W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. • www.NortonEbooks.

com

AMERICA
A NARRATIVE HISTORY
NINTH EDITION

George Brown Tindall and David Emory Shi

AMERICA


D E TA I L O F E N G R AV I N G B A S E D O N
T H E C H A S M O F T H E C O LO R A D O
BY THOMAS MORAN
AMERICA
A NARRATIVE HISTORY

Ninth Edition

GEORGE BROWN TINDALL

DAVID EMORY SHI

W . W . NORTON & COMPANY . NEW YORK . LONDON

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tindall, George Brown.
America : a narrative history / George Brown Tindall,
David Emory Shi.—9th ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-393-91262-3 (hardcover)
1. United States—History—Textbooks. I. Shi, David E. II. Title.
E178.1.T55 2013 2012034504
973—dc23
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110-0017
wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
F OR B RUCE AND S USAN
AND FOR B LAIR

F OR
J ASON AND J ESSICA
GEORGE B. TINDALL recently of the University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill, was an award-winning historian
of the South with a number of major books to his credit,
including The Emergence of the New South, 1913–1945 and
The Disruption of the Solid South.

DAVID E. SHI is a professor of history and the president

emeritus of Furman University. He is the author of several
books on American cultural history, including the award-
winning The Simple Life: Plain Living and High Thinking in
American Culture and Facing Facts: Realism in American
Thought and Culture, 1850–1920.
 
CONTENTS

List of Maps • xvii

Preface • xxi
Acknowledgments • xxv

Part One / A NOT-SO-“NEW” WORLD

1 | THE COLLISION OF CULTURES 5

PRE-COLUMBIAN INDIAN CIVILIZATIONS 6 • EUROPEAN VISIONS OF
AMERICA 15 • THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE 17 • THE VOYAGES OF
COLUMBUS 19 • THE GREAT BIOLOGICAL EXCHANGE 23 • PROFESSIONAL
EXPLORERS 25 • THE SPANISH EMPIRE 26 • THE PROTESTANT
REFORMATION 40 • CHALLENGES TO THE SPANISH EMPIRE 44

2 | BRITAIN AND ITS COLONIES 52

THE ENGLISH BACKGROUND 52 • SETTLING THE CHESAPEAKE 56
• SETTLING NEW ENGLAND 67 • INDIANS IN NEW ENGLAND 78
• THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA 83 • SETTLING THE
CAROLINAS 84 • SETTLING THE MIDDLE COLONIES AND GEORGIA 89
• THRIVING COLONIES 102

ix
x • CONTENTS

3 | COLONIAL WAYS OF LIFE 106

THE SHAPE OF EARLY AMERICA 107 • SOCIETY AND ECONOMY IN THE
SOUTHERN COLONIES 114 • SOCIETY AND ECONOMY IN NEW
ENGLAND 127 • SOCIETY AND ECONOMY IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES 139
• COLONIAL CITIES 143 • THE ENLIGHTENMENT IN AMERICA 146
• THE GREAT AWAKENING 150

4 | FROM COLONIES TO STATES 158

ENGLISH ADMINISTRATION OF THE COLONIES 159 • THE HABIT OF
SELF-GOVERNMENT164 • TROUBLED NEIGHBORS 165 • THE COLONIAL
WARS 169 • REGULATING THE COLONIES 180 • FANNING THE
FLAMES 185 • A WORSENING CRISIS 190 • SHIFTING AUTHORITY 194
• INDEPENDENCE 200

Part Two / BUILDING A NATION

5 | THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 213

1776: WASHINGTON’S NARROW ESCAPE 214 • AMERICAN SOCIETY AT
WAR 218 • 1777: SETBACKS FOR THE BRITISH 221 • 1778: BOTH
SIDES REGROUP 225 • THE WAR IN THE SOUTH 229 • THE TREATY
OF PARIS 235 • THE POLITICAL REVOLUTION 238 • THE SOCIAL
REVOLUTION 240 • THE EMERGENCE OF AN AMERICAN CULTURE 249

6 | SHAPING A FEDERAL UNION 254

THE CONFEDERATION GOVERNMENT 255 • CREATING THE CONSTITUTION 267

7 | THE FEDERALIST ERA 284

A NEW NATION 285 • HAMILTON’S FINANCIAL VISION 290 • THE REPUBLICAN

ALTERNATIVE 298 • CRISES FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC 300 • SETTLEMENT
OF NEW LAND 309 • TRANSFER OF POWER 312 • THE ADAMS
ADMINISTRATION 314
 Contents • xi

8 | THE EARLY REPUBLIC 326

THE NEW AMERICAN NATION 327 • JEFFERSONIAN SIMPLICITY 329
• DIVISIONS IN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 340 • WAR IN EUROPE 342
• THE WAR OF 1812 347

Part Three / AN EXPANSIVE NATION

9 | THE DYNAMICS OF GROWTH 369

TRANSPORTATION AND THE MARKET REVOLUTION 370 • A COMMUNICATIONS

REVOLUTION 379 • AGRICULTURE AND THE NATIONAL ECONOMY 380
• THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 384 • THE POPULAR CULTURE 392
• IMMIGRATION 395 • ORGANIZED LABOR 402 • THE RISE OF THE
PROFESSIONS 405 • JACKSONIAN INEQUALITY 407

10 | NATIONALISM AND SECTIONALISM 410

ECONOMIC NATIONALISM 410 • “AN ERA OF GOOD FEELINGS” 415 • CRISES
AND COMPROMISES 420 • JUDICIAL NATIONALISM 424 • NATIONALIST
DIPLOMACY 428 • ONE-PARTY POLITICS 429

11 | THE JACKSONIAN ERA 440

SETTING THE STAGE 442 • 447 • JACKSON’S INDIAN

NULLIFICATION
POLICY 455 • THE BANK CONTROVERSY 459 • CONTENTIOUS
POLITICS 462 • VAN BUREN AND THE NEW PARTY SYSTEM 468 • ASSESSING
THE JACKSON YEARS 474

12 | THE OLD SOUTH 478

THE DISTINCTIVENESS OF THE OLD SOUTH 480 • WHITE SOCIETY IN

THE SOUTH 487 • BLACK SOCIETY IN THE SOUTH 492 • THE CULTURE
OF THE SOUTHERN FRONTIER 505
xii • CONTENTS

13 | RELIGION, ROMANTICISM, AND REFORM 510

RATIONAL RELIGION 511 • THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING 513
• ROMANTICISM IN AMERICA 522 • THE FLOWERING OF AMERICAN
LITERATURE 527 • EDUCATION 531 • THE REFORM IMPULSE 535
• ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENTS 542

Part Four / A HOUSE DIVIDED

AND REBUILT

14 | AN EMPIRE IN THE WEST 559

THE TYLER PRESIDENCY 560 • THE WESTERN FRONTIER 563 • MOVING
WEST 571 • ANNEXING TEXAS 579 • THE MEXICAN WAR 589

15 | THE GATHERING STORM 600

SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 601 • THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 609

• THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA CRISIS 617 • THE DEEPENING SECTIONAL CRISIS 628
• THE CENTER COMES APART 637

16 | THE WAR OF THE UNION 648

THE END OF THE WAITING GAME648 • THE BALANCE OF FORCE 654
• THE WAR’S EARLY COURSE 656 • EMANCIPATION 672 • THE WAR
BEHIND THE LINES 676 • GOVERNMENT DURING THE WAR 679 • THE
FALTERING CONFEDERACY 685 • THE CONFEDERACY’S DEFEAT 690
• A MODERN WAR 700

17 | RECONSTRUCTION: NORTH AND SOUTH 704

THE WAR’S AFTERMATH 705 • THE BATTLE OVER POLITICAL

RECONSTRUCTION 711 • THE ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN 713
• RECONSTRUCTING THE SOUTH 720 • THE RECONSTRUCTED
SOUTH 724 • THE GRANT YEARS 732
 Contents • xiii

Part Five / GROWING PAINS

18 | BIG BUSINESS AND ORGANIZED LABOR 751

THE RISE OF BIG BUSINESS 751 • ENTREPRENEURS 761 • THE WORKING

CLASS 768

19 | THE SOUTH AND THE WEST TRANSFORMED 790

THE MYTH OF THE NEW SOUTH 791 • THE NEW WEST 797

20 | THE EMERGENCE OF URBAN AMERICA 820

AMERICA’S MOVE TO TOWN 821 • THE NEW IMMIGRATION 826

• POPULAR CULTURE 832 • EDUCATION AND SOCIAL THOUGHT 839

21 | GILDED AGE POLITICS AND AGRARIAN REVOLT 848

PARADOXICAL POLITICS 849 • CORRUPTION AND REFORM: HAYES TO

HARRISON 853 • THE FARM PROBLEM AND AGRARIAN PROTEST
MOVEMENTS 864 • THE ECONOMY AND THE SILVER SOLUTION 872
• RACE RELATIONS DURING THE 1890S 878

Part Six / MODERN AMERICA

22 | SEIZING AN AMERICAN EMPIRE 897

TOWARD THE NEW IMPERIALISM 898 • EXPANSION IN THE PACIFIC 900
• THE WAR OF 1898 903 • IMPERIAL RIVALRIES IN EAST ASIA 920
• BIG-STICK DIPLOMACY 922

23 | “MAKING THE WORLD OVER”: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA 932

ELEMENTS OF REFORM 934 • THE SOCIAL GOSPEL 935 • EARLY EFFORTS AT

URBAN REFORM 937 • FEATURES OF PROGRESSIVISM 944 • ROOSEVELT’S
xiv • CONTENTS

PROGRESSIVISM 950 • ROOSEVELT ’S SECOND TERM 953 • FROM

ROOSEVELT TO TAFT 958 • WOODROW WILSON’S PROGRESSIVISM 962
• LIMITS OF PROGRESSIVISM 977

24 | AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR 980

WILSON AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS 980 • AN UNEASY NEUTRALITY 983

• AMERICA’S ENTRY INTO THE WAR 995 • AMERICA AT WAR 1001
• THE FIGHT FOR THE PEACE 1007 • LURCHING FROM WAR TO PEACE 1015

25 | THE MODERN TEMPER 1022

THE REACTIONARY TWENTIES 1024 • THE “JAZZ AGE” DURING THE

“ROARING TWENTIES” 1034 • MASS CULTURE 1044 • THE MODERNIST
REVOLT 1050

26 | REPUBLICAN RESURGENCE AND DECLINE 1060

“NORMALCY” 1061 • ISOLATIONISM IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS 1065

• THE HARDING SCANDALS 1069 • THE NEW ERA 1074 • PRESIDENT
HOOVER, THE ENGINEER 1078 • GLOBAL CONCERNS 1086 • FROM
HOOVERISM TO THE NEW DEAL 1092

27 | NEW DEAL AMERICA 1100

REGULATORY EFFORTS 1105 • THE SOCIAL COST OF THE DEPRESSION 1110

• CULTURE IN THE THIRTIES 1117 • THE NEW DEAL MATURES 1120
• ROOSEVELT ’S SECOND TERM 1129 • THE LEGACY OF THE NEW DEAL 1136

28 | THE SECOND WORLD WAR 1142

FROM ISOLATIONISM TO INTERVENTION 1142 • FOREIGN CRISES 1143
• WAR CLOUDS 1150 • THE STORM IN EUROPE 1152 • THE STORM IN
THE PACIFIC 1159 • A WORLD WAR 1163 • MOBILIZATION AT HOME 1165
• SOCIAL EFFECTS OF THE WAR 1167 • THE ALLIED DRIVE TOWARD BERLIN 1175
• LEAPFROGGING TO TOKYO 1185 • A NEW AGE IS BORN 1188 • THE
FINAL LEDGER 1200
 Contents • xv

Part Seven / THE AMERICAN AGE

29 | THE FAIR DEAL AND CONTAINMENT 1209

DEMOBILIZATION UNDER TRUMAN 1210 • THE COLD WAR 1215

• CIVIL RIGHTS DURING THE 1940S 1225 • THE COLD WAR HEATS UP 1232

30 | THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE 1246

A PEOPLE OF PLENTY 1248 • A CONFORMIST CULTURE 1258 • CRACKS
IN THE PICTURE WINDOW 1261 • ALIENATION AND LIBERATION 1263
• MODERATE REPUBLICANISM—THE EISENHOWER YEARS 1268 • THE EARLY
YEARS OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT 1273 • FOREIGN POLICY IN
THE 1950S 1282 • FOREIGN INTERVENTIONS 1285 • REFLECTION
AND FOREIGN CRISES 1290 • FESTERING PROBLEMS ABROAD 1294
• ASSESSING THE EISENHOWER PRESIDENCY 1296

31 | NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S 1300

THE NEW FRONTIER 1300 • EXPANSION OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT 1306
• FOREIGN FRONTIERS 1314 • LYNDON B. JOHNSON AND THE GREAT
SOCIETY 1322 • FROM CIVIL RIGHTS TO BLACK POWER 1331 • THE TRAGEDY
OF VIETNAM 1338 • SIXTIES CRESCENDO 1344

32 | REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S 1350

THE ROOTS OF REBELLION 1351 • NIXON AND MIDDLE AMERICA 1367

• NIXON AND VIETNAM 1376 • NIXON TRIUMPHANT 1381
• WATERGATE 1387 • AN UNELECTED PRESIDENT 1392

33 | A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990 1400

THE CARTER PRESIDENCY 1401 • THE REAGAN REVOLUTION 1412 • REAGAN’S

FIRST TERM 1417 • REAGAN’S SECOND TERM 1425 • THE CHANGING
SOCIAL LANDSCAPE 1429 • THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION 1438 • CULTURAL
CONSERVATISM 1446
xvi • CONTENTS

34 | AMERICA IN A NEW MILLENNIUM 1450

AMERICA’S CHANGING MOSAIC 1451 • 1452
BUSH TO CLINTON
• DOMESTIC POLICY IN CLINTON’S FIRST TERM 1456
• REPUBLICAN
INSURGENCY 1458 • THE CLINTON YEARS AT HOME 1462 • FOREIGN-POLICY
CHALLENGES 1466 • THE ELECTION OF 2000 1469 • COMPASSIONATE
CONSERVATISM 1472 • GLOBAL TERRORISM 1473 • SECOND-TERM
BLUES 1482 • A HISTORIC ELECTION 1487 • OBAMA’S FIRST TERM 1491

GLOSSARY A1

APPENDIX A59
THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE A61 • ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION A66
• THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES A74 • AMENDMENTS TO THE
CONSTITUTION A86 • PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS A96 • ADMISSION OF
STATES A104 • POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES A105 • IMMIGRATION
TO THE UNITED STATES, FISCAL YEARS 1820–2011 A106 • IMMIGRATION BY
REGION AND SELECTED COUNTRY OF LAST RESIDENCE, FISCAL YEARS 1820–2011 A108
• PRESIDENTS, VICE PRESIDENTS, AND SECRETARIES OF STATE A117

FURTHER READINGS A123

CREDITS A149

INDEX A155
 
MAPS

The First Migration 7

Pre-Columbian Civilizations in Middle and South America 10
Pre-Columbian Civilizations in North America 11
Norse Discoveries 16
Columbus’s Voyages 22
Spanish and Portuguese Explorations 26
Spanish Explorations of the Mainland 35
English, French, and Dutch Explorations 45
Land Grants to the Virginia Company 59
Early Virginia and Maryland 66
Early New England Settlements 70
The West Indies, 1600–1800 73
Early Settlements in the South 85
The Middle Colonies 96
European Settlements and Indian Tribes in Early America 100–101
The African Slave Trade, 1500–1800 120
Atlantic Trade Routes 133
Major Immigrant Groups in Colonial America 142
The French in North America 168
Major Campaigns of the French and Indian War 172
North America, 1713 176
North America, 1763 177
Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1775 195
Major Campaigns in New York and New Jersey, 1776–1777 217

xvii
xviii • MAPS

Major Campaigns in New York and Pennsylvania, 1777 222

Western Campaigns, 1776–1779 228
Major Campaigns in the South, 1778–1781 232
Yorktown, 1781 232
North America, 1783 236
Western Land Cessions, 1781–1802 258
The Old Northwest, 1785 260
The Vote on the Constitution, 1787–1790 280
Treaty of Greenville, 1795 305
Pinckney’s Treaty, 1795 308
The Election of 1800 322
Explorations of the Louisiana Purchase, 1804–1807 339
Major Northern Campaigns of the War of 1812 353
Major Southern Campaigns of the War of 1812 355
Transportation West, about 1840 372–373
The Growth of Railroads, 1850 376
The Growth of Railroads, 1860 377
Population Density, 1820 384
Population Density, 1860 385
The Growth of Industry in the 1840s 389
The Growth of Cities, 1820 392
The Growth of Cities, 1860 393
The National Road, 1811–1838 414
Boundary Treaties, 1818–1819 418
The Missouri Compromise, 1820 423
The Election of 1828 436
Indian Removal, 1820–1840 456
The Election of 1840 472
Cotton Production, 1821 482
Population Growth and Cotton Production, 1821–1859 483
The Slave Population, 1820 494
The Slave Population, 1860 495
The Mormon Trek, 1830–1851 522
The Webster-Ashburton Treaty, 1842 563
Wagon Trails West 573
The Election of 1844 584
The Oregon Dispute, 1818–1846 588
Major Campaigns of the Mexican War 594
 Maps • xix

The Compromise of 1850 613

The Gadsden Purchase, 1853 619
The Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854 620
The Election of 1856 627
The Election of 1860 643
Secession, 1860–1861 652
The First Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861 657
Campaigns in the West, February–April 1862 664
The Peninsular Campaign, 1862 667
Campaigns in Virginia and Maryland, 1862 672
The Vicksburg Campaign, 1863 686
Campaigns in the East, 1863 688
Grant in Virginia, 1864–1865 693
Sherman’s Campaigns, 1864–1865 696
Reconstruction, 1865–1877 730
The Election of 1876 742
Transcontinental Railroad Lines, 1880s 758
Sharecropping and Tenancy, 1880–1900 793
The New West 802–803
Indian Wars 806
The Emergence of Cities, 1880 822
The Emergence of Cities, 1920 823
The Election of 1896 877
The War of 1898 in the Pacific 909
The War of 1898 in the Caribbean 911
U.S. Interests in the Pacific 917
U.S. Interests in the Caribbean 926
Women’s Suffrage, 1869–1914 941
The Election of 1912 966
World War I in Europe, 1914 989
World War I, the Western Front, 1918 1003
Europe after the Treaty of Versailles, 1918 1013
The Election of 1932 1095
The Tennessee Valley Authority 1110
Aggression in Europe, 1935–1939 1146
Japanese Expansion before Pearl Harbor 1160
World War II Military Alliances, 1942 1176
World War II in Europe and Africa, 1942–1945 1178–1179
xx • MAPS

World War II in the Pacific, 1942–1945 1186–1187

The Occupation of Germany and Austria 1224
The Election of 1948 1231
The Korean War, 1950 1235
The Korean War, 1950–1953 1235
The Election of 1952 1270
Postwar Alliances: The Far East 1289
Postwar Alliances: Europe, North Africa, the Middle East 1292
The Election of 1960 1304
Vietnam, 1966 1340
The Election of 1968 1347
The Election of 1980 1411
The Election of 1988 1438
The Election of 2000 1470
The Election of 2004 1482
The Election of 2008 1491
 
PREFACE

This edition of America: A Narrative History includes the most substantial

changes since I partnered with George Tindall in 1984, but I have been dili-
gent to sustain his steadfast commitment to a textbook grounded in a com-
pelling narrative history of the American experience. From the start of our
collaboration, we strove to write a book animated by colorful characters,
informed by balanced analysis and social texture, and guided by the unfold-
ing of key events. Those classic principles, combined with a handy format
and low price, have helped make America: A Narrative History one of the
most popular and well-respected American history textbooks.
This Ninth Edition of America features a number of important
changes designed to make the text more teachable and classroom-friendly.
Chief among them are major structural changes, including the joining of
several chapters to reduce the overall number from thirty-seven to thirty-
four, as well as the re-sequencing of several chapters to make the narrative
flow more smoothly for students. Major organizational changes include:

• New Chapter 4, From Colonies to States, combines The Imperial Perspec-

tive and From Empire to Independence from previous editions to better
integrate the events leading up to the American Revolution.
• New Chapter 9, The Dynamics of Growth, now leads off Part III, An
Expansive Nation, to first introduce the industrial revolution and the
growth of the market economy before turning to major political, social,
and cultural developments.
• New Chapter 12, The Old South, has been moved up, now appearing
between the chapters on the Jacksonian era and the American Renais-
sance, in order to foreground the importance of slavery as a major issue
during this period.

xxi
xxii • PREFACE

• From Isolation to Global War, a chapter from previous editions, has been
broken up, and its parts redistributed to new Chapter 26, Republican
Resurgence and Decline, and new Chapter 28, The Second World War, in
order to better integrate the coverage of domestic politics and interna-
tional relations during this period.
• New Chapter 30, The 1950s: Affluence and Anxiety in an Atomic Age,
combines Through the Picture Window and Conflict and Deadlock: The Eisen-
hower Years from the previous editions to better show the relationship
between political, social, and cultural developments during the 1950s.

In terms of content changes, the overarching theme of the new edition is the
importance of African-American history. While African-American history
has always been a central part of the book’s narrative, this Ninth Edition fea-
tures enhanced and fully up-to-date treatment based on the best recent
scholarship in African-American history, including African slavery, slavery
in America during the colonial era and revolutionary war, the slave trade in
the South, slave rebellions, the practical challenges faced by slaves liberated
during the Civil War, the Wilmington Riot of 1898, in which an elected city
government made up of blacks was ousted by armed violence, President
Woodrow Wilson’s segregationist views and policies, the Harlem Renais-
sance, the Double V Campaign during World War II, and the Freedom Sum-
mer of 1964.
Of course, as in every new edition, there is new material related to con-
temporary America—the first term of the Barack Obama administration,
the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and the emergence of the
Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movements—as well as the stagnant
economy in the aftermath of the Great Recession. In addition, I have incor-
porated fresh insights from important new scholarly works dealing with
many significant topics throughout this new edition.
America’s New Student Resources are designed to make students better
readers. New, carefully crafted pedagogical features have been added to the
Ninth Edition to further guide students through the narrative.

• Focus questions, chapter summaries, and new bold-face key terms work
together seamlessly to highlight core content. The chapters are enhanced
with easy-to-read full-color maps and chapter chronologies.
• New Author Videos feature David Shi explaining major developments in
American history. Each of the 42 video segments includes additional
media, such as illustrations and maps, to enhance the learning experience.
 Preface • xxiii

• New “Critical Reading Exercises,” tied directly to the Ninth Edition, help
students learn how to read the textbook. Students are guided through a
series of exercises to identify the most important information from select
passages in each chapter.
• New Cross-Chapter Quizzes in the Norton Coursepacks are designed to
help students prepare for midterm and final examinations by challenging
them to think across periods, to trace longer-term developments, and to
make connections and comparisons.
• A new edition of For the Record: A Documentary History of America, by
David E. Shi and Holly A. Mayer (Duquesne University), is the perfect
companion reader for America: A Narrative History. The new Fifth Edi-
tion has been brought into closer alignment with the main text. For the
Record now has 250 primary-source readings from diaries, journals,
newspaper articles, speeches, government documents, and novels, includ-
ing a number of readings that highlight the substantially updated theme
of African-American history in this new edition of America. If you
haven’t looked at For the Record in a while, now would be a good time to
take a look.
• New Norton Mix: American History enables instructors to build their
own custom reader from a database of nearly 300 primary and secondary
source selections. The custom readings can be packaged as a standalone
reader or integrated with chapters from America into a custom textbook.
• America: A Narrative History StudySpace (wwnorton.com/web
/america9) provides a proven assignment-driven plan for each chapter. In
addition to the new “Critical Reading Exercises” and new “Author
Videos,” highlights include focus questions, learning objectives, chapter
outlines, quizzes, iMaps and new iMap quizzes, map worksheets, flash-
cards, interactive timelines, and “U.S. History Tours” powered by Google
Earth map technology. There are also several hundred multimedia primary-
source selections—including documents, images, and audio and video
clips—grouped by topic to aid research and writing.

America’s New Instructor Resources are designed to provide addi-

tional resources that will enable more dynamic classroom lectures:

• New Norton American History Digital Archive disks on African-American

history are the eighth and ninth disks in this extraordinary collection of
digital resources for classroom lecture. The 2 new disks come with nearly
xxiv • PREFACE

400 selections from African-American history, including illustrations, pho-

tographs and audio and video clips.
• New PowerPoint Lectures with dynamic Author Videos. Replete with
every image and map from the textbook, the America Ninth Edition
PowerPoints now also feature the new Author Videos. These classroom-
ready presentations can be used as lecture launchers or as video sum-
maries of major issues and developments in American history.
• New enhanced Coursepack integrates all StudySpace content with these
handy features and materials: 1) Forum Questions designed for online and
hybrid courses; 2) Critical Reading Exercises that report to your LMS
Gradebook; 3) Cross-Chapter Quizzes for each half of the survey course.
• The Instructor’s Manual and Test Bank, by Mark Goldman (Tallahassee
Community College), Michael Krysko (Kansas State University), and
Brian McKnight (UVA, Wise), includes a test bank of multiple-choice,
short-answer, and essay questions, as well as detailed chapter outlines,
lecture suggestions, and bibliographies.

It’s clear why America continues to set the standard when it comes to provid-
ing a low-cost book with high-value content. Your students will buy it because
it’s so affordable, and they’ll read it because the narrative is so engaging!
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In preparing the Ninth Edition, I have benefited from the insights and sug-
gestions of many people. Some of those insights have come from student
readers of the text, and I encourage such feedback. I’d particularly like to
thank Eirlys Barker, who has worked on much of the new StudySpace con-
tent, Laura Farkas (Wake Technical College), who has created the wonderful
new “Critical Reading Exercises,” and I’d like to give special thanks to Bran-
don Franke (Blinn College, Bryan) for his work on the new PowerPoint lec-
tures. Finally, many thanks to Mark Goldman, Michael Krysko, and Brian
McKnight for their efforts on the Instructor’s Manual and Test Bank.
Numerous scholars and survey instructors advised me on the new edi-
tion: Eirlys Barker (Thomas Nelson Community College), Blanche Bricke
(Blinn College), Michael Collins (Midwestern State University), Scott Cook
(Motlow State Community College), Carl Creasman, Jr. (Valencia College),
Stephen Davis (Lone Star College), Susan Dollar (Northwestern State Uni-
versity of Louisiana), Alicia Duffy (University of Central Florida), Laura
Farkas (Wake Technical Community College), Jane Flaherty (Texas A&M
University), Brandon Franke (Blinn College), Mark Goldman (Tallahassee
Community College), James Good (Lone Star College), Barbara Green
(Wright State University), D. Harland Hagler (University of North Texas),
Michael Harkins (Harper College), Carolyn Hoffman (Prince George’s
Community College), Marc Horger (Ohio State University), Michael Krivdo
(Texas A&M University), Margaret Lambert (Lone Star College), Pat Ledbet-
ter (North Central Texas College), Stephen Lopez (San Jacinto College),
Barry Malone (Wake Technical Community College), Dee Mckinney (East
Georgia College), Lisa Morales (North Central Texas College), Robert Out-
land III (Louisiana State University), Catherine Parzynski (Montgomery
County Community College), Robert Lynn Rainard (Tidewater Community
College), Edward Duke Richey (University of North Texas), Stuart Smith III

xxv
xxvi • ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

(Germanna Community College), Roger Tate (Somerset Community Col-

lege), Kyle Volk (University of Montana), Vernon Volpe (University of
Nebraska), Heidi Weber (SUNY Orange), Cecil Edward Weller, Jr. (San Jac-
into College), and Margarita Youngo (Pima Community College).
Once again, I thank my friends at W. W. Norton for their consummate
professionalism and good cheer, especially Jon Durbin, Justin Cahill, Steve
Hoge, Melissa Atkin, Kate Feighery, Lorraine Klimowich, Stephanie Romeo,
Debra Morton-Hoyt, Ashley Horna, Heather Arteaga, Julie Sindel, and
Tamara McNeill.
 Part One


A

NOT-SO-“NEW”

WORLD
H istory is filled with ironies. Luck and accidents often shape
events more than actions do. Long before Christopher Columbus hap-
pened upon the Caribbean Sea in his effort to find a westward passage to
Asia, the indigenous people he mislabeled Indians had occupied and
transformed the lands of the Western Hemisphere for thousands of
years. The first residents in what Europeans came to call the “New
World” had migrated from northeastern Asia during the last glacial
advance of the Ice Age, nearly 20,000 years ago. By the end of the fif-
teenth century, when Columbus began his voyage west, there were mil-
lions of Indians living in the Western Hemisphere. Over the centuries,
they had developed diverse and often highly sophisticated societies,
some rooted in agriculture, others in trade or imperial conquest. So, the
New World was “new” only to the Europeans who began exploring, con-
quering, and exploiting the region at the end of the late fifteenth century.
The Indian cultures were, of course, profoundly affected by the arrival
of peoples from Europe and Africa. The Indians experienced cata-
strophic cultural change: they were exploited, infected, enslaved, dis-
placed, and exterminated. Millions of acres of tribal lands were taken or
bought for a pittance. Yet this conventional tale of tragic conquest over-
simplifies the complex process by which the Indians, Europeans, and
Africans interacted in the Western Hemisphere. The Indians were more
than passive victims of European power; they were also trading partners
and often allies as well as rivals of the transatlantic newcomers. They
became neighbors and advisers, converts and spouses. As such, they par-
ticipated creatively and powerfully in the creation of the new society
known as America.
The Europeans who risked their lives to settle in the Western Hemi-
sphere were a diverse lot. Young and old, men and women, they came
from Spain, Portugal, France, the British Isles, the Netherlands, Scandi-
navia, Italy, and the German states (Germany would not become a
united nation until the mid–nineteenth century). A variety of motives
inspired them to undertake the often-harrowing transatlantic voyage.
Some were adventurers and fortune seekers eager to gain glory and find
gold, silver, and spices. Others were fervent Christians eager to create
kingdoms of God in the “New World.” Still others were convicts,
debtors, indentured servants, or political or religious exiles. Many were
simply seeking a piece of land, higher wages, and greater economic
opportunity. A settler in Pennsylvania noted that “poor people (both
men and women) of all kinds can here get three times the wages for
their labour than they can in England.”
Yet such enticements were not sufficient to attract enough workers to
keep up with the rapidly expanding colonial economies, so the Euro-
peans forced the Indians to work for them. But there were never enough
laborers to meet the unceasing demand. Moreover, captive Indians often
escaped or were so rebellious that their use as slaves was banned in sev-
eral colonies. The Massachusetts legislature outlawed forced labor
because the Indians displayed “a malicious, surly and revengeful spirit;
rude and insolent in their behavior, and very ungovernable.”
Beginning early in the seventeenth century, colonists turned to Africa
for their labor needs. European nations—especially Portugal and
Spain—had long been transporting captive Africans to the Western
Hemisphere, from Chile to Canada. In 1619 a Dutch warship brought
twenty captured Africans to Jamestown, near the coast of Virginia. The
Dutch captain exchanged the slaves for food and supplies. This first of
many transactions involving enslaved people in British America would
transform American society in complex, multilayered ways that no
one at the time envisioned. Few Europeans during the colonial era
saw the contradiction between the promise of freedom in America
for themselves and the expanding
institution of race-based slavery.
Nor did they reckon with the
problems associated with intro-
ducing into the colonies people
deemed alien and inferior. Thus
began the two great social injus-
tices that have come to haunt
American history: the conquest
and displacement of the Indians
and the enslavement of Africans.
The intermingling of people,
cultures, and ecosystems from the
continents of Africa, Europe, and
the Western Hemisphere gave
colonial American society its
distinctive vitality and variety. In turn, the diversity of the environment
and the varying climate spawned quite different economies and patterns
of living in the various regions of North America. As the original settle-
ments grew into prosperous and populous colonies, the transplanted
Europeans had to fashion social institutions and political systems to
manage dynamic growth and control rising tensions.
At the same time, imperial rivalries among the Spanish, French, Eng-
lish, and Dutch triggered costly wars fought in Europe and around the
world. The monarchs of Europe struggled to manage often-unruly
colonies, which, they discovered, played crucial roles in their frequent
European wars. Many of the colonists had brought with them to Amer-
ica a feisty independence, which led them to resent government interfer-
ence in their affairs. A British official in North Carolina reported that
the residents of the Piedmont region were “without any Law or Order.
Impudence is so very high, as to be past bearing.” As long as the reins of
imperial control were loosely held, the colonists and their British rulers
maintained an uneasy partnership. But as the royal authorities tightened
their control during the mid–eighteenth century, they met resistance
from colonists, which became revolt and culminated in revolution.

1
THE COLLISION
OF CULTURES

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• What civilizations existed in America before the arrival of

Europeans?
• Why were European countries, such as Spain and Portugal, pre-
pared to embark on voyages of discovery by the sixteenth century?
• How did contact between the Western Hemisphere and Europe
change through the exchange of plants, animals, and pathogens?
• What were the Europeans’ reasons for establishing colonies in
America?
• What is the legacy of the Spanish presence in North America?
• What effect did the Protestant Reformation have on the coloniza-
tion of the “New World”?

T he history of the United States of America begins long before

1776. The supposed “New World” discovered by intrepid
European explorers was in fact a very “old world” to civiliza-
tions thousands of years in the making. Debate continues about when and
how the first humans arrived in North America. Until recently, archaeolo-
gists had assumed that ancient Siberians some 12,000 to 15,000 years ago
had journeyed 600 miles across the frigid Bering Strait near the Arctic Circle
on what was then a treeless land connecting northeastern Siberia with
Alaska (by about 7000 B.C., the land bridge had been submerged by rising sea
levels). These nomadic, spear-wielding hunters and their descendants, called
Paleo-Indians (“old” Indians) by archaeologists, drifted south in pursuit of
large game animals. Over the next 500 years, as the climate warmed and the
glaciers receded, a steady stream of small groups fanned out across the entire
Western Hemisphere, from the Arctic Circle to the tip of South America.
6 • THE COLLISION OF CULTURES (CH. 1)

Recent archaeological discoveries in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Chile sug-

gest a more complex story of human settlement. The new evidence reveals
that prehistoric humans may have arrived much earlier (perhaps 18,000 to
40,000 years ago) from various parts of Asia—and some may even have
crossed the Atlantic Ocean from southwestern Europe.
Regardless of when humans first set foot on the North American conti-
nent, the region and its indigenous peoples eventually became a crossroads
for immigrants from around the globe: Europeans, Africans, Asians, and
others—all of whom brought with them as immigrants distinctive back-
grounds, cultures, technologies, and motivations. This immigrant experience—
past and present—has become one of the major themes of American
life. Before and after 1776, what became the United States of America has
taken in more people, and more different kinds of people, than any other
nation in world history. Christopher Columbus’s pathbreaking voyage in 1492
unleashed an unrelenting wave of exploration, conquest, exploitation, and
settlement that transformed the Americas, Europe, and Africa in ways no one
imagined possible.

P R E - C O L U M B I A N I N D I A N C I V I L I Z AT I O N S

The first peoples in North America discovered an immense continent

with extraordinary climatic and environmental diversity. Coastal plains,
broad grasslands, harsh deserts, and soaring mountain ranges generated dis-
tinct habitats, social structures, and cultural patterns. By the time Columbus
happened upon the Western Hemisphere, the hundreds of tribes living in
North America may together have numbered over 10 million people. They
had developed a diverse array of communities in which more than 400 lan-
guages were spoken. Yet despite the distances and dialects separating them,
the Indian societies created extensive trading networks, which helped spread
ideas and innovations. Contrary to the romantic myth of early Indian civi-
lizations living in perfect harmony with nature and one another, the indige-
nous societies often engaged in warfare and exploited the environment by
burning vast areas, planting fields, and gathering seeds, berries, and roots
while harvesting vast numbers of game animals, fish, and shellfish.

E A R LY C U LT U R E S After centuries of subsistence nomadic life centered

on hunting game animals and gathering edible wild plants, the ancient Indi-
ans settled in more permanent villages. Thousands of years after people first
appeared in North America, climatic changes and extensive hunting had
 Pre-Columbian Indian Civilizations • 7

When did people first cross the Bering Sea? What evidence have archaeologists and
anthropologists found from the lives of the first people in America? Why did those
people travel to North America?
8 • THE COLLISION OF CULTURES (CH. 1)

killed off the largest mammals. Global warming diminished grasslands and
stimulated forest growth, which provided plants and small animals for
human consumption. The ancient Indians adapted to the new environments
by developing nature-centered religions, mastering the use of fire, improving
technology such as spear points, inventing fiber snares and basketry, as well as
mills for grinding nuts, and domesticating the dog and the turkey. A new cul-
tural stage arrived with the introduction of farming, fishing, and pottery
making. Hunters focused on faster, more elusive mammals: deer, antelope,
elk, moose, and caribou. Already by about 5000 B.C., Indians of Mexico were
generating an “agricultural revolution” by growing the plant foods that would
become the staples of the hemisphere: chiefly maize (corn), beans, and
squash but also chili peppers, avocados, and pumpkins. The annual cultiva-
tion of such crops enabled Indian societies to grow larger and more complex,
with their own distinctive social, economic, and political institutions.

T H E M AYA S , A Z T E C S , C H I B C H A S , A N D I N C A SBetween about

2000 and 1500 B.C., permanent farming towns and cities appeared in Mexico
and northern Guatemala. The more settled life in turn provided time for the
cultivation of religion, crafts, art, science, administration—and frequent
warfare. The Indians in the Western Hemisphere harbored the usual human
grievances against their neighbors, and wars were common. From about A.D.
300 to 900, Middle America (Mesoamerica, what is now Mexico and Central
America) developed densely populated cities complete with gigantic pyra-
mids, temples, and palaces, all supported by surrounding peasant villages.
Moreover, the Mayas used mathematics and astronomy to devise a sophisti-
cated calendar more accurate than the one the Europeans were using at the
time of Christopher Columbus in the late fifteenth century. Mayan civiliza-
tion was highly developed, featuring sprawling cities, hierarchical govern-
ment, terraced farms, spectacular pyramids, and a cohesive ideology.
In about A.D. 900 the complex Mayan culture collapsed. The Mayas had
overexploited the rain forest, upon whose fragile ecosystem they depended. As
an archaeologist has explained, “Too many farmers grew too many crops on
too much of the landscape.” Widespread deforestation led to hillside erosion
and a catastrophic loss of nutrient-rich farmland. Overpopulation added to
the strain on Mayan society, prompting civil wars. Mayan war parties
destroyed each other’s cities and took prisoners, who were then sacrificed to
the gods in theatrical rituals. Whatever the reasons for the weakening of
Mayan society, it succumbed to the Toltecs, a warlike people who conquered
most of the region in the tenth century. But around A.D. 1200 the Toltecs
mysteriously withdrew after a series of droughts, fires, and invasions.
 Pre-Columbian Indian Civilizations • 9

Mayan society
A fresco depicting the social divisions of Mayan society. A Mayan lord, at the center,
receives offerings.

During the late thirteenth century the Aztecs—named after the legendary
Aztlán, from where they were supposed to have come—arrived from the
northwest to fill the vacuum in the Basin of Mexico. They founded the city
of Tenochtitlán in 1325 and gradually expanded their control over neighbor-
ing tribes in central Mexico. The Aztecs developed a thriving commerce in
gold, silver, copper, and pearls as well as agricultural products. When the
Spanish invaded Mexico in 1519, the sprawling Aztec Empire, connected by
a network of roads with rest stops every ten miles or so, encompassed per-
haps 5 million people.
Farther south, in what is now Colombia, the Chibchas built a similar
empire on a smaller scale. Still farther south the Quechuas (better known as
the Incas, from the name for their ruler) controlled a huge empire contain-
ing as many as 12 million people speaking at least twenty different languages.
The Incas had used a shrewd mixture of diplomacy, marriage alliances with
rival tribes, and military conquest to create a vast realm that by the fifteenth
century stretched 2,500 miles along the Andes Mountains from Ecuador to
Chile on the west coast of South America. The Incas were as sophisticated as
10 • THE COLLISION OF CULTURES (CH. 1)

AT L A N T I C

G ULF O F M E X ICO
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TOLTECS
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IN MIDDLE AND 0 250 500 Miles

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What were the major pre-Columbian civilizations? What factors caused the demise
of the Mayan civilization? When did the Aztecs build Tenochtitlán?

the Aztecs in transforming their mountainous empire into a flowering civi-

lization with fertile farms, enduring buildings, and an interconnected net-
work of roads.

I N D I A N C U LT U R E S O F N O R T H A M E R I C A The pre-Columbian
Indians of the present-day United States created several distinct civilizations,
the largest of which were the Pacific Northwest culture; the Hohokam-
Anasazi culture of the Southwest; the Adena-Hopewell culture of the Ohio
River valley; and the Mississippian culture east of the Mississippi River. None
of these developed as fully as the civilizations of the Mayas, Aztecs, and Incas
to the south, but like their Mesoamerican counterparts, the North American
Indians often warred with one another. They shared some fundamental
 Pre-Columbian Indian Civilizations • 11

R
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PRE-COLUMBIAN
CIVILIZATIONS GULF OF MEXICO
IN NORTH AMERICA

What were the three dominant pre-Columbian civilizations in North America?

Where was the Adena-Hopewell culture centered? How was the Mississippian civi-
lization similar to that of the Mayans or Aztecs? What made the Anasazi culture
different from the other North American cultures?

myths and beliefs, especially concerning the sacredness of nature, the necessity
of communal living, and respect for elders, but they developed in different
ways at different times and in different places. In North America alone, there
were probably 240 different tribes speaking many different languages when
the Europeans arrived.
The Indians of the Pacific Northwest occupied a narrow strip of land
and offshore islands along the heavily forested coast, extending 2,000 miles
northward from California through what are now Oregon, Washington, and
British Columbia, to southern Alaska. They engaged in little farming since
the fish, whales, game (mostly deer and mountain sheep), and edible wild
plants were so plentiful. The coastal Indians were also talented woodwork-
ers; they built plank houses and large canoes out of cedar trees. Socially, the
12 • THE COLLISION OF CULTURES (CH. 1)

Indians along the Northwest coast were divided into chiefs, commoners, and
slaves; raids to gain slaves were the primary cause of tribal warfare.
The Adena-Hopewell culture in what is today the Midwest left behind enor-
mous earthworks and hundreds of elaborate burial mounds, some of them
shaped like great snakes, birds, and other animals. The Adena and, later,
the Hopewell peoples were gatherers and hunters who lived in small, isolated
communities. They used an intricate kinship network to form social and spir-
itual alliances. Evidence from the burial mounds suggests that they had a com-
plex social structure featuring a specialized division of labor. Moreover, the
Hopewells developed an elaborate trade network that spanned the continent.
The Mississippian culture, centered in the southern Mississippi River
valley, flourished between 900 and 1350. The Mississippians forged a
complex patchwork of chiefdoms. In river valleys they built substantial
towns around central plazas and temples. Like the Hopewells to the
north, the Mississippians developed a specialized labor system, an effec-
tive governmental structure, and an expansive trading network. They
cleared vast tracts of land to grow maize, beans, squash, and sunflowers.
The dynamic Mississippian culture peaked in the fourteenth century, but
succumbed first to climate change and finally to diseases brought by
Europeans.
The Mississippian people con-
structed elaborate regional centers,
the largest of which was Cahokia,
in southwest Illinois, across the
Mississippi River from what is now
St. Louis. There the Indians con-
structed elaborate public struc-
tures and imposing shrines. At the
height of its influence, between
A.D. 1050 and 1250, the Cahokia
metropolis hosted thousands of
people on some 3,200 acres. Outly-
ing towns and farming settlements
ranged up to fifty miles in all direc-
tions. For some unknown reason,
the residents of Cahokia dispersed
Mississippian artifact after 1400.
A ceramic human head effigy from the The arid Southwest (in what is
Mississippian culture. The Mississippians now Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico,
disappeared by 1500. and Utah) spawned irrigation-
 Pre-Columbian Indian Civilizations • 13

Cliff dwellings
Ruins of Anasazi cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado.

based cultures, elements of which exist today and heirs to which (the Hopis,
Zunis, and others) still live in the adobe cliff dwellings (called pueblos by the
Spanish) erected by their ancestors. About A.D. 500, the indigenous Hohokam
people migrated from present-day Mexico into today’s southern Arizona, where
they constructed temple mounds similar to those in Mexico. For unknown rea-
sons, the Hohokam society disappeared during the fifteenth century.
The most widespread and best known of the Southwest tribal cultures
were the Anasazi (“Enemy’s Ancestors” in the Navajo language). In ancient
times they developed extensive settlements in the “four corners,” where the
states of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah meet. In contrast to the
Mesoamerican and Mississippian cultures, Anasazi society lacked a rigid
class structure. The religious leaders and warriors labored much as the rest
of the people did. In fact, the Anasazi engaged in warfare only as a means of
self-defense (Hopi means “Peaceful People”). Environmental factors shaped
Anasazi culture and eventually caused its decline. Toward the end of the
thirteenth century, a lengthy drought and the pressure of migrating Indians
from the north threatened the survival of Anasazi society.
14 • THE COLLISION OF CULTURES (CH. 1)

INDIANS IN 1500 When Europeans arrived in North America in the

sixteenth century, as many as 10 million Indians lived on a continent criss-
crossed by trails and rivers that formed an extensive trading network. Over
thousands of years, the Indians had developed a great diversity of responses
to an array of natural environments. The scores of tribes can be clustered
according to three major regional groups: the Eastern Woodlands tribes, the
Great Plains tribes, and the Western tribes.
The Eastern Woodlands peoples tended to live along the rivers. They
included three regional groups distinguished by their languages: the Algon-
quian, the Iroquoian, and the Muskogean. The dozens of Algonquian-speaking
tribes stretched from the New England seaboard to lands along the Great
Lakes and into the upper Midwest and south to New Jersey, Virginia, and the
Carolinas. The Algonquian tribes along the coast were skilled at fishing; the
inland tribes excelled at hunting. All of them practiced agriculture to some
extent, and they frequently used canoes hollowed out of trees (“dugouts”) to
navigate rivers and lakes. Most Algonquians lived in small round shelters
called wigwams. Their villages typically ranged from 500 to 2,000 inhabitants.
West and south of the Algonquians were the Iroquoian-speaking tribes
(including the Seneca, Onondaga, Mohawk, Oneida, and Cayuga, and the
Cherokee and Tuscarora in the South), whose lands spread from upstate New
York south through Pennsylvania and into the upland regions of the Carolinas
and Georgia. The Iroquois’s skill at growing corn led them to create perma-
nent agricultural villages. Around their villages they constructed log walls, and
within them they built enormous bark-covered longhouses, which housed
several related family clans. Unlike the patriarchal Algonquian culture,
Iroquoian society was matriarchal. In part, the matriarchy reflected the fre-
quent absence of Iroquois men. As adept hunters and traders, the men traveled
extensively for long periods. Women headed the clans, selected the chiefs,
controlled the distribution of property, and planted as well as harvested
the crops.
The third major Indian group in the Eastern Woodlands included the tribes
who spoke the Muskogean language: the Creeks, Chickasaws, and Choctaws.
West of the Mississippi River were the peoples living on the Great Plains and in
the Great Basin (present-day Utah and Nevada), many of whom had migrated
from the East. Plains Indians, including the Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Arapaho,
Comanche, Apache, and Sioux, were nomadic tribes whose culture focused on
hunting the vast herds of bison. The Western tribes, living along the Pacific
coast, depended upon fishing, sealing, and whaling. Among them were Salish
tribes, including the Tillamook, the Chinook, and the Pomo and Chumash.
For at least 15,000 years before the arrival of Europeans, the Indians had
occupied the vastness of North America undisturbed by outside invaders.
 European Visions of America • 15

War between tribes, however, was commonplace. Success in warfare was

the primary source of a male’s prestige among many tribes. As a Cherokee
explained in the eighteenth century, “We cannot live without war. Should we
make peace with the Tuscororas, we must immediately look out for some
other nation with whom we can engage in our beloved occupation.”
Over the centuries, the native North Americans had adapted to the neces-
sity of warfare, changing climate, and varying environments. They would
also do so in the face of the unprecedented changes wrought by the arrival of
Europeans. In the process of changing and adapting to new realities in
accordance with their own traditions, the Indians played a significant role in
shaping America and the origins of the United States.

EUROPEAN VISIONS OF AMERICA

The European invasion of the Western Hemisphere was fueled by

curiosity and enabled by advances in nautical technology. Europeans had
long wondered about what lay beyond the western horizon. During the
tenth and eleventh centuries the Vikings (seafaring Norse peoples who lived
in Scandinavia) crisscrossed much of the globe. From villages in Norway,

Vikings in the “New World”

A Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, in northeastern
Canada. Reconstructed longhouses in Icelandic Viking style are in the
background.
 16 • THE COLLISION OF CULTURES (CH. 1)

GREENLAND
NORWAY

FAROE
ISLANDS

ICELAND SHETLAND
ISLANDS NORTH
SCOTLAND SEA
LABRADOR
IRELAND
ENGLAND
L’Anse aux Meadows
N O RT H EUROPE
NEWFOUNDLAND
AMERICA

CAPE COD
AT L A N T I C O C E A N

NORSE DISCOVERIES
Norse settlements AFRICA

When did the first Norse settlers reach North America? What was the symbolic sig-
nificance of these lands of the Western Hemisphere? How far south in North Amer-
ica did the Norse explorers travel?

Sweden, and Denmark, Viking warriors and traders ventured down to North
Africa, across the Baltic Sea, up Russian rivers, and across the Black Sea to
the fabled Turkish capital, Constantinople (present-day Istanbul). The Vikings
also headed west, crossing the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, raiding
towns in Ireland, settling in Iceland, and then exploring the coast of the
uppermost reaches of North America.
Around A.D. 985 a Norse Icelander named Erik the Red colonized the west
coast of a rocky, fogbound island he called Greenland. The world’s largest
island, Greenland was mostly covered by ice and devoid of human inhabi-
tants. The Vikings established a settlement on the southwest coast. Erik the Red
ironically named the island Greenland in hopes of misleading prospective
colonists about its suitability for settlement. Leif Eriksson, son of Erik the
Red, sailed west and south from Greenland about A.D. 1001 and sighted
the coast of present-day Newfoundland in northeastern Canada, where he set-
tled for the winter. The Greenland colonies vanished mysteriously in the
fifteenth century.
 The Expansion of Europe • 17

T H E E X PA N S I O N OF EUROPE

The European exploration of the Western Hemisphere was enabled by

several key developments during the fifteenth century. New knowledge and
new technologies enabled the construction of full-rigged sailing ships capa-
ble of oceanic voyages, more accurate navigation techniques and maps, and
more powerful weapons. Driving those improvements was an unrelenting
ambition to explore new territories (especially the Indies, a term which then
referred to eastern Asia), garner greater wealth and richer commerce, and
spread Christianity across the globe. This remarkable age of discovery coin-
cided with the rise of modern science; the growth of global trade, commercial
towns, and modern corporations; the decline of feudalism and the formation
of nations; the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation;
and the resurgence of some old sins—greed, conquest, exploitation, oppres-
sion, racism, and slavery—that quickly defiled the mythical innocence of the
so-called New World.

RENAISSANCE GEO GRAPHY For more than two centuries before

Columbus, European thought was enlivened by the so-called Renaissance—
the rediscovery of ancient texts, the rebirth of secular learning, and a perva-
sive intellectual curiosity—all of which spread more rapidly after Johannes
Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press around 1440. Learned Euro-
peans of the fifteenth century revered the ideas of classical Greece and
Rome, including ancient concepts of geography. Greek mathematicians had
concluded that the earth was round rather than flat. That Columbus was try-
ing to prove that the world’s sphericity is an enduring—and false—myth; no
informed person in the late fifteenth century thought the earth was flat.
Progress in the art of nautical navigation accompanied the revival of secular
learning during the Renaissance. Steering across the open sea, however,
remained more a matter of intuition than science.

T H E G R O W T H O F T R A D E , T O W N S , A N D N AT I O N - S TAT E S
Europe’s interest in global exploration derived primarily from the dramatic
growth of urban commerce and world trade. By the fifteenth century, Euro-
pean traders traveled by sea and land all the way to east Asia, where they
acquired herbal medicines, silk, jewels, perfumes, and rugs. They also pur-
chased the much-coveted Asian spices—pepper, nutmeg, clove—so essential
for preserving food and enhancing its flavor. The growing trade between
Europe and Asia spawned a growing class of wealthy merchants and led to
18 • THE COLLISION OF CULTURES (CH. 1)

the creation of the first modern corporations, through which stockholders

shared risks and profits.
Global commerce was chancy and costly, however. Goods commonly
passed from hand to hand, from ships to pack horses and back to ships, along
the way subject to taxes demanded by various rulers. The vast Muslim world,
extending from Spain across North Africa and into central Asia, straddled the
important trade routes, adding to the hazards. Muslims tenaciously opposed
efforts to “Christianize” their lands. Little wonder, then, that Europeans were
eager to find an alternative all-water western route to spice-rich east Asia.
Another spur to global exploration was the rise of unified nations, ruled
by powerful monarchs wealthy enough to sponsor the search for foreign
riches. The growth of the merchant class went hand in hand with the growth
of centralized political power and the rapidly expanding population. Mer-
chants wanted uniform currencies and favorable trade regulations. They
thus became natural allies of the trade-loving monarchs. In turn, merchants
and university-trained professionals supplied the monarchs with money,
lawyers, and government officials. The Crusaders—European armies sent
between 1095 and 1270 to conquer the Muslim-controlled Holy Land—had
also advanced the process of international trade and exploration. The Crusades
had brought Europe into contact with the Middle East and had decimated
the ranks of the feudal lords, many of whom were killed while fighting Mus-
lims. And new means of warfare—the use of gunpowder and royal armies—
further weakened the independence of the nobility relative to the monarchs.
In the late thirteenth century, the Venetian explorer Marco Polo and his
father embarked on an epic, twenty-four-year-long journey eastward across
Asia where they met the fabled Kublai Khan, the grand ruler of a vast empire
encompassing Mongolia and China. Polo’s published account of the Asian
riches amassed by the “Great Khan” dazzled Europeans, including Christo-
pher Columbus.
By 1492 the map of Europe had been transformed. The decentralized feu-
dal system of the Middle Ages had given way to several united kingdoms:
France, where in 1453 Charles VII had surfaced from the Hundred Years’
War as head of a unified nation; England, where in 1485 Henry VII had
emerged victorious after thirty years of civil strife known as the Wars of the
Roses; Portugal, where John I had fought off the Castilians to ensure
national independence; and Spain, where in 1469 Ferdinand of Aragon and
Isabella of Castile had united two warring kingdoms in marriage.
The Spanish king and queen were crusading Christian expansionists. On
January 1, 1492, after nearly eight centuries of religious warfare between Span-
ish Christians and Moorish Muslims on the Iberian Peninsula, Ferdinand
 The Voyages of Columbus • 19

and Isabella declared victory for Catholicism at Granada, the last Muslim
stronghold. The zealously pious monarchs gave the defeated Muslims, and
soon thereafter, the Jews living in Spain and Portugal (called Sephardi), the
same desperate choice: convert to Catholicism or leave Spain.
The forced exile of Muslims and Jews from Spain was one of the many fac-
tors that prompted Europe’s involvement in global expansion. Other factors—
urbanization, world trade, the rise of centralized nations, and advances in
knowledge, technology, and firepower—combined with natural human
curiosity, greed, and religious zeal to spur the exploration and conquest of
the Western Hemisphere. Beginning in the late fifteenth century, Europeans
set in motion the events that, as one historian has observed, would bind
together “four continents, three races, and a great diversity of regional
parts.” During the two and a half centuries after 1492, the Spanish developed
the most extensive empire the world had ever known. It would span south-
ern Europe and the Netherlands, much of the Western Hemisphere, and
parts of Asia. Yet the Spanish Empire grew so vast that its sprawling size and
ethnic complexity eventually led to its disintegration. In the meantime, the
expansion of Spanish influence around the world helped shape much of
the development of American society and history.

T H E V O YA G E S OF C O LU M B U S

Global naval exploration began in an unlikely place: the tiny seafaring

kingdom of Portugal, the westernmost country in Europe, strategically
positioned at the convergence of the Mediterranean and Atlantic cultures.
Beginning in 1422, having captured the Muslim stronghold of Ceuta, on the
North African coast, the Portuguese dispatched naval expeditions to map the
West African coast, spread the Christian faith among the “pagan” Africans,
and return with gold, spices, ivory, and slaves. Over the years Portuguese
ships brought back plunder as well as tens of thousands of enslaved Africans.
They also adapted superior sailing techniques that they encountered on
Arab merchant vessels to create new oceangoing ships called caravels, which
could perform better in headwinds and go faster. The Portuguese also bor-
rowed from the Arabs a device called an astrolabe that enabled sailors to
locate their ship’s position by latitude calculations.
Equipped with such innovations, the Portuguese then focused on find-
ing a maritime route to the riches of the Indies. In 1488, Bartholomeu Dias
rounded the Cape of Good Hope, at Africa’s southern tip, before his panicky
crew forced him to turn back. Ten years later Dias’s countryman, Vasco da
20 • THE COLLISION OF CULTURES (CH. 1)

Gama, sailed south from Portugal. Without maps, charts, or reliable pilots,
he led four leaky ships along the west coast of Africa. They traveled around
the Cape of Good Hope, up the Arab-controlled east coast of Africa, and
crossed the Indian Ocean to India, where da Gama acquired tons of spices.
The epic two-year voyage covered 24,000 miles, took the lives of over half the
crew, and helped to establish little Portugal as a global seafaring power.
Christopher Columbus, meanwhile, was learning his trade in the school
of Portuguese seamanship. Born in Genoa, Italy, in 1451, Columbus took to
the sea at an early age, teaching himself geography, navigation, and Latin.
By the 1480s, he was eager to spread Christianity across the globe. Dazzled
by the prospect of garnering Asian riches, he developed a bold plan to reach
the spice-trade ports of the Indies (India, China, the East Indies, or Japan)
by sailing not south along the African coast but west across the Atlantic. The
tall, red-haired Columbus was an audacious visionary whose persistence was
as great as his courage. He eventually persuaded the Spanish monarchs Fer-
dinand and Isabella to award him a tenth share of any riches he gathered
abroad: pearls; gold, silver, or other precious metals; and the Asian spices so
coveted by Europeans. The legend that the queen had to hock the crown jew-
els to finance the voyage is as spurious as the fable that Columbus set out to
prove the earth was round.
Columbus chartered one seventy-
five-foot ship, the Santa María, and
the Spanish city of Palos supplied two
smaller caravels, the Pinta and the
Niña. From Palos on August 3, 1492,
this little squadron of tiny ships, with
about ninety men, most of them Span-
iards, set sail westward for what
Columbus thought was Asia. As the
weeks passed, the crews grew first weary,
then restless, then panicky. There was
even whispered talk of mutiny. Two
of Columbus’s captains urged him to
turn back. But early on October 12
a lookout yelled, “Tierra! Tierra!”
(“Land! Land!”). He had sighted an
Christopher Columbus island in the Bahamas east of Florida
A portrait by Sebastiano del Piombo,
that Columbus named San Salvador
ca. 1519, said to be Christopher (Blessed Savior). Columbus decided,
Columbus. incorrectly, that they must be near the
 The Voyages of Columbus • 21

Indies, so he called the island people los Indios. At every encounter with the
peaceful indigenous people, known as Tainos or Arawaks, his first question
was whether they had any gold. If they had gold the Spaniards seized it; if
they did not, the Europeans forced them to search for it. Columbus
described the “Indians” as naked people, “very well made, of very handsome
bodies and very good faces.” He added that “with fifty men they could all be
subjugated and compelled to do anything one wishes.” It would be easy, he
said, “to convert these people [to Catholicism] and make them work for us.”
After leaving San Salvador, Columbus continued to search for a passage to
the fabled Indies through the Bahamas, down to Cuba, and then eastward to
the island he named Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic),
where he first found significant amounts of gold jewelry and was introduced
to tobacco. Columbus learned of, but did not encounter until his second voy-
age, the fierce Caribs of the Lesser Antilles. The Caribbean Sea was named
after them, and their supposed bad habit of eating human flesh gave rise to
the word cannibal, derived from a Spanish version of their name (caníbal).
At the end of 1492, Columbus, still believing he had reached Asia, decided
to return to Europe. He left about forty men on Hispaniola and captured a
dozen Indians to present as gifts to the Spanish king and queen. When
Columbus reached Spain, he received a hero’s welcome. Thanks to the newly
invented printing press, news of his westward voyage spread rapidly across
Europe. In a letter that circulated widely throughout Europe, Columbus
described the “great victory” he had achieved by reaching the Indies and tak-
ing “possession” of the “innumerable peoples” he found there. The Spanish
monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella told Columbus to prepare for a second
voyage, instructing him to “treat the Indians very well and lovingly and
abstain from doing them any injury.” Columbus and his men would repeat-
edly defy this order.
The Spanish monarchs also sought to solidify their legal claim against
Portugal’s threats to the newly discovered lands in the Americas. With the
help of the pope (a Spaniard), rivals Spain and Portugal reached a compro-
mise, called the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), which drew an imaginary line
west of the Cape Verde Islands (off the west coast of Africa) and stipulated
that the area to its west—which included most of the Americas—would be a
Spanish sphere of exploration and settlement. Africa and what was to
become Brazil were granted to Portugal. In practice, this meant that while
Spain developed its American empire in the sixteenth century, Portugal pro-
vided it with enslaved African laborers.
Flush with success and convinced that he was an agent of God’s divine
plan, Columbus returned across the Atlantic in 1493 with seventeen ships
 22 • THE COLLISION OF CULTURES (CH. 1)

ENGLAND
FRANCE
N O RT H
AMERICA SPAIN
PORTUGAL
AZORES

AT L A N T I C
GULF
OF CANARY
MEXICO BAHAMAS 1492 ISLANDS
CUBA
SAN SALVADOR OCEAN
1493
HISPANIOLA
AFRICA
JAMAICA
CENTRAL 1502
AMERICA CAPE VERDE
CARIBBEAN SEA ISLANDS
LESSER
ANTILLES
1498
PACIFIC TRINIDAD
OCEAN
SOUTH COLUMBUS’S VOYAGES
AMERICA

How many voyages did Columbus make to the Americas? What is the origin of the
name for the Caribbean Sea? What happened to the colony that Columbus left on
Hispaniola in 1493?

and 1,400 men. Also on board were Catholic priests charged with converting
the Indians. Columbus discovered that the camp he had left behind was in
chaos. The unsupervised soldiers had run amok, raping women, robbing vil-
lages, and, as Columbus’s son later added, “committing a thousand excesses
for which they were mortally hated by the Indians.”
Columbus returned to Spain in 1496. Two years later he sailed west again,
discovering the island of Trinidad and exploring the northern coast of South
America. He led a fourth and final voyage in 1502, during which he sailed
along the coast of Central America, still looking in vain for a passage to the
Indies. To the end of his life, Columbus insisted that he had discovered the
outlying parts of Asia, not a new continent. By one of history’s greatest
ironies, this lag led Europeans to name the “New World” not for Columbus
but for another Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci, who sailed across
the Atlantic in 1499. Vespucci landed on the coast of South America
and reported that it was so large it must be a “new” continent. European
mapmakers thereafter began to label the “New World” using a variant of
Vespucci’s first name: America.
 The Great Biological Exchange • 23

T H E G R E AT B I O L O G I C A L E XC H A N G E

The first European contacts with the Western Hemisphere began an

unprecedented worldwide biological and social exchange that ultimately
worked in favor of the Europeans at the expense of the indigenous peoples.
Indians, Europeans, and eventually Africans intersected to create new reli-
gious beliefs and languages, adopt new tastes in food, and develop new
modes of dress.
If anything, the plants and animals of the two worlds were more different
from each other than were the peoples and their ways of life. Europeans
had never seen creatures such as iguanas, bison, cougars, armadillos,
opossums, sloths, tapirs, anacondas, condors, and hummingbirds. Turkeys,
guinea pigs, llamas, and alpacas
were also new to Europeans. Nor
did the Indians know of horses,
cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, and chick-
ens, which soon arrived from
Europe in abundance. Within a
half century whole islands of the
Caribbean would be overrun by
pigs brought from Europe.
The exchange of plant life
between Old and New Worlds
worked a revolution in the
diets of both hemispheres. Before
Columbus’s voyage, three
foods were unknown in Europe:
maize (corn), potatoes (sweet
and white), and many kinds
of beans (snap, kidney, lima, and
others). The white potato, al-
though commonly called Irish, is
actually native to South America.
Explorers brought it back to
Europe, where it thrived. The
“Irish potato” was eventually
transported to North America by
Scots-Irish immigrants during Algonquian chief in warpaint
the early eighteenth century. From the notebook of English settler John
Other Western Hemisphere food White, this sketch depicts an Indian chief.
24 • THE COLLISION OF CULTURES (CH. 1)

plants included peanuts, squash, peppers, tomatoes, pumpkins, pineapples,

sassafras, papayas, guavas, avocados, cacao (the source of chocolate), and
chicle (for chewing gum). Europeans in turn introduced rice, wheat, barley,
oats, wine grapes, melons, coffee, olives, bananas, “Kentucky” bluegrass,
daisies, and dandelions to the Americas.
The beauty of the biological exchange was that the food plants were more
complementary than competitive. Corn, it turned out, could flourish almost
anywhere in the world. The nutritious food crops exported from the Ameri-
cas thus helped nourish a worldwide population explosion probably greater
than any since the invention of agriculture. The dramatic increase in the
European populations fueled by the new foods in turn helped provide the
surplus of people who colonized the “New World.”

Smallpox
Aztec victims of the 1538 smallpox epidemic are covered in shrouds (center) as two
others lie dying (at right).
 Professional Explorers • 25

By far the most significant aspect of the biological exchange, however, was
the transmission of infectious diseases. European colonists and enslaved
Africans brought with them deadly pathogens that Native Americans had
never experienced: smallpox, typhus, diphtheria, bubonic plague, malaria,
yellow fever, and cholera. The results were catastrophic. Far more Indians—
tens of millions—died from contagions than from combat. Deadly diseases
such as typhus and smallpox produced pandemics on an unprecedented
scale. Unable to explain or cure the diseases, Native American chiefs and reli-
gious leaders often lost their stature. As a consequence, tribal cohesion and
cultural life disintegrated, and efforts to resist European assaults collapsed.
Smallpox was an especially ghastly and highly contagious disease in the
“New World.” In central Mexico alone, some 8 million people, perhaps a third
of the entire Indian population, died of smallpox within a decade of the
arrival of the Spanish. In colonial North America, as Indians died by the tens
of thousands, disease became the most powerful weapon of the European
invaders. A Spanish explorer noted that half the Indians died from smallpox
and “blamed us.” Many Europeans, however, interpreted such epidemics as
diseases sent by God to punish those who resisted conversion to Christianity.

PROFESSIONAL EXPLORERS

The news of Columbus’s remarkable voyages raced across Europe

during the sixteenth century and stimulated other expeditions to the Western
Hemisphere. Over the next two centuries, many European nations dis-
patched ships and claimed territory by “right of discovery”: Spain, Portugal,
France, Britain, the Netherlands, and Russia. The national governments
sponsored professional explorers, mostly Italians, who probed the shorelines
in the Americas during the early sixteenth century. The first to sight the
North American continent was John Cabot, a Venetian sponsored by Henry
VII of England. Authorized to “conquer and possess” any territory he found,
Cabot crossed the North Atlantic in 1497. His landfall at what the king called
“the new founde lande,” in present-day Canada, gave England the basis for a
later claim to all of North America. During the early sixteenth century, how-
ever, the English grew so preoccupied with internal divisions and war
with France that they failed to capitalize on Cabot’s discoveries. In 1513 the
Spaniard Vasco Núñez de Balboa became the first European to sight the
Pacific Ocean, having crossed the Isthmus of Panama on foot.
The Spanish were eager to find a passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
To that end, in 1519 Ferdinand Magellan, a haughty Portuguese sea captain
 26 • THE COLLISION OF CULTURES (CH. 1)

PORTUGAL
SPAIN
Line of Treaty
NORTH of Tordesillas,
AMERICA 1494
PORTUGAL

ATLANTIC
OCEAN EUROPE
SPAIN

A S I A
PORTUGAL
SPAIN
AZORES JAPAN
Line of Treaty
CANARY CHINA PACIFIC
of Tordesillas,
ISLANDS OCEAN
1494
ARABIA INDIA
PHILIPPINE
i A FR IC A
ucc ISLANDS
Vesp
SRI LANKA MOLUCCAS
Amazon River
Equator
SOUTH ATLANTIC ZANZIBAR
INDIAN OCEAN
OCEAN
D ias

AMERICA Congo
MADAGASCAR
River crew
llan’s
Mage AUSTRALIA
an
ell

CAPE OF GOOD HOPE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE

ag

EXPLORATIONS
M

0 2,000 Miles
Strait of Magellan Spanish Portuguese
CAPE HORN 0 2,000 Kilometers

What is the significance of Magellan’s 1519 voyage? What biological exchanges

resulted from these early explorations?

hired by the Spanish, discovered the strait at the southern tip of South
America that now bears his name. Magellan kept sailing north and west
across the Pacific Ocean, discovering Guam and, eventually, the Philippines,
where indigenous people killed him. Surviving crew members made their
way back to Spain, arriving in 1522, having been at sea for three years. Their
dramatic accounts of the global voyage quickened Spanish interest in global
exploration.

T H E S PA N I S H E M P I R E

During the sixteenth century, Spain created the world’s most powerful
empire. At its height it encompassed much of Europe, most of the Americas,
parts of Africa, and various trading outposts in Asia. But it was the gold
 The Spanish Empire • 27

and especially the silver looted from the Americas that fueled the engine
of Spain’s “Golden Empire.” And the benefits of global empire came at
the expense of Indians. Heroic Spanish adventurers were also ruthless
exploiters. By plundering, conquering, and colonizing the Americas and
converting and enslaving its inhabitants, the Spanish planted Christianity in
the Western Hemisphere and gained the resources to rule the world.
The Caribbean Sea served as the funnel through which Spanish power
entered the Americas. After establishing colonies on Hispaniola, includ-
ing Santo Domingo, which became the capital of the West Indies, the Span-
ish proceeded eastward to Puerto Rico (1508) and westward to Cuba
(1511–1514). Their motives were explicit, as one soldier explained: “We
came here to serve God and the king, and also to get rich.” Like the French
and the British after them, the Spanish who conquered vast areas of the
Western Hemisphere were willing to risk everything in pursuit of wealth,
power, glory, or divine approval.
Many of the Europeans in the first wave of settlement died of malnutri-
tion or disease. But the Indians suffered far more casualties, for they were ill
equipped to resist the European invaders. Disunity everywhere—civil disor-
der, rebellion, and tribal warfare—left the indigenous peoples vulnerable to
division and foreign conquest. Attacks by well-armed soldiers and deadly
germs from Europe perplexed and overwhelmed the Indians. Europeans
took for granted the superiority of their civilization and ways of life. Such
arrogance undergirded the conquest and enslavement of the Indians, the
destruction of their way of life, and the seizure of their land and treasures.

A C L A S H O F C U LT U R E S The often-violent encounter between Span-

ish and Indians involved more than a clash between different peoples. It also
involved contrasting forms of technological development. The Indians of
Mexico had copper and bronze but no iron. They used wooden canoes for
transportation, while the Europeans sailed in heavily armed oceangoing ves-
sels. The Spanish ships not only carried human cargo, but also steel swords,
firearms, explosives, and armor. These advanced military tools terrified
Indians. A Spanish priest in Florida observed that gunpowder “frightens the
most valiant and courageous Indian and renders him slave to the white
man’s command.” Arrows and tomahawks were seldom a match for guns,
cannons, and smallpox.
The Europeans enjoyed other cultural advantages. For example, before
the arrival of Europeans the only domesticated four-legged animals in North
America were dogs and llamas. The Spanish, on the other hand, brought
with them horses, pigs, and cattle. Horses provided greater speed in battle
28 • THE COLLISION OF CULTURES (CH. 1)

Cortés in Mexico
Page from the Lienzo de Tlaxcala, a historical narrative from the sixteenth century.
The scene, in which Cortés is shown seated on a throne, depicts the arrival of the
Spanish in Tlaxcala.

and introduced a decided psychological advantage. “The most essential

thing in new lands is horses,” reported one Spanish soldier. “They instill the
greatest fear in the enemy and make the Indians respect the leaders of the
army.” Even more feared among the Indians were the greyhound fighting
dogs that the Spanish used to guard their camps.

C O RT E S’ S C O N Q U E S T The most dramatic European conquest of a

major indigenous civilization on the North American mainland occurred in
Mexico. On February 18, 1519, Hernán Cortés, driven by dreams of gold
and glory in Mexico, set sail from Cuba. His fleet of eleven ships carried
nearly 600 soldiers and sailors. Also on board were 200 indigenous Cubans,
sixteen horses, and cannons. After the invaders landed at what is now Ver-
acruz, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, they assaulted a confederation of
four small Indian kingdoms independent of, and opposed to, the domineer-
ing Aztecs. Cortés shrewdly persuaded the vanquished warriors to join his
advance on the hated Aztecs.
Cortés’s soldier-adventurers, called conquistadores, received no pay; they
were military entrepreneurs willing to risk their lives for a share in the
expected plunder and slaves. To prevent any men from deserting, Cortés had
 The Spanish Empire • 29

the ships burned, sparing one vessel to carry the expected gold back to
Spain. The nearly 200-mile march of Cortés’s army from Veracruz through
difficult mountain passes to the Aztec capital took nearly three months.

THE AZTECS Cortés was one of the most audacious figures in world
history. With his small army, the thirty-four-year-old adventurer brashly set
out to conquer the opulent Aztec Empire, which extended from central Mex-
ico to what is today Guatemala. The Aztecs—their most accurate name is
Mexica—were a once-nomadic people who had wandered south from
northern Mexico and settled in the central highlands in the fourteenth
century. On marshy islands on the west side of Lake Tetzcoco, the site of
present-day Mexico City, they built Tenochtitlán, a dazzling capital city
dominated by towering stone temples, broad paved avenues, thriving mar-
kets, and some 70,000 adobe huts.
By 1519, when the Spanish landed on the Mexican coast, the Aztecs were one
of the most powerful civilizations in the world. As their empire had expanded
across central and southern Mexico, they had developed elaborate urban soci-
eties, sophisticated legal systems, scientific farming techniques, including irri-
gated fields and engineering marvels, and a complicated political structure. By

Aztec sacrifices to the gods

Renowned for military prowess, Aztecs would capture and then sacrifice their enemies.
30 • THE COLLISION OF CULTURES (CH. 1)

1519, their arts were flourishing; their architecture was magnificent. Aztec rulers
were invested with godlike qualities, and nobles, priests, and warrior-heroes
dominated the social hierarchy.

AZTEC RELIGION Like most agricultural peoples, the Aztecs centered

their spiritual beliefs on the cosmic forces of nature. Many of the Aztec gods
were aligned with natural forces—the sun, the sky, water, wind, fire—and
the gods perpetually struggled with one another for supremacy. Like most
Mesoamericans, the Aztecs regularly offered human sacrifices—captives,
slaves, women, and children—to please the gods and to promote rain, enable
good harvests, and ensure victory in battle. The Aztecs also used the reli-
gious obligation to offer sacrifices as a means of justifying their relentless
imperial assaults against other tribes. Prisoners of war in vast numbers were
needed as sacrificial offerings. In elaborate weekly rituals at temples and in
the streets, Aztec priests used stone knives to cut out the beating hearts of
live victims. By the early sixteenth century as many as 10,000 people a year
were sacrificed at numerous locations across Mesoamerica. The Spanish
were aghast at this “most horrid and abominable custom,” but it is impor-
tant to remember that sixteenth-century Europeans also conducted public
torture and executions of the most ghastly sort—beheadings, burnings,
hangings. Between 1530 and 1630, England alone executed 75,000 people.

S PA N I S H I N VA D E R S As Cortés and his army marched across Mexico,

they heard fabulous accounts of Tenochtitlán. With some 200,000 inhabi-
tants, it was the largest city in the Americas and much larger than most
European cities. Graced by wide canals, stunning gardens, and formidable
stone pyramids, the fabled lake-encircled capital seemed impregnable. But
Cortés made the most of his assets. By a combination of threats and
deceptions, Cortés and his Indian allies entered Tenochtitlán peacefully and
captured the emperor, Montezuma II. Cortés explained to Montezuma why
the invasion was necessary: “We Spaniards have a disease of the heart that
only gold can cure.” Montezuma acquiesced in part because he mistook
Cortés for a god.
After taking the Aztecs’ gold and silver, the Spanish forced Montezuma to
provide laborers to mine more of the precious metals. This state of affairs
lasted until the spring of 1520, when disgruntled Aztecs, regarding Mon-
tezuma as a traitor, rebelled, stoned him to death, and attacked Cortés’s
forces. The Spaniards lost about a third of their men as they retreated. Their
20,000 indigenous allies remained loyal, however, and Cortés gradually
regrouped his forces. In 1521, he besieged the imperial city for eighty-five
 The Spanish Empire • 31

days, cutting off its access to water and food and allowing a smallpox epi-
demic to decimate the inhabitants. As a Spaniard observed, the smallpox
“spread over the people as great destruction. Some it covered on all parts—
their faces, their heads, their breasts, and so on. There was great havoc. Very
many died of it. . . . They could not move; they could not stir.” The ravages of
smallpox and the support of thousands of anti-Aztec indigenous allies help
explain how such a small force of determined Spaniards lusting for gold and
silver was able to vanquish a proud nation of nearly 1 million people. After
the Aztecs surrendered, a merciless Cortés ordered the leaders hanged and
the priests devoured by dogs. In two years Cortés and his disciplined army
had conquered a fabled empire that had taken centuries to develop.
Cortés set the style for waves of plundering conquistadores to follow.
Within twenty years, Spain had established a sprawling empire in the “New
World.” In 1531, Francisco Pizarro led a band of soldiers down the Pacific
coast from Panama toward Peru, where they brutally subdued the Inca
Empire. The Spanish invaders seized the Inca palaces and country estates,
took royal women as mistresses and wives, and looted the empire of its gold
and silver. From Peru, Spain extended its control southward through Chile
by about 1553 and north, to present-day Colombia, by 1538. One of the con-
quistadores explained that he went to America “to serve God and His
Majesty, to give light to those who were in darkness, and to grow rich, as men
desire to do.”

SPANISH AMERICA As the sixteenth century unfolded, Spain

expanded its settlements in the “New World” and established far-flung
governmental and economic centers in Mexico, the Caribbean, Central
America, and South America. The crusading conquistadores transferred to
America a socioeconomic system known as the encomienda, whereby favored
officers became privileged landowners who controlled Indian villages. As
encomenderos, they were called upon to protect and care for the villages and
support missionary priests. In turn, they could require the Indians to provide them
with goods and labor. Spanish America therefore developed from the start a
society of extremes: wealthy conquistadores and encomenderos at one end of
the spectrum and indigenous peoples held in poverty at the other end.
What was left of them, that is. By the mid-1500s native Indians were
nearly extinct in the West Indies, reduced more by European diseases than
by Spanish brutality. To take their place, as early as 1503 the Spanish coloniz-
ers began to transport enslaved Africans, the first in a wretched traffic that
eventually would carry millions of captive people across the Atlantic into
bondage. In all of Spain’s “New World” empire, by one estimate, the Indian
32 • THE COLLISION OF CULTURES (CH. 1)

Missionaries in the “New World”

A Spanish mission in New Mexico, established to spread the Catholic faith among
the indigenous peoples.

population plummeted from about 50 million at the outset to 4 million in

the seventeenth century. Whites, who totaled no more than 100,000 in the
mid–sixteenth century, numbered over 3 million by the end of the colonial
period.
Spain established by force a Christian empire in the Western Hemisphere.
Through the various Catholic evangelical orders—Augustinians, Benedictines,
Dominicans, Franciscans, and Jesuits—the Spanish (and later the French)
launched a massive effort to convert the Indians (“heathens”). During the
sixteenth century, thousands of priests fanned out across New Spain (and, later,
New France). The missionaries ventured into the remotest areas to spread the
gospel. Many of them decided that the Indians of Mexico could be converted
only by force. “Though they seem to be a simple people,” a Spanish friar
declared in 1562, “they are up to all sorts of mischief, and are obstinately
attached to the rituals and ceremonies of their forefathers. The whole land is
certainly damned, and without compulsion, they will never speak the [religious]
truth.” By the end of the sixteenth century, there were over 300 monasteries or
missions in New Spain, and Catholicism had become a major instrument of
Spanish imperialism.
 The Spanish Empire • 33

Not all Spanish officials forced conversion on the Indians. In 1514,

Bartolomé de Las Casas, a Catholic priest in Cuba, renounced the practice of
coercive conversions and spent the next twenty years advocating better treat-
ment for indigenous people. But his courageous efforts made little headway
against the process of forced evangelization. Most colonizers believed, as a
Spanish bishop in Mexico declared in 1585, that the Indians must be “ruled,
governed, and guided” to Christianity “by fear more than by love.”

S PA N I S H E X P L O R AT I O N I N N O R T H A M E R I C A During the six-

teenth century, Spanish America gradually developed into a settled society.
The conquistadores were succeeded by a second generation of bureaucrats,
and the encomienda gave way to the hacienda (a great farm or ranch) as the
claim to land became a more important source of wealth than the Span-
ish claim to labor. From the outset, in sharp contrast to the later English
experience, the Spanish government regulated every detail of colonial
administration. After 1524, the Council of the Indies issued laws for New
Spain, served as the appellate court for civil cases arising in the colonies, and
administered the bureaucracy.
Throughout the sixteenth century no European power other than Spain
held more than a brief foothold in the “New World.” Spain had the advan-
tage not only of having arrived first but also of having stumbled onto those
regions that would produce the quickest profits. While France and England
were struggling with domestic quarrels and religious conflict, Spain had
forged an intense national unity. Under King Charles V, Spain dominated
Europe as well as the “New World” during the first half of the sixteenth cen-
tury. The treasures of the Aztecs and the Incas added to its power, but the
single-minded focus on gold and silver also undermined the basic economy
of Spain and tempted the government to live beyond its means. The influx of
gold and silver from the “New World” financed the growth of the Spanish
Empire (and army) while causing inflation throughout Europe.
For most of the colonial period, much of what is now the United States
belonged to Spain, and Spanish culture etched a lasting imprint upon Amer-
ican ways of life. Spain’s colonial presence lasted more than three centuries,
much longer than either England’s or France’s. New Spain was centered in
Mexico, but its frontiers extended from the Florida Keys to Alaska and
included areas not currently thought of as formerly Spanish, such as the
Deep South and the lower Midwest. Hispanic place-names—San Francisco,
Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, San Diego, Tucson, Santa Fe, San Antonio, Pen-
sacola, and St. Augustine—survive to this day, as do Hispanic influences in
art, architecture, literature, music, law, and cuisine.
34 • THE COLLISION OF CULTURES (CH. 1)

The Spanish encounter with Indian populations and their diverse cultures
produced a two-way exchange by which the contrasting societies blended,
coexisted, and interacted. Even when locked in mortal conflict and driven by
hostility and mutual suspicion, the two cultures necessarily affected each
other; both Indians and conquerors devised creative adaptations. In other
words, New Spain, while permeated with violence, coercion, and intoler-
ance, also produced a mutual accommodation that enabled two living
traditions to persist side by side. For example, the Pueblos of the Southwest
practiced two religious traditions simultaneously, adopting Spanish Catholi-
cism under duress while retaining the essence of their inherited animistic
faith. The “Spanish borderlands” of the southern United States preserve
many reminders of the Spanish presence.
Juan Ponce de León, then governor of Puerto Rico, made the earliest
known exploration of Florida in 1513. Meanwhile, Spanish explorers skirted
the Gulf of Mexico coast from Florida to Veracruz, scouted the Atlantic coast
from Key West to Newfoundland, and established a short-lived colony on
the Carolina coast.
Sixteenth-century knowledge of the North American interior came mostly
from would-be conquistadores who sought to plunder the hinterlands. The
first, Pánfilo de Narváez, landed in 1528 at Tampa Bay, marched northward
to Apalachee, an indigenous village in present-day Alabama, and then
returned to the coast near present-day St. Marks, Florida, where he and his
crew built crude vessels in the hope of reaching Mexico. Wrecked on the
coast of Texas, a few survivors under Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca worked
their way painfully overland and, after eight years, stumbled into a Spanish
outpost in western Mexico.
Hernando de Soto followed their example. With 600 men, as well as
horses and fighting dogs, he landed on Florida’s west coast in 1539, hiked up
as far as western North Carolina, and then moved westward beyond the Mis-
sissippi River and up the Arkansas River, looting and destroying indigenous
villages along the way. In the spring of 1542, de Soto died near Natchez; the
next year the survivors among his party floated down the Mississippi, and
311 of the original adventurers found their way to Mexico. In 1540, Fran-
cisco Vásquez de Coronado, inspired by rumors of gold, traveled northward
into New Mexico and northeast across Texas and Oklahoma as far as Kansas.
He returned in 1542 without gold but with a more realistic view of what lay
in those arid lands.
The Spanish established provinces in North America not so much as com-
mercial enterprises but as defensive buffers protecting their more lucrative
trading empire in Mexico and South America. They were concerned about
 The Spanish Empire • 35

French traders infiltrating from Louisiana, English settlers crossing into

Florida, and Russian seal hunters wandering down the California coast.
The first Spanish outpost in the present United States emerged in response
to French encroachments on Spanish claims. In the 1560s, spirited French
Protestants (called Huguenots) established France’s first American colonies

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What were the Spanish conquistadores’ goals for exploring the Americas? How did
Cortés conquer the Aztecs? Why did the Spanish first explore North America, and
why did they establish St. Augustine, the first European settlement in what would
become the United States?
36 • THE COLLISION OF CULTURES (CH. 1)

on the coast of what became South Carolina and Florida. In 1565 a Spanish
outpost on the Florida coast, St. Augustine, became the first European town
in the present-day United States and is now the nation’s second-oldest urban
center, after the pueblos of New Mexico. Spain’s colony at St. Augustine
included a fort, church, hospital, fish market, and over 100 shops and
houses—all built decades before the first English settlements at Jamestown
and Plymouth. While other early American outposts failed, St. Augustine sur-
vived as a defensive base perched on the edge of a continent.
In September 1565, Spanish soldiers from St. Augustine assaulted Fort
Caroline, the French Hugenot colony in northeastern Florida, and hanged
all the surviving men over age fifteen. The Spanish commander notified his
devoutly Catholic king that he had “hanged all those he had found [in Fort
Caroline] because . . . they were scattering the odious Lutheran doctrine in
these Provinces.” Later, when survivors from a shipwrecked French fleet
washed ashore on Florida beaches after a hurricane, the Spanish commander
told them they must abandon Protestantism and swear their allegiance to
Catholicism. When they refused, he executed 245 of them. Religion in Amer-
ica was truly a life-and-death affair. The destruction of the French outpost in
Florida left a vacuum of settlement along the Atlantic coast for the British,
Dutch, and Swedes to fill a half century later.

THE S PA N I S H S O U T H W E S T The Spanish eventually established

other permanent settlements in what are now New Mexico, Texas, and Cali-
fornia. Eager to pacify rather than fight the far more numerous Indians of
the region, the Spanish used religion as an instrument of colonial control.
Missionaries, particularly Franciscans and Jesuits, established isolated Cath-
olic missions, where they imposed Christianity on the indigenous people.
After about ten years a mission would be secularized: its lands would be
divided among the converted Indians, the mission chapel would become a
parish church, and the inhabitants would be given full Spanish citizenship—
including the privilege of paying taxes. The soldiers who were sent to protect
the missions were housed in presidios, or forts; their families and the mer-
chants accompanying them lived in adjacent villages.
The land that would later be called New Mexico was the first center of
mission activity in the American Southwest. In 1598, Juan de Oñate, a
wealthy, imperious son of a Spanish mining family in Mexico, received a
land grant for the territory north of Mexico above the Rio Grande. With an
expeditionary military force made up mostly of Mexican Native Americans
and mestizos (the offspring of Spanish fathers and indigenous mothers), he
took possession of New Mexico, established a capital north of present-day
 The Spanish Empire • 37

Santa Fe, and sent out expeditions to search for gold and silver deposits. He
promised the local Indians, called Pueblos, that Spanish dominion would
bring them peace, justice, prosperity, and protection. Conversion to Catholi-
cism offered even greater benefits: “an eternal life of great bliss” instead of
“cruel and everlasting torment.”
Some Indians welcomed the missionaries as “powerful witches” capable of
easing their burdens. Others tried to use the Spanish invaders as allies
against rival tribes. Still others saw no alternative but to submit. The Indians
living in Spanish New Mexico were required to pay tribute to their
encomenderos and perform personal tasks for them, including sexual favors.
Soldiers and priests flogged disobedient Indians.
Before the end of the province’s first year, in December 1598, the Pueblos
revolted, killing several soldiers and incurring Oñate’s wrath. During
three days of relentless fighting, Spanish soldiers killed 500 Pueblo men and
300 women and children. Survivors were enslaved. Pueblo males over the age
of twenty-five had one foot severed in a public ritual intended to frighten
the Pueblos and keep them from
escaping or resisting. Children
were taken from their parents and
placed under the care of a Fran-
ciscan mission, where, Oñate
remarked, “they may attain the
knowledge of God and the salva-
tion of their souls.”
During the first three quarters
of the seventeenth century, Span-
ish New Mexico expanded very
slowly. The hoped-for deposits of
gold and silver were never found,
and a sparse food supply blunted
the interest of potential colonists.
The Spanish government pre-
pared to abandon the colony, only
to realize that Franciscan mis-
sionaries had baptized so many
Pueblos that they ought not be
Cultural conflict
deserted. In 1608 the government
This Peruvian illustration, from a 1612–
decided to turn New Mexico 1615 manuscript by Felipe Guamán Poma
into a royal province. The follow- de Ayala, shows a Dominican friar forcing a
ing year it dispatched a royal native woman to weave.
38 • THE COLLISION OF CULTURES (CH. 1)

governor, and in 1610, as English settlers were struggling to survive at

Jamestown, in Virginia, the Spanish moved the province’s capital to Santa
Fe, the first permanent seat of government in the present-day United States.
By 1630 there were fifty Catholic churches and friaries in New Mexico and
some 3,000 Spaniards.
Franciscan missionaries claimed that 86,000 Pueblos had been converted
to Christianity. In fact, however, resentment among the Indians increased
with time. In 1680 a charismatic Indian leader named Popé organized a mas-
sive rebellion among twenty Indian towns. The Indians burned Catholic
churches; tortured, mutilated, and executed priests; and destroyed all relics
of Christianity. Popé then established Santa Fe as the capital of his confeder-
acy. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 constituted the greatest defeat that the Indi-
ans ever inflicted on European efforts to conquer and colonize the “New
World.” It took fourteen years and four military assaults for the Spanish to
reestablish control over New Mexico.

H O R S E S A N D T H E G R E AT P L A I N S Another major consequence of

the Pueblo Revolt was the opportunity it afforded Indian rebels to acquire
hundreds of coveted Spanish horses (Spanish authorities had made it illegal
for Indians to own horses). The Pueblos in turn established a thriving horse
trade with Navajos, Apaches, and other tribes. By 1690, horses were evident
in Texas, and they soon spread across the Great Plains, the vast rolling grass-
lands extending from the Missouri River valley in the east to the base of the
Rocky Mountains in the west.
Horses were a disruptive ecological force in North America. Prior to the
arrival of horses, Indians hunted on foot and used dogs as their beasts of
burden. But dogs are carnivores, and it was difficult to find enough meat to
feed them. Horses thus changed everything, providing the Plains Indians
with a transforming source of mobility and power. Horses are grazing
animals, and the vast grasslands of the Great Plains offered plenty of forage.
Horses could also haul up to seven times as much weight as dogs, and their
speed and endurance made the Indians much more effective hunters and
warriors. In addition, horses enabled Indians to travel farther to trade and
fight.
Horses worked a revolution in the economy as well as the ecology of the
Great Plains. Tribes such as the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, Kiowa, and
Sioux reinvented themselves as equestrian societies. They left their tradi-
tional woodland villages on the fringes of the plains and became nomadic
bison (buffalo) hunters. Indians used virtually every part of the bison they
killed: meat for food; hides for clothing, shoes, bedding, and shelter; muscles
 The Spanish Empire • 39

Plains Indians
The horse-stealing raid depicted in this hide painting demonstrates the essential
role horses played in Plains life.

and tendons for thread and bowstrings; intestines for containers; bones for
tools; horns for eating utensils; hair for headdresses; and dung for fuel. One
scholar has referred to the bison as the “tribal department store.”
In the short run the horse brought prosperity and mobility to the Plains
Indians. Horses became the center and symbol of Indian life on the plains.
Yet the Indians began to kill more bison than the herds could replace. In
addition, horses competed with the bison for food, often depleting the
prairie grass and compacting the soil in the river valleys during the winter.
And as tribes traveled greater distances and encountered more people, infec-
tious diseases spread more widely.
Nonetheless, horses became so valuable that they intensified intertribal
warfare. A family’s status reflected the number of horses it possessed. Horses
eased some of the physical burdens on women, but also imposed new
demands. Women and girls tended to the horses, butchered and dried the
buffalo meat, and tanned the hides. As the value of the hides grew, male
hunters began practicing polygamy, primarily for economic reasons: more
wives could process more buffalo. The rising value of wives eventually led
40 • THE COLLISION OF CULTURES (CH. 1)

Plains Indians to raid other tribes in search of captive brides as well as

horses. The introduction of horses into the Great Plains, then, was a decid-
edly mixed blessing. By 1800 a white trader could observe that “this is a
delightful country, and were it not for perpetual wars, the natives might be
the happiest people on earth.”

T H E P R O T E S TA N T R E F O R M AT I O N

The zealous efforts of the Spanish to convert Indians to Catholicism

illustrated the murderous intensity with which Europeans engaged in reli-
gious life in the sixteenth century. Spiritual concerns were paramount. Reli-
gion inspired, consoled, and united people. In matters of faith, the Roman
Catholic Church and the Bible were the pervasive sources of authority.
Social life centered on worship services, prayer rituals, and religious festivals
and ceremonies. People believed fervently in heaven and hell, devils and
witches, demons and angels, magic and miracles, astrology and the occult.
Europeans also took for granted the collaboration of church and state;
monarchs required religious uniformity. Heresy and blasphemy were not
tolerated. Christians were willing to kill and die for their beliefs. During the
Reformation, when “protestant” dissidents challenged the supremacy of the
Roman Catholic Church, Catholics and Protestants persecuted, imprisoned,
tortured, and killed each other—in large numbers. In France between 1562
and 1629, for example, nine civil wars were fought over religion, with 2 million
to 4 million people dying in the widespread conflicts—out of a total popula-
tion of 19 million.
The Protestant Reformation intensified national rivalries, and, by chal-
lenging Catholic Spain’s power, profoundly affected the course of early
American history. When Columbus sailed west in 1492, all of western
Europe acknowledged the supremacy of the Catholic Church and its pope in
Rome. The unity of Christendom began to crack on October 31, 1517, how-
ever, when Martin Luther (1483–1546), an obscure German theologian and
minister, posted on the door of his Wittenberg church (a then-common way
to announce a public debate) his Ninety-five Theses in protest against the
corruption of Catholic officials. He especially criticized the sale of indul-
gences, whereby monks and priests would forgive sins of the living or the
dead in exchange for money or goods. Sinners, Luther argued, could win sal-
vation neither by doing good works nor by purchasing indulgences but only
by receiving the gift of God’s grace through the redemptive power of Christ
 The Protestant Reformation • 41

and through a direct personal relationship with God—the “priesthood of all

believers.”
Lutheranism spread rapidly among the German-speaking people and
their rulers—some of them with an eye to seizing property owned by the
Catholic Church. Church officials lashed out at Luther, calling him “a leper
with a brain of brass and a nose of iron.” The pope dismissed Lutheranism
as a “cancerous disease” and a “plague.” When the pope expelled Luther
from the church in 1521 and banned all of his writings to keep the world
from being “infected” by his heretical ideas, the German states erupted in
religious conflicts. The controversy was not settled until 1555, when each
German prince was allowed to determine the religion of his subjects. Most
of northern Germany, along with Scandinavia, became Lutheran. The prin-
ciple of close association between church and state thus carried over into
Protestant lands, but Luther had unleashed volatile ideas that ran beyond
his control.
The Protestant Reformation spread rapidly across Europe during the six-
teenth century. It was in part a theological dispute, in part a political move-
ment, and in part a catalyst for social change, civil strife, colonial expansion,
and imperial warfare. Martin Luther’s bold ideas shattered the unity of
Catholic Europe and ignited civil wars and societal upheavals. Once
unleashed, the flood of Protestant rebellion flowed in directions unexpected
and unwanted by Luther and his allies. Militant Protestants pursued Luther’s
rebellious doctrine to its logical end by preaching religious liberty for all.
Further divisions on doctrinal matters such as baptism, communion, and
church organization spawned various sects, such as the Anabaptists, who
rejected infant baptism and favored the separation of church and state.
Other offshoots—including the Mennonites, Amish, and Schwenckfeldians—
appeared first in Europe and later in America, but the more numerous like-
minded groups would be the Baptists and the Quakers, whose origins were
English. These Anabaptist sects ended up exerting considerable influence on
the fabric of colonial life in America.

C A LV I N I S M Soon after Martin Luther began his revolt against the short-
comings of Catholicism, Swiss Protestants also challenged papal authority. In
Geneva the reform movement looked to John Calvin (1509–1564), a brilliant
French scholar who had fled to that city and brought it under the sway of his
powerful beliefs. In his great theological work, The Institutes of the Christian
Religion (1536), Calvin set forth a stern doctrine. All people, he taught, were
damned by Adam’s original sin, but the sacrifice of Christ made possible the
42 • THE COLLISION OF CULTURES (CH. 1)

redemption of those whom God had “elected” and thus had predestined to
salvation from the beginning of time. Predestination was an uncompromis-
ing doctrine, but the infinite wisdom of God, Calvin declared, was beyond
human understanding.
Intoxicated by godliness, Calvin insisted upon strict morality and hard
work, values that especially suited the rising middle class. Moreover, he
taught that God valued every form of work, however menial it might be.
Calvin also permitted lay members a share in the governance of the church
through a body of elders and ministers called the presbytery. Calvin’s doc-
trines formed the basis for the German Reformed Church, the Dutch
Reformed Church, the Presbyterians in Scotland, some of the Puritans in
England (and, eventually, in America), and the Huguenots in France.
Through these and other groups, John Calvin exerted a greater effect upon
religious belief and practice in the English colonies than did any other leader
of the Reformation. His insistence on the freedom of individual believers, as
well as his recognition that monarchs and political officials were sinful like
everyone else, helped contribute to the evolving ideas in Europe of represen-
tative democracy and of the importance of separating church power from
state (governmental) power.

T H E R E F O R M AT I O N I N E N G L A N D In England the Reformation

followed a unique course. The Church of England, or the Anglican Church,
took form through a gradual process of integrating Calvinism with English
Catholicism. In early modern England, church and state were united and
mutually supportive. The monarchy required people to attend religious
services and to pay taxes to support the church. The English rulers also
supervised the hierarchy of church officials: two archbishops, twenty-six
bishops, and thousands of parish clergy. The royal rulers often instructed the
religious leaders to preach sermons in support of particular government
policies. As one English king explained, “People are governed by the pulpit
more than the sword in time of peace.”
Purely political reasons initially led to the rejection of papal authority in
England. Brilliant and energetic Henry VIII (r. 1509–1547), the second
monarch of the Tudor dynasty, had in fact won from the pope the title
Defender of the Faith for refuting Martin Luther’s ideas. But Henry’s mar-
riage to Catherine of Aragon, his brother’s widow, had produced no male
heir, and to marry again required that he obtain an annulment of his mar-
riage from the pope. In the past, popes had found ways to accommodate
such requests, but Catherine was the aunt of Charles V, king of Spain and
ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, whose support was vital to the church. So
 The Protestant Reformation • 43

the pope refused to grant an annulment. Unwilling to accept the rebuff,

Henry severed England’s nearly nine-hundred-year-old connection with the
Catholic Church, named a new archbishop of Canterbury, who granted the
annulment, and married his mistress, the lively Anne Boleyn.
In one of history’s greatest ironies, Anne Boleyn gave birth not to the male
heir that Henry demanded but to a daughter, named Elizabeth. The disap-
pointed king later accused his wife of adultery, ordered her beheaded, and
declared the infant Elizabeth a bastard. Yet Elizabeth received a first-rate
education and grew up to be quick-witted and nimble, cunning and coura-
geous. After the bloody reigns of her Protestant half brother, Edward VI, and
her Catholic half sister, Mary I, she ascended the throne in 1558, at the age of
twenty-five. Over the next forty-five years, Elizabeth proved to be the most
remarkable female ruler in history. Her long reign over the troubled island
kingdom was punctuated by political turmoil, religious tension, economic
crises, and foreign wars. Yet Queen Elizabeth came to rule over England’s
golden age.
Born into a man’s world and given a man’s role, Elizabeth could not be a
Catholic, for in the Catholic view her birth was illegitimate. During her long
reign, from 1558 to 1603, therefore, the Church of England became Protestant,
but in its own way. The Anglican organizational structure, centered on bishops
and archbishops, remained much the same, but the church doctrine and prac-
tice changed: the Latin liturgy became, with some changes, the English Book of
Common Prayer, the cult of saints was dropped, and the clergy were permitted
to marry. For the sake of unity, the
“Elizabethan settlement” allowed some
latitude in theology and other matters,
but this did not satisfy all. Some
Britons tried to enforce the letter of the
law, stressing traditional Catholic prac-
tices. Many others, however, especially
those under Calvinist influence, wished
to “purify” the church of all its Catholic
remnants and promote widespread
spiritual revival. Some of these “Puri-
tans” would leave England to build
their own churches in America. Those
who broke altogether with the Church
of England were called Separatists. Queen Elizabeth I
Thus, the religious controversies asso- Shown here in her coronation robes,
ciated with the English Reformation so ca. 1559.
44 • THE COLLISION OF CULTURES (CH. 1)

dominated the nation’s political life that interest in colonizing the “New
World” waned during the mid-seventeenth century, only to be revived by the
end of the century.

CHALLENGES TO THE S PA N I S H E M P I R E

The Spanish monopoly on “New World” colonies remained intact

throughout the sixteenth century, but not without challenge from European
rivals. The success of Catholic Spain in conquering and exploiting much of
the Western Hemisphere spurred Portugal, France, England, and the Nether-
lands to develop their own imperial claims in the Western Hemisphere. The
French were the first to pose a serious threat. Spanish treasure ships sailing
home from New Spain offered tempting targets for French privateers. In
1524 the French king sent the Italian Giovanni da Verrazano west across the
Atlantic in search of a passage to Asia. Sighting land (probably at Cape Fear,
North Carolina), Verrazano ranged along the coast as far north as Maine. On
a second voyage, in 1528, his life met an abrupt end in the West Indies at the
hands of the Caribs.
Unlike the Verrazano voyages, those of Jacques Cartier, beginning in the
next decade, led to the first French effort at colonization in North America.
During three voyages, Cartier explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence and ven-
tured up the St. Lawrence River, between what would become Canada and
New York. Twice he got as far as present-day Montreal, and twice he win-
tered at or near the site of Quebec, near which a short-lived French colony
appeared in 1541–1542. From that time forward, however, French kings lost
interest in Canada. France after midcentury plunged into religious civil
wars, and the colonization of Canada had to await the coming of Samuel de
Champlain, “the Father of New France,” after 1600. Champlain would lead
twenty-seven expeditions across the Atlantic from France to Canada during
a thirty-seven-year period.
From the mid-1500s, greater threats to Spanish power arose from the
growing strength of the Dutch and the English. The United Provinces of the
Netherlands (Holland), which had passed by inheritance to the Spanish king
and become largely Protestant, rebelled against Spanish rule in 1567. A long,
bloody struggle for independence ensued. Spain did not accept the indepen-
dence of the Dutch republic until 1648.
Almost from the beginning of the Protestant Dutch revolt against
Catholic Spain, the Dutch plundered Spanish ships in the Atlantic and car-
ried on illegal trade with Spain’s colonies. While Queen Elizabeth steered a
 Challenges to the Spanish Empire • 45

GREENLAND

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Who were the first European explorers to rival Spanish dominance in the “New
World,” and why did they cross the Atlantic? Why was the defeat of the Spanish
Armada important to the history of English exploration? What was the significance
of the voyages of Gilbert and Raleigh?
46 • THE COLLISION OF CULTURES (CH. 1)

tortuous course to avoid open war with Spain, she encouraged both Dutch
and English sea captains to engage in smuggling and piracy. In 1577, Sir
Francis Drake embarked on his famous adventure around South America,
raiding Spanish towns along the Pacific Ocean and surprising a treasure ship
from Peru. Eventually he found his way westward around the world and
arrived home in 1580. Elizabeth knighted him upon his return.

T H E D E F E AT O F T H E A R M A D A The plundering of Spanish ship-

ping by English privateers continued for some twenty years before open war
erupted. In 1568, Queen Elizabeth’s cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, having
been ousted the year before by Scottish Presbyterians in favor of her infant
son, James, fled to England. Mary, who was Catholic, had a claim to the Eng-
lish throne by virtue of her descent from Henry VII, and as the years passed,
she conspired to overthrow the Protestant queen Elizabeth. In 1587, after
learning of plots to kill her and elevate Mary to the throne, Elizabeth
ordered Mary beheaded.
News of Mary’s execution outraged Philip II, the king of Catholic Spain,
and he resolved to crush Protestant England and his former sister-in-law
Queen Elizabeth—he had been married to Elizabeth’s half sister, Mary,
whose death, in 1558, had occasioned Elizabeth’s ascent to the throne. To do
so, he assembled the fabled Spanish Armada: 130 ships, 8,000 sailors, and at
least 18,000 soldiers—the greatest invasion fleet in history. On May 28, 1588,
the Armada left Lisbon headed for the English Channel. The English navy,
whose almost one hundred warships were smaller but faster, was waiting for
them. As the two fleets positioned themselves for the great naval battle,
Queen Elizabeth donned a silver breastplate and told the English forces,
“I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart
and stomach of a king, and a King of England too.” As the battle unfolded,
the heavy Spanish galleons could not compete with the speed and agility of the
smaller English ships. The English fleet harried the Spanish ships through the
English Channel on their way to the Netherlands, where the Armada was to
pick up more soldiers for an assault on England. But caught up in a powerful
“Protestant wind” from the south, the storm-tossed Spanish fleet was swept
into the North Sea instead. What was left of it finally found its way home
around the British Isles, scattering wreckage on the shores of Scotland and
Ireland. The stunning defeat of Catholic Spain’s Armada bolstered the
Protestant cause across Europe. The ferocious storm that smashed the
retreating Spanish ships seemed to be a sign of God’s will. Queen Elizabeth
commissioned a special medallion to commemorate the successful defense
of England. The citation read, “God blew and they were dispersed.” Spain’s
 Challenges to the Spanish Empire • 47

“The Invincible Armada”

The Spanish Armada in a sixteenth-century English oil painting.

King Philip seemed to agree. Upon learning of the catastrophic defeat, he

sighed, “I sent the Armada against men, not God’s winds and waves.”
Defeat of the Spanish Armada marked the beginning of England’s global
naval supremacy and cleared the way for English colonization of America.
English colonists could now make their way to North America without fear
of Spanish interference. The naval victory was the climactic event of Queen
Elizabeth’s reign. England at the end of the sixteenth century was in the
springtime of its power, filled with a youthful zest for new worlds and new
wonders.

E N G L I S H E X P L O R AT I O N O F A M E R I C AThe history of the English

efforts to colonize America begins with Sir Humphrey Gilbert and his half
brother, Sir Walter Raleigh. In 1578, Gilbert, who had long been a favorite of
the queen’s, secured royal permission to establish a colony in America.
Gilbert, after two false starts, set out with a colonial expedition in 1583,
intending to settle near Narragansett Bay (in present-day Rhode Island). He
48 • THE COLLISION OF CULTURES (CH. 1)

instead landed in Newfoundland (Canada) and took possession of the land

for Elizabeth. With winter approaching and his largest vessels lost, Gilbert
returned home. While in transit, however, his ship vanished, and he was
never seen again.
The next year, Sir Walter Raleigh persuaded the queen to renew Gilbert’s
colonizing mission in his own name. The flotilla discovered the Outer Banks
of North Carolina and landed at Roanoke Island, where the soil seemed
fruitful and the Indians friendly. Raleigh decided to name the area Virginia,
in honor of childless Queen Elizabeth, the “Virgin Queen.” After several false
starts, Raleigh in 1587 sponsored another expedition of about one hundred
colonists, including women and children, under Governor John White.
White spent a month on Roanoke Island and then returned to England for
supplies, leaving behind his daughter Elinor and his granddaughter Virginia
Dare, the first English child born in the “New World.” White’s return was
delayed because of the war with Spain. When he finally landed, in 1590, he
discovered that Roanoke had been abandoned and pillaged.

The Arrival of the English in Virginia

The arrival of English explorers on the Outer Banks, with Roanoke Island at left.
 Challenges to the Spanish Empire • 49

No trace of the “lost colonists” was ever found. Indians may have
killed them, or hostile Spaniards—who had certainly planned to
attack—may have done the job. The most recent evidence indicates that the
“Lost Colony” fell prey to a horrible drought. Tree-ring samples reveal that
the colonists arrived during the driest seven-year period in 770 years. While
some may have gone south, the main body of colonists appears to have gone
north, to the southern shores of Chesapeake Bay, as they had talked of doing,
and lived there for some years until they were killed by local Indians.
There was not a single English colonist in North America when Queen
Elizabeth died, in 1603. The Spanish controlled the only colonial outposts
on the continent. But that was about to change. Inspired by the success of
the Spanish in exploiting the “New World,” and emboldened by their defeat
of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the English—as well as the French and the
Dutch—would soon develop their own versions of American colonialism.
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Pre-Columbian America At the time of contact, the Aztecs and Mayas of Cen-
tral America had developed empires sustained by large-scale agriculture and
long-distance trade. North American Indians, however, were less well organized.
The Anasazi and the indigenous peoples in the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys did
establish important trading centers sustained by intensive agriculture.
• Age of Exploration By the 1490s, Europe was experiencing a renewed curiosity
about the world. New technologies led to the creation of better maps and navi-
gation techniques. Nation-states searching for gold and glory emerged, and
Europeans desired silks and spices from Asia.
• Great Biological Exchange Contact resulted in a great biological exchange.
Crops prevalent in the “new world” such as maize, beans, and potatoes became
staples in the Old World. Indigenous peoples incorporated into their culture
such Eurasian animals as the horse and pig. The invaders carried pathogens that
set off pandemics of smallpox, plague, and other illnesses to which Indians had
no immunity.
• Colonizing the Americas When the Spanish began to colonize the “New
World,” the conversion of the Indians to Catholicism was important, but the
search for gold and silver was primary. In that search, the Spanish demanded
goods and labor from their new subjects. As the indigenous population
declined, mostly from diseases, the Spanish began to “import” enslaved Africans.
• Spanish Legacy Spain left a lasting legacy in the North American borderlands
from California to Florida. Catholic missionaries contributed to the destruction
of the old ways of life by exterminating “heathen” beliefs in the Southwest, a
practice that led to open rebellion in 1598 and 1680.
• Protestant Reformation The Protestant Reformation shattered the unity of
Catholic Europe. By the reign of Elizabeth I of England, religious differences had
led to state-supported plunder of Spanish treasure ships, then to open hostility
with Spain. England’s defeat of the Spanish Armada cleared the path for English
dominance in North America.
 CHRONOLOGY

by 12,000 B.C.

A.D. 1492

1497
Humans have migrated to the Americas, most of them from
Siberia
Columbus, sailing for Spain, makes first voyage of discovery
John Cabot explores Newfoundland
1503 First Africans are brought to the Americas
1513 Juan Ponce de León explores Florida
1517–1648 Protestant Reformation spurs religious conflict between
Catholics and Protestants
1519 Hernán Cortés begins the Spanish conquest of the Aztec
Empire
1531 Francisco Pizarro subdues the Incas of Peru
1541 Jacques Cartier, sailing for France, explores the St. Lawrence
River
1561 St. Augustine, the first European colony in present day
America, is founded
1584–1587 Raleigh’s Roanoke Island venture
1588 The English defeat the Spanish Armada
1680 Popé leads rebellion in New Mexico

KEY TERMS & NAMES

Aztec Empire p. 9 conquistadores p. 28 Reformation p. 40

pueblos p. 13 Tenochtitlán p. 29 Martin Luther p. 40

Vikings p. 15 Francisco Pizarro p. 31 Queen Elizabeth I of

England p. 43
Christopher Columbus encomienda p. 31
p. 20 Jacques Cartier p. 44
Bartolomé de Las Casas
Amerigo Vespucci p. 22 p. 33 Raleigh’s Roanoke Island
Colony p. 48
Hernán Cortés p. 28 Hernando de Soto p. 34

2
BRITAIN AND ITS
COLONIES

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• What were Britain’s reasons for establishing colonies in North

America?
• Why did the first English colony, at Jamestown, experience hard-
ships in its first decades?
• How important was religion as a motivation for colonization?
• How did British colonists and Indians adapt to each other’s
presence?
• Why was it possible for England to establish successful colonies by
1700?

T he England that Queen Elizabeth governed at the beginning

of the seventeenth century was a unique blend of elements.
The Anglican Church mixed Protestant theology and
Catholic rituals. And the growth of royal power had paradoxically been
linked to the rise of civil liberties for the English people, in which even Tudor
monarchs took pride. In the course of their history, the English people have
displayed a genius for “muddling through,” a gift for the pragmatic compro-
mise that at times defies logic but in the light of experience somehow works.

T H E E N G L I S H B A C KG R O U N D

Dominated by England, the British Isles also included the kingdoms of

Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. The United Kingdom, set off from continental
Europe by the English Channel, had safe frontiers after the union of the Eng-
lish and Scottish crowns in 1603. Such comparative isolation enabled the
 The English Background • 53

nation to develop institutions quite different from those on the Continent.

Unlike the absolute monarchs of France and Spain, the British rulers shared
power with the nobility and a lesser aristocracy, known as the gentry, whose
representatives formed the bicameral legislature known as Parliament, made
up of the House of Lords and the House of Commons.

E N G L I S H L I B E RT I E SThat England was a parliamentary monarchy

made it distinctive among the European nations in the sixteenth century.
The Magna Carta (Great Charter) of 1215, a statement of rights and liberties
wrested by feudal nobles from the king, had established the principle that
the people had basic rights, the most important of which was that everyone
was equal before the law and no person was above the law, including those in
power. The most important power allocated to the Parliament was the
authority to enact or modify taxes. By controlling government tax revenue,
the legislative body exercised important leverage over the monarchy.

ENGLISH ENTERPRISE The cherished tradition of English liberties

inspired a sense of personal initiative and entrepreneurial enterprise that
spawned prosperity and empire. Unlike the Spanish, the English formed for-
profit joint-stock companies as their mode of global expansion. These entre-
preneurial ventures were the ancestors of the modern corporation. Private
investors, not the government, shared the risks and profits associated with
maritime exploration and colonial settlement. In the late sixteenth century,
some of the larger companies managed to get royal charters that entitled
them to monopolies in certain territories and even government powers in
their outposts. Such joint-stock companies were the most important organi-
zational innovation of the era, and they provided the first instruments of
British colonization in America.
For all the vaunted glories of English liberty and enterprise, it was not the
best of times for the common people. During the late sixteenth century,
Britain experienced a population explosion that outstripped the economy’s
ability to support the surplus of workers. Many of those jobless workers
would find their way to America, already viewed as a land of opportunity. An
additional strain on the population was the “enclosure” of farmlands on
which peasants had lived and worked. As the trade in woolen products grew,
landlords decided to “enclose” farmlands and evict the tenants in favor of
grazing sheep. The enclosure movement of the sixteenth century, coupled
with the rising population, generated the great number of beggars and
vagrants who peopled the literature of Elizabethan times and gained
immortality in the line from the Mother Goose tale: “Hark, hark, the dogs do
54 • B RITAIN AND I TS C OLONIES (CH. 2)

bark. The beggars have come to town.” The needs of this displaced peasant
population, on the move throughout the British Isles, provided a compelling
argument for colonial expansion.

PA R L I A M E N T A N D T H E S T UA R T S Queen Elizabeth, who never

married and did not give birth to an heir, died in 1603. With her demise, the
Tudor family line ran out, and the throne fell to the first of the Stuarts,
whose dynasty would span most of the seventeenth century, a turbulent time
during which the British planted their overseas empire. In 1603, James VI
of Scotland, son of the ill-fated Mary, Queen of Scots, and great-great-
grandson of Henry VII, became King James I of England—as Elizabeth had
planned. The new monarch coined the term Great Britain to describe the
merging of Scotland with England and Ireland. A man of ponderous learn-
ing, James fully earned his reputation as the “wisest fool in Christendom.”
Tall and broad-shouldered, he was bisexual, conceited, profligate, and lazy.
He lectured the people on every topic, but remained blind to deep-rooted
English traditions and sensibilities. While the Tudors had wielded power
through constitutional authority, James promoted the theory of divine
right, by which monarchs answered only to God. James I inherited from his

Stuart kings
(Left) James I, the successor to Queen Elizabeth and the first of England’s Stuart
kings. (Right) Charles I in a portrait by Gerrit van Honthorst.
 The English Background • 55

cousin Queen Elizabeth a divided Church of England, with the militantly

reform-minded Puritans in one camp and the conservative Anglican estab-
lishment in the other. The Puritans had hoped the new king would support
their opposition to the Catholic trappings of Anglicanism; they found
instead a testy autocrat who promised to banish them from the British Isles.
James I offended even Anglicans by deciding to end Queen Elizabeth’s war
with Catholic Spain.
Charles I, who succeeded his father, James, in 1625, proved to be an even
more stubborn defender of absolute royal power. Like the French and Span-
ish monarchs, King Charles preferred a highly centralized kingdom special-
izing in oppression and hierarchy. He disbanded Parliament from 1629 to
1640, levied taxes by decree, and allowed the systematic persecution of Puri-
tans. The monarchy went too far when it tried to impose Anglican forms of
worship on Presbyterian Scots. In 1638, Scotland rose in revolt, and in 1640
King Charles, desperate for money, told Parliament to raise taxes for the
defense of his kingdom. The “Long Parliament” refused, going so far as to
condemn to death the king’s chief minister. In 1642, when the king tried to
arrest five members of Parliament, a prolonged civil war erupted between
the “Roundheads,” mostly Puritans who backed Parliament, and the “Cava-
liers,” or royalists, who supported the king. In 1646 parliamentary forces
captured King Charles and eventually tried him on charges of high treason.
The judges found the king guilty, labeling him a “tyrant, traitor, murderer,
and public enemy.” Charles was beheaded in 1649.
Oliver Cromwell, the commander of the parliamentary army, filled the vac-
uum created by the execution of the king. He operated like a military dictator,
ruling first through a council chosen by Parliament (the Commonwealth)
and, after he dissolved Parliament, as “lord protector” (“the Protectorate”).
Cromwell extended religious toleration to all Britons except Catholics and
Anglicans, but his arbitrary governance and his stern moralistic codes pro-
voked growing resentment. When, after his death, in 1658, his son proved too
weak to rule, the army once again took control, permitted new elections for
Parliament, and in 1660 supported the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy
under young Charles II, son of the executed king.
Charles II accepted as terms of the Restoration settlement the principle
that he must rule jointly with Parliament. His younger brother, the Duke of
York (who became James II upon succeeding to the throne in 1685), was less
flexible. He openly avowed Catholicism and assumed the same unyielding
authoritarian stance as the first two Stuart kings. He had opponents mur-
dered or imprisoned, and he defied parliamentary statutes. The people could
bear the king’s efforts to mimic France’s Sun King, Louis XIV, so long as they
56 • B RITAIN AND I TS C OLONIES (CH. 2)

expected one of his Protestant daughters, Mary or Anne, to succeed him. In

1688, however, the birth of a royal son who would be reared a Catholic
brought matters to a crisis. Determined to prevent a Catholic monarch,
political, religious, and military leaders invited the king’s Protestant daugh-
ter Mary Stuart and her Protestant husband, William III of Orange, the rul-
ing Dutch prince, to assume the British throne as joint monarchs. When
William landed in England with a Dutch army, King James II fled to France,
his adopted home. The Parliament then reasserted its right to counterbal-
ance the authority of the monarchy.
By ending a long era of internal conflict, royal absolutism, and chronic
instability, the “Glorious Revolution” greatly enhanced Britain’s world
power. Moreover, Parliament finally established its freedom from monarchi-
cal control. The monarchy would henceforth derive its power not from God
but from the people. Under the Bill of Rights, drafted in 1689, William and
Mary gave up the royal right to suspend laws, appoint special courts, keep a
standing army, or levy taxes except by Parliament’s consent. They further
agreed to hold frequent legislative sessions and allow freedom of speech. The
Glorious Revolution helped to change the Church of England from an intol-
erant, persecuting church to one that acknowledged the right of dissenters.

SETTLING THE CHESAPEAKE

During these eventful years, all but one of Britain’s North American
colonies were founded. The Stuart kings were eager to weaken the power of
France and Spain and gain Britain’s share of overseas colonies, trade, and
plunder. The British colonies in America began not as initiatives undertaken
by the monarchy but as profit-seeking corporations. In 1606, King James
I chartered a joint-stock enterprise called the Virginia Company, with two
divisions: the First Colony of London and the Second Colony of Plymouth.
King James assigned to the Virginia Company an explicit religious mission.
He decreed that the settlers would bring the “Christian religion” to the Indi-
ans who “live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge
and worship of God.” But as was true of most colonial ventures, such pious
intentions were mixed with the lure of profits. The stockholders viewed the
colony as a source of gold and other minerals; products—such as wine, cit-
rus fruits, and olive oil—that would free England from dependence upon
Spain; and pitch, tar, potash, and other forest products needed by the navy.
Investors promoted colonization as an opportunity to trade with the Indi-
ans; some also saw it as a way to transplant the growing number of jobless
 Settling the Chesapeake • 57

vagrants from Britain to the Americas. Few if any of the original investors
foresaw what the first English colony would actually become: a place to grow
tobacco.
From the outset the pattern of English colonization diverged significantly
from the Spanish pattern, in which all aspects of colonial life were regulated
by the government. While interest in America was growing, the English had
already begun “planting” settlements, called plantations, in Ireland, which
they had conquered by military force under Queen Elizabeth. The English
would subjugate (and convert to Protestantism) the Indians as they had the
Irish in Ireland. Yet in America the English, unlike the Spanish in Mexico
and Peru, settled along the Atlantic seaboard, where the Indian populations
were relatively sparse. There was no powerful Aztec or Inca Empire to con-
quer. The colonists thus had to establish their own communities near Indian
villages. Yet the British colonists who arrived in the seventeenth century
rarely settled in one place for long. They were migrants more than settlers,
people who had been on the move in Britain and continued to pursue new
opportunities in different places once they arrived in America.

V I R G I N I A The Virginia Company planted the first permanent colony in

Virginia. On May 6, 1607, three tiny ships carrying 105 men and boys (39 of
the original voyagers had died at sea) reached Chesapeake Bay after four
storm-tossed months at sea. They chose a river with a northwest bend—in
the hope of finding a passage to Asia—and settled about forty miles inland
to hide from marauding Spaniards. The river they called the James and the
colony, Jamestown, in what would become the province of Virginia, named
after Queen Elizabeth, the “Virgin Queen.”
On a low-lying peninsula fed by brackish water and swarming with
malarial mosquitoes, the sea-weary colonists built a fort, thatched huts, a
storehouse, and a church. They needed to grow their own food, but most
were either townsmen unfamiliar with farming or “gentleman” adventurers
who scorned manual labor. They had come expecting to find gold, friendly
Indians, and easy living. Instead they found disease, drought, starvation, dis-
sension, and death. Most did not know how to exploit the area’s abundant
game and fish. Supplies from England were undependable, and only some
effective leadership and trade with the Indians, who taught the ill-prepared
colonists to grow maize, enabled them to survive.
The indigenous peoples of the region were loosely organized. Powhatan
was the powerful chief of numerous Algonquian-speaking villages in eastern
Virginia, representing over 10,000 Indians. The two dozen tribes making up
the so-called Powhatan Confederacy were largely an agricultural people
58 • B RITAIN AND I TS C OLONIES (CH. 2)

“Ould Virginia”
A 1624 map of Virginia by John Smith, showing Chief Powhatan in the upper left.

focused on raising corn. They lived in some 200 villages along rivers in for-
tified settlements and resided in wood houses sheathed with bark. Chief
Powhatan collected tribute from the tribes he had conquered—fully 80 per-
cent of the corn that they grew was handed over. Powhatan also developed a
lucrative trade with the English colonists, exchanging corn and hides for
hatchets, swords, and muskets; he realized too late that the newcomers
wanted more than corn; they intended to seize his lands and subjugate his
people.
The colonists, as it happened, had more than a match for Powhatan in
Captain John Smith, a short, stocky, twenty-seven-year-old soldier of for-
tune with rare powers of leadership and self-promotion. The Virginia Com-
pany, impressed by Smith’s exploits in foreign wars, had appointed him a
member of the council to manage the new colony in America. It was a wise
 48

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VIRGINIA COMPANY

What did the stockholders of the Virginia Company hope to

gain from the first two English colonies in North America? How
were the first English settlements different from the Spanish set-
tlements in North America? What were the major differences
between the First Colony of London and the Second Colony of
Plymouth?
60 • B RITAIN AND I TS C OLONIES (CH. 2)

decision. Of the original 105 settlers, only 38 survived the first nine months.
With the colonists on the verge of starvation, Smith imposed strict discipline
and forced all to labor, declaring that “he that will not work shall not eat.” In
dealing with the bickering settlers, he imprisoned, whipped, and forced
them to work. Smith also bargained with the Indians and explored and
mapped the Chesapeake region. Through his dictatorial efforts, Jamestown
survived.
In 1609 the Virginia Company sent more colonists to Jamestown, includ-
ing several women. A new charter replaced the largely ineffective council
with an all-powerful governor. The company then lured new investors and
attracted new settlers with the promise of free land after seven years of labor.
With no gold or silver in Virginia, the company in effect had given up hope
of prospering except through the sale of land, which would rise in value as
the colony grew. Hundreds of new settlers overwhelmed the infant colony.
During the “starving time” of the winter of 1609–1610, most of the colonists
died of disease or starvation. Desperate colonists consumed their horses,

Colonial necessities
A list of provisions recommended to new settlers by the Virginia Company in 1622.
 Settling the Chesapeake • 61

cats, and dogs, then survived on rats and mice. A few even ate the leather
from their shoes and boots. Some fled to nearby indigenous villages, only to
be welcomed with arrows. One man killed, salted, and ate his pregnant wife.
His fellow colonists tortured and executed him.
In June 1610, as the surviving colonists prepared to abandon Jamestown
and return to England, the new governor, Lord De La Warr, arrived in Vir-
ginia with three ships and 150 men. The colonists created new settlements
upstream at Henrico (Richmond) and two more downstream, near the
mouth of the river. It was a critical turning point for the English colony,
whose survival required a combination of stern measures and not a little
luck. After Lord De La Warr returned to England in 1611, Sir Thomas Gates
took charge of the colony and established a strict system of laws. When a
man was caught stealing oatmeal, the authorities thrust a long needle
through his tongue, chained him to a tree, and let him starve to death as a
grisly example to the community. Gates also ordered that the dilapidated
Anglican church be repaired and that colonists attend services on Thursdays
and Sundays. The church bell rang each morning and afternoon to remind
colonists to pray. As Lord De La Warr declared, Virginia would be a colony
where “God [would be] duly and daily served.” Religious uniformity thus
became an essential instrument of public policy and civil duty in colonial
Virginia.
Over the next seven years the Jamestown colony limped along until it
gradually found a lucrative source of revenue: tobacco. The plant had been
grown on Caribbean islands for years, and smoking had become a popular—
and addictive—habit in Europe. In 1612, having been introduced to growing
tobacco by the Indians, colonist John Rolfe got hold of some seed from the
more savory Spanish varieties, and by 1616 Chesapeake tobacco had become
a profitable export. Even though King James dismissed smoking as “loath-
some to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, and dangerous to
the lungs,” he swallowed his objections to the “noxious weed” when he
realized how much revenue it provided the monarchy. Virginia’s tobacco
production soared during the seventeenth century, leading the Virginia
Company in 1616 to change its land policy in the colony. Instead of being
treated as laborers, whereby they worked the land for the company, colonists
were thereafter allowed to own their own land. But still there was a chronic
shortage of labor. Tobacco became such a profitable, labor-intensive crop
that planters purchased more and more indentured servants (colonists who
exchanged several years of labor for the cost of passage to America and the
eventual grant of land), thus increasing the flow of immigrants to the
colony. Indentured servitude became a primary source of labor in English
62 • B RITAIN AND I TS C OLONIES (CH. 2)

America. Over half of the white immi-

grants to the British colonies arrived
under indenture.
Meanwhile, John Rolfe had made
another contribution to stability by mar-
rying Pocahontas, the favorite daughter of
Chief Powhatan. Pocahontas (a nickname
usually translated as “Frisky”; her given
name was Matoaka) had been a familiar
figure in Jamestown. In 1607, then only
eleven, she figured in perhaps the best-
known story of the settlement, her plea
Pocahontas
for the life of John Smith. Smith had got-
Shown here in European dress, by
ten into trouble when he led a small group
1616 Pocahontas was known as
“Lady Rebecca.” up the James River. When the Englishmen
trespassed on Powhatan’s territory, the
Indians attacked. Smith was wounded, interrogated, and readied for execution.
At that point, according to Smith, the headstrong Pocahontas made a dramatic
appeal for his life, and Powhatan eventually agreed to release the foreigner in
exchange for muskets, hatchets, beads, and trinkets.
Schoolchildren still learn the dramatic story of Pocahontas intervening to
save Smith. Such dramatic events are magical; they inspire movies, excite our
imagination, animate history—and confuse it. Pocahontas and John Smith
were friends, not lovers. Moreover, the Indian princess saved the swashbuck-
ling Smith on more than one occasion, before she herself was kidnapped by
English settlers in an effort to blackmail Powhatan. As the weeks passed, how-
ever, she surprised her captors by choosing to join them. She embraced Chris-
tianity, was baptized and renamed Rebecca, and fell in love with 28-year-old
widower John Rolfe. They married and in 1616 moved with their infant son,
Thomas, to London. There the young princess drew excited attention from the
royal family and curious Londoners. But only a few months after arriving,
Rebecca, aged twenty, contracted a lung disease and died.
In 1618, Sir Edwin Sandys, a prominent member of Parliament, became
head of the Virginia Company and instituted a series of reforms. First of all he
inaugurated a new “headright” policy: any Englishman who bought a share in
the company and could get to Virginia could have fifty acres on arrival, and
fifty more for any servants he brought along. The following year the company
relaxed the colony’s military regime and promised that the settlers would have
the “rights of Englishmen,” including a legislature. This was a crucial develop-
ment, for the English had long enjoyed the greatest civil liberties and the least
 Settling the Chesapeake • 63

intrusive government in Europe. Now, the English colonists in Virginia were to

enjoy the same rights. On July 30, 1619, the first General Assembly of Virginia
met in the Jamestown church, “sweating & stewing, and battling flies and mos-
quitoes,” as they assumed responsibility for representative government.
The year 1619 was eventful in other respects. In that year, a ship with
ninety young women aboard arrived in the overwhelmingly male colony.
Men rushed to claim them as wives by providing 125 pounds of tobacco for
the cost of their transatlantic passage. And a Dutch ship stopped by and
dropped off “20 Negars,” the first Africans known to have reached English
America. By this time, Europeans had been selling enslaved Africans for over
a century. The increasingly profitable tobacco trade intensified the settlers’
lust for land, slaves, and women. English planters especially coveted the
fields cultivated by Indians because they had already been cleared and were
ready to be planted. In 1622 the Indians tried to repel the land-grabbing
English. They killed a fourth of the settlers, some 350 colonists, including
John Rolfe (who had returned from England). The vengeful English thereafter
decimated Indians in Virginia. The 24,000 Algonquians who inhabited the
colony in 1607 were reduced to 2,000 by 1669.
Some 14,000 English men, women, and children had migrated to
Jamestown since 1607, but most of them had died; the population in 1624
stood at a precarious 1,132. In 1624 an English court dissolved the struggling
Virginia Company, and Virginia became a royal colony. No longer were the
settlers mere laborers toiling for a stock company; they were now citizens
with the freedom to own private property and start business enterprises.
Sir William Berkeley, who arrived as Virginia’s royal governor in 1642,
presided over the colony’s growth for most of the next thirty-five years. The
turmoil of Virginia’s early days gave way to a more stable period. Tobacco
prices surged, and the large planters began to consolidate their economic
gains through political action. They assumed key civic roles as justices of the
peace and sheriffs, helped initiate improvements such as roads and bridges,
supervised elections, and collected taxes. They also formed the able-bodied
men into local militias. Despite the presence of a royal governor, the elected
Virginia assembly continued to assert its sovereignty, making laws for the
colony and resisting the governor’s encroachments.
The relentless stream of new settlers and indentured servants into Vir-
ginia exerted constant pressure on indigenous lands and produced unwanted
economic effects and social unrest. To sustain their competitive advantage,
the largest planters bought up the most fertile land along the coast, thereby
forcing freed servants to become tenants or claim less fertile land inland. In
either case the tenants found themselves at a disadvantage. They grew
64 • B RITAIN AND I TS C OLONIES (CH. 2)

dependent upon planters for land and credit, and small farmers along the
western frontier became more vulnerable to Indian attacks. By 1676 a fourth
of the free white men in Virginia were landless. Vagabonds roamed the
countryside, squatting on private property, working at odd jobs, or poaching
game or engaging in other petty crimes in order to survive. Alarmed by the
growing social unrest, the large planters who controlled the assembly
lengthened terms of indenture, passed more stringent vagrancy laws, stiff-
ened punishments, and stripped the landless of their political rights. Such
efforts only increased social friction.

BAC O N ’ S R E B E L L I O N In the mid-1670s a variety of simmering

tensions—caused by depressed tobacco prices, rising taxes, roaming livestock,
and crowds of freed servants greedily eyeing indigenous lands—contributed
to the tangled events that have come to be labeled Bacon’s Rebellion. The
revolt grew out of a festering hatred for the domineering colonial governor,
William Berkeley. He catered to the wealthiest planters and despised
commoners. The large planters who dominated the assembly levied high
taxes to finance Berkeley’s regime, which in turn supported their interests at
the expense of the small farmers and servants. With little nearby land avail-
able, newly freed indentured servants were forced to migrate westward in
their quest for farms. Their lust for land
led them to displace the Indians. When
Governor Berkeley failed to support the
aspiring farmers in their conflict with
Indians, the farmers rebelled. The tyran-
nical governor expected as much. Just
before the outbreak of rebellion, Berkeley
had remarked that most Virginians were
“Poore, Endebted, Discontented and
Armed.”
The discontent turned to violence in
1675 when a petty squabble between a
white planter and indigenous people on
the Potomac River led to the murder of
the planter’s herdsman and, in turn, to
retaliation by frontier militiamen, who
News of the Rebellion killed two dozen Indians. The violence
A pamphlet printed in London
spread. A force of Virginia and Maryland
provided details about Bacon’s militiamen murdered five indigenous
Rebellion. chieftains who had sought to negotiate.
 Settling the Chesapeake • 65

Enraged Indians took their revenge on frontier settlements. Scattered attacks

continued southward down to the James River, where Nathaniel Bacon’s
overseer was killed.
By then, their revenge accomplished, the Indians had pulled back. What
followed had less to do with a state of war than with a state of hysteria. Gov-
ernor Berkeley proposed that the assembly erect a series of forts along the
frontier. But that would not slake the settlers’ own thirst for revenge—nor
would it open new lands to settlement. Besides, it would be expensive. Some
thought Berkeley was out to preserve for himself the profitable trade with
Indians in animal hides and fur.
In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon defied Governor Berkeley’s authority by
assuming command of a group of frontier vigilantes. The tall, slender
twenty-nine-year-old Bacon, a graduate of Cambridge University, had been
in Virginia only two years, but he had been well set up by an English father
relieved to get his vain, ambitious, hot-tempered son out of the country.
Later historians would praise Bacon as “the Torchbearer of the Revolution”
and leader of the first struggle of common folk versus aristocrats. In part
that was true. The rebellion he led was largely a battle of servants, small
farmers, and even slaves against Virginia’s wealthiest planters and political
leaders. But Bacon was also a rich squire’s spoiled son with a talent for trou-
ble. It was his ruthless assaults against peaceful Indians and his greed for
power and land rather than any commitment to democratic principles that
sparked his conflict with the governing authorities.
Bacon despised indigenous people and resolved to kill them all. Berkeley
opposed Bacon’s genocidal plan not because he liked Indians, but also
because he wanted to protect his lucrative monopoly over the deerskin
trade. Bacon ordered the governor arrested. Berkeley’s forces resisted—but
only feebly—and Bacon’s men burned Jamestown. Bacon, however, could
not savor the victory long; he fell ill and died a month later.
Governor Berkeley quickly regained control, hanged twenty-three rebels,
and confiscated several estates. When his men captured one of Bacon’s lieu-
tenants, Berkeley gleefully exclaimed: “I am more glad to see you than any man
in Virginia. Mr. Drummond, you shall be hanged in half an hour.” For such
severity the king denounced Berkeley as a “fool” and recalled him to England,
where he died within a year. A royal commission made peace treaties with the
remaining Indians, about 1,500 of whose descendants still live in Virginia on
tiny reservations guaranteed them by the king in 1677. The result of Bacon’s
Rebellion was that new lands were opened to the colonists, and the wealthy
planters became more cooperative with the small farmers. But the rebellion by
landless whites also convinced many large planters that they would be better
served by bringing in more enslaved Africans to work their fields.
66 • B RITAIN AND I TS C OLONIES (CH. 2)

M A RY L A N D In 1634, ten years after Virginia became a royal colony, a

neighboring settlement appeared on the northern shores of Chesapeake Bay.
Named Maryland in honor of Queen Henrietta Maria, it was granted to
Lord Baltimore by King Charles I and became the first proprietary colony—
that is, it was owned by an individual, not by a joint-stock company.
Sir George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, converted to Catholicism in
1625 and sought the American colony as a refuge for persecuted English
Catholics. His son, Cecilius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, actually
founded the colony.
In 1634, Calvert planted the first settlement in Maryland at St. Mary’s,
near the mouth of the Potomac River. Calvert recruited Catholic gentlemen
as landholders, but a majority of the indentured servants were Protestants.
The charter gave Calvert power to make laws with the consent of the
freemen (all property holders). The first legislative assembly met in 1635

re
wa
la iver
De
R

MARYLAND
Po
to

ac
m

Ri
ve
r
Delaware
Bay

Yo St. Marys (1634)

VIRGINIA rk
Ri
ve
r
ATLANTIC
ver
Ri
OCEAN
s

e
m
Ja Henrico (1610)
Jamestown (1607)
Chesapeake
Bay

Roanoke
Island (1580s)

EARLY VIRGINIA AND

MARYLAND
Original grant to Lord Baltimore
0 50 100 Miles
Present-day boundary of Maryland
0 50 100 Kilometers

Why did Lord Baltimore create Maryland? How was Maryland

different from Virginia? What were the main characteristics of
Maryland’s 1632 charter?
 Settling New England • 67

and divided into two houses in 1650, with governor and council sitting sepa-
rately, an action instigated by the predominantly Protestant freemen—
largely immigrants from Virginia and former servants who had become
landholders. The charter also empowered the proprietor to grant huge
manorial estates, and Maryland had some sixty before 1676, but the Lords
Baltimore soon found that to recruit settlers they had to offer them small
farms, most of which grew tobacco. Unlike Virginia, which struggled for
years to reach economic viability, Maryland prospered quickly because of its
ability to grow tobacco. And its long coastline along the Chesapeake Bay gave
planters easy access to shipping.

SETTLING NEW ENGLAND

Far to the north of the Chesapeake Bay colonies, quite different Eng-
lish settlements were emerging. The New England colonists were generally
made up of middle-class families that could pay their own way across the
Atlantic. In the Northeast there were relatively few indentured servants, and
there was no planter elite. Most male settlers were small farmers, merchants,
seamen, or fishermen. New England also attracted more women than did the
southern colonies. Although its soil was not as fertile as that of the Chesa-
peake and its growing season much shorter, New England was a much
healthier place to settle. Because of its colder climate, settlers avoided the
infectious diseases that ravaged the southern colonies. Life expectancy was
accordingly much longer. During the seventeenth century only 21,000
colonists arrived in New England, compared with the 120,000 who went to
the Chesapeake Bay colonies. But by 1700, New England’s white population
exceeded that of Maryland and Virginia.
Unlike the early Jamestown colonists who arrived in America seeking
adventure and profit, most early New Englanders were motivated by reli-
gious ideals. They were devout Puritans who embraced a much more rigor-
ous Protestant faith than did the Anglican colonists who settled Virginia and
Maryland. In 1650, for example, Massachusetts had eight times as many
ministers as Virginia. The Puritans who arrived in America were on a divine
mission to create a model Christian society living according to God’s com-
mandments. In the New World these self-described “saints” intended to
purify their churches of all Catholic and Anglican rituals and enact a code of
laws and a government structure based upon biblical principles. Such a holy
settlement, they hoped, would provide a beacon of righteousness for a
wicked England to emulate.
68 • B RITAIN AND I TS C OLONIES (CH. 2)

P LY M O U T H In 1620 a band of Puritan refugees heading for Virginia

strayed off course and made landfall at Cape Cod, off the southern coast of
what became Massachusetts. These “Pilgrims” belonged to the most radical
sect of Puritans, the Separatists (also called Nonconformists). The Church of
England, according to the Puritans, had retained too many vestiges of
Catholicism. Viewing themselves as the “godly,” they demanded that the
Anglican Church rid itself of “papist” rituals. No use of holy water. No ele-
gant robes (vestments). No jeweled gold crosses. No worship of saints and
relics. No kneeling for communion. No “viperous” bishops and archbishops.
No organ music.
The Separatists went further. Having decided that the Church of England
could not be fixed, they resolved to create their own godly congregations.
Such rebelliousness infuriated the leaders of the Church of England. During
the late sixteenth century, Separatists were “hunted & persecuted on every
side.” English authorities imprisoned Separatist leaders, three of whom were
hanged, drawn, and quartered. King James I resolved to eliminate the Puri-
tan Separatists. “I shall make them conform,” he vowed in 1604, “or I will
hurry them out of the land or do worse.” Many Separatists fled to Holland to
escape persecution. After ten years in the Dutch city of Leiden, they decided
to move to America.
In 1620, about a hundred men, women, and children, led by William
Bradford, crammed aboard the tiny Mayflower. Their ranks included both
“saints” (people recognized as having been selected by God for salvation)
and “strangers” (those yet to receive the gift of grace). The latter group
included John Alden, a cooper (barrel maker), and Myles Standish, a soldier
hired to organize their defenses. The stormy voyage led them to Cape Cod.
“Being thus arrived at safe harbor, and brought safe to land,” William Brad-
ford wrote, “they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven who
had brought them over the vast and furious ocean.” Since they were outside
the jurisdiction of any organized government, forty-one of the Pilgrim lead-
ers entered into the Mayflower Compact, a formal agreement to abide by the
laws made by leaders of their own choosing.
On December 26 the Mayflower reached harbor at the place the Pilgrims
named Plymouth, after the English port from which they had embarked, and
they built dwellings on the site of an abandoned indigenous village. Nearly
half of them died of disease over the winter, but in the spring of 1621 the
colonists met Squanto, an Indian who showed them how to grow maize and
catch fish. By autumn the Pilgrims had a bumper crop of corn and a flour-
ishing fur trade. To celebrate, they held a harvest feast with the Indians. That
 Settling New England • 69

Crossing the Atlantic

Sailors on a sixteenth-century oceangoing vessel navigating by the stars.

event provided the inspiration for what has become the annual Thanksgiv-
ing holiday in the United States.
Throughout its existence, until it was absorbed into Massachusetts in
1691, the Plymouth colony remained in the anomalous position of holding a
land grant but no charter of government from any English authority. Their
government grew instead out of the Mayflower Compact, which was neither
exactly a constitution nor a precedent for later constitutions. Rather, it was
the obvious recourse of a group of colonists who had made a covenant (or
agreement) to form a church and believed God had made a covenant with
them to provide a way to salvation. Thus, the civil government grew natu-
rally out of the church government, and the members of each were identical
at the start. The signers of the compact at first met as the General Court,
which chose the governor and his assistants (or council). Others were later
admitted as members, or “freemen,” but only church members were eligible.
70 • B RITAIN AND I TS C OLONIES (CH. 2)

Miles

Why did European settlers first populate the Plymouth colony? How were the set-
tlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony different from those of Plymouth? What was
the origin of the Rhode Island colony?

Eventually, as the colony grew, the General Court became a body of repre-
sentatives from the various towns.

M A S S A C H U S E T T S B AY The Plymouth colony’s population never rose

above 7,000, and after ten years it was overshadowed by its larger neighbor,
the Massachusetts Bay Colony. That colony, too, was intended to be a holy
commonwealth bound together in the harmonious worship of God and the
pursuit of their “callings.” Like the Pilgrims, most of the Puritans who
 Settling New England • 71

colonized Massachusetts Bay were

Congregationalists, who formed self-
governing churches with membership
limited to “visible saints”—those who
could demonstrate receipt of the gift
of God’s grace. But unlike the Ply-
mouth Separatists, the Puritans still
hoped to reform (“purify”) the Church
of England from within, and therefore
they were called Nonseparating Con-
gregationalists.
In 1629, King Charles I had char-
tered a joint-stock company called the
Massachusetts Bay Company. It con-
sisted of a group of English Puritans John Winthrop
led by John Winthrop, a lawyer ani-
The first governor of Massachusetts
mated by profound religious convic- Bay Colony, in whose vision the
tions. Winthrop resolved to use the colony would be as “a city upon a hill.”
colony as a refuge for persecuted Puri-
tans and as an instrument for building
a “wilderness Zion” in America. To do so, he shrewdly took advantage of a
fateful omission in the royal charter for the Massachusetts Bay Company:
the usual proviso that the joint-stock company maintain its home office in
England. Winthrop’s group took its charter with them, thereby transferring
government authority to Massachusetts Bay, where they hoped to ensure
local control. So unlike the Virginia Company, which ruled Jamestown from
London, the Massachusetts Bay Company was self-governing.
In 1630 the Arbella, with John Winthrop and the charter aboard,
embarked with ten other ships for Massachusetts. There were 700 Puritans
on board. Some 200 of the exiles died in the crossing. In “A Modell of Chris-
tian Charity,” a lay sermon delivered on board, Winthrop told his fellow
Puritans that they were a chosen people on a divine mission: “We must con-
sider that we shall be a city upon a hill”—a shining example to England of
what a godly community could be, a community dedicated to God and
God’s laws. They landed in Massachusetts, and by the end of the year seven-
teen ships bearing 1,000 more colonists had arrived. As settlers—both Puri-
tan and non-Puritan—poured into the region, Boston became the new
colony’s chief city and capital.
It is hard to exaggerate the crucial role played by John Winthrop in estab-
lishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony. A devout pragmatist who often
72 • B RITAIN AND I TS C OLONIES (CH. 2)

governed as an enlightened despot, he steadfastly sought to steer a middle

course between clerical absolutists and Separatist zealots. Winthrop prized
stability and order and hated democracy, which he called the “worst of all
forms of government.” Like many Puritan leaders, Winthrop believed that
enforcing religious orthodoxy (the “true religion”) and ensuring civil order
justified the persecution of dissenters and heretics. Dissenters, whether they
were Catholics, Anglicans, Quakers, or Baptists, would be punished, impris-
oned, banished, or executed. As an iron-souled man governing a God-
saturated community, John Winthrop provided the foundation not only for
a colony but also for major elements in America’s cultural and political
development.
The Arbella migrants were the vanguard of a massive movement, the
Great Migration, which carried some 80,000 Britons to new settlements
around the world over the next decade. The migrants were seeking religious
freedom and economic opportunity, and most of them traveled to America.
They went not only to New England and the Chesapeake Bay colonies but
also to the West Indies: St. Christopher (first settled in 1624), Barbados
(1625), Nevis (1632), Montserrat (1632), Antigua (1632), and Jamaica
(1655). The West Indian islands started out to grow tobacco but ended up
in the more profitable business of producing sugarcane. In seventeenth-
century Europe, sugar evolved from being a scarce luxury to a daily neces-
sity, and its value as an import commodity soared. By the late eighteenth
century, the value of commerce from Jamaica—sugar, slaves, and molasses—
was greater than all of the trade generated by the North American colonies.
During the first half of the seventeenth century, more English emigrants
lived on the “sugar islands” in the Caribbean than in New England and the
Chesapeake colonies.
The transfer of the Massachusetts charter, whereby an English trading
company evolved into a provincial government, was a unique venture in col-
onization. Under the royal charter, power rested with the Massachusetts
General Court, which elected the governor and the assistants. The General
Court consisted of shareholders, called freemen. At first the freemen had no
power except to choose “assistants,” who in turn chose the governor and
deputy governor. In 1634, however, the freemen turned themselves into a
representative body called the General Court, with two or three deputies to
represent each town. A final stage in the evolution of the government came
in 1644, when the General Court divided itself into a bicameral assembly,
with all decisions requiring a majority in each house.
Thus, over a period of fourteen years, the Massachusetts Bay Company, a
trading corporation, evolved into the governing body of a holy common-
 Settling New England • 73

0 100 200 Miles

THE WEST INDIES,
1600–1800 0 100 200 Kilometers
VIRGIN
ISLANDS
(Br., 1672)
ST. CHRISTOPHER (Br., 1624)
AT L A N T I C ANTIGUA (Br., 1632)
NEVIS GUADELOUPE
OCEAN (Br., 1628) (Fr., 1635)
FLORIDA MONTSERRAT DOMINICA
(Br., 1632) (Fr., 1632; Br., 1763)

GULF MARTINIQUE
(Fr., 1635)
OF BAHAMA
MEXICO ISLANDS
ST. VINCENT
(Br., 1629, (Br., 1763) BARBADOS
1670) (Br., 1625)
Havana GRENADA
(Br., 1763)
CUBA
(SPAIN) TURKS ISLANDS (Br., 1672)
CAYMAN ISLANDS G SANTO DOMINGO
(Br., 1655) R
E (SPAIN)
A Inset area
TE
BELIZE (Br., Ca. 1638) R
BRITISH HONDURAS JAMAICA Port Royal PUERTO RICO
(Br., 1655) ANT
(Br., 1786) (Kingston) I L L E S (SPAIN)
HAITI
(Fr., 1640, 1697)

LES
HONDURAS
(SPAIN)
CARIBBEAN SEA
IL
NICARAGUA MOSQUITO
COAST T
(SPAIN) AN
(Br., 1655) LESSER

TOBAGO (Fr., 1677;

Br., 1763; Fr., 1783)
TRINIDAD
(Br., 1802)
0 150 300 Miles
PACIFIC NEW GRANADA
OCEAN (SPAIN) 0 150 300 Kilometers

Why did Britons settle in the West Indies in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies? Keeping in mind what you read in Chapter 1 about the colonies in the West
Indies, what products would you expect those colonies to produce? Why would
those colonies have had strategic importance to the British?

wealth. Membership in a Puritan church replaced the purchase of stock as

the means of becoming a freeman, which was to say a voter. The General
Court, like Parliament, had two houses: the House of Assistants, corre-
sponding roughly to the House of Lords, and the House of Deputies, corre-
sponding to the House of Commons. Although the charter remained
unchanged, government was quite different from the original expectation.
74 • B RITAIN AND I TS C OLONIES (CH. 2)

RHODE ISLAND More by accident than design, Massachusetts became

the staging area for the rest of New England, as new colonies grew out of
religious quarrels that prompted some to leave the original colony. Puri-
tanism was a combustible religious movement: on the one hand, the search
for God’s will encouraged a rigid orthodoxy; on the other hand, it could lead
troubled consciences to embrace radical ideas. Young Roger Williams
(1603–1683), who had arrived from England in 1631 as a “godly minister,”
was among the first to cause problems, precisely because he was the purest of
Puritans. He shared with the colony’s leaders the same faith: all saw God’s
purpose in every facet of life and saw their own purpose as advancing the
kingdom of God. But Williams criticized his Massachusetts brethren for fail-
ing to repudiate all elements of the “whorish” Church of England. Whereas
John Winthrop cherished authority, Williams championed liberty and pro-
moted mercy. Williams decided that the true covenant was not between God
and each congregation but between God and the individual. He was one of a
small but growing number of Puritans who posed a provocative question: If
one’s salvation depends solely upon God’s grace, why bother to have
churches at all? Why not endow individuals with the authority to exercise
their free will in worshipping God?
The charismatic Williams held a brief pastorate in Salem, north of
Boston, and then moved south to Separatist Plymouth, where he learned
indigenous languages. Governor Bradford liked Williams but charged that
he “began to fall into strange opinions,” specifically, that he questioned the
right of English settlers to confiscate Indian lands. Williams then returned to
Salem, where he came to love and support the Indians. His belief that a true
church must include only those who had received God’s gift of grace eventu-
ally convinced him that no true church was possible, unless perhaps consist-
ing of his wife and himself.
In Williams’s view the purity of the church required complete separation
between religion and government, for politics would inevitably corrupt
faith. He especially detested the longstanding practice of governments
imposing a particular faith on people. “Forced worship,” he declared, “stinks
in God’s nostrils.” He labeled efforts by governments to impose religious
orthodoxy “soul rape.” Governments should be impartial regarding reli-
gions, he believed: all faiths should be treated equally; the individual con-
science (a “most precious and invaluable Jewel”) should be sacrosanct.
Williams steadfastly resisted the attempts by governmental authorities to
force Indians to abandon their “own religions.”
Such radical views prompted the Salem church to expel Williams, where-
upon he retorted so hotly against “ulcered and gangrened” churches that
 Settling New England • 75

The diversity of English Protestantism

Religious quarrels within the Puritan fold led to the founding of new colonies. In
this seventeenth-century cartoon, four Englishmen, each representing a faction in
opposition to the established Church of England, are shown fighting over the Bible.

the General Court in October 1635 banished him to England. Williams,

however, slipped away with his family and a few followers and found shelter
among the Narragansetts. In 1636, Williams bought land from the Indians
and established the town of Providence at the head of Narragansett Bay, the
first permanent settlement in Rhode Island and the first in America to
promote religious freedom and to prohibit residents from “invading or
molesting” the Indians. In Rhode Island, Williams welcomed all who fled
religious persecution in Massachusetts Bay, including Baptists, Quakers,
76 • B RITAIN AND I TS C OLONIES (CH. 2)

and Jews. For their part, Boston officials came to view Rhode Island as a
refuge for rogues.
Thus the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, the smallest
in America, began in Narragansett Bay as a refuge for dissenters who agreed
that the state had no right to coerce religious belief. In 1640 the colony’s set-
tlers formed a confederation and in 1643 secured their first charter of incor-
poration as Providence Plantations. In 1652 Rhode Island passed the first
law in North America outlawing slavery. Roger Williams lived until 1683, an
active, beloved citizen of the commonwealth he founded, in a society that,
during his lifetime at least, lived up to his principles of religious freedom
and a government based upon the consent of the people. His ideas eventu-
ally would exercise a significant influence on America’s ethical and legal tra-
ditions. The ease with which Williams rejected Puritan orthodoxy and
launched his own free colony illustrated the geographical imperative of
American religious history: first the colonies and later the nation were too
large to allow any form of orthodoxy to remain dominant. America’s vast-
ness fostered diversity.

ANNE HUTCHINSON Roger Williams was only one of several prominent

Puritan dissenters. Another, Anne Hutchinson, quarreled with the Puritan lead-
ers for different reasons. She was the
articulate, strong-willed, intelligent wife
of a prominent merchant. Hutchinson
raised thirteen children, served as a
healer and midwife, and hosted meet-
ings in her Boston home to discuss
sermons. Soon, however, the discus-
sions turned into well-attended forums
for Hutchinson’s own commentaries
on religious matters. Blessed with vast
biblical knowledge and a quick wit,
she claimed to have experienced direct
revelations from the Holy Spirit that
convinced her that only two or three
Puritan ministers actually preached the
appropriate “covenant of grace.” The
The Trial of Anne Hutchinson
others, she charged, were godless hyp-
In this nineteenth-century wood
engraving, Anne Hutchinson stands
ocrites, deluded and incompetent; the
her ground against charges of heresy “covenant of works” they promoted
from the leaders of Puritan Boston. led people to believe that good con-
 Settling New England • 77

duct would ensure salvation. Eventually Hutchinson claimed to know which of

her neighbors had been saved and which were damned.
Hutchinson’s beliefs were provocative for several reasons. Puritan theol-
ogy was grounded in the Calvinist doctrine that people could be saved only
by God’s grace rather than through their own willful actions. But Puritanism
in practice also insisted that ministers were necessary to interpret God’s will
for the people so as to “prepare” them for the possibility of their being
selected for salvation. In challenging the very legitimacy of the ministerial
community as well as the hard-earned assurances of salvation enjoyed by
current church members, Hutchinson was undermining the stability of an
already fragile social system. Moreover, her critics likened her claim of direct
revelations from the Holy Spirit to the antinomian heresy, a subversive belief
that one is freed from obeying the moral law by one’s own faith and by God’s
grace. Unlike Roger Williams, Hutchinson did not advocate religious indi-
vidualism. Instead, she sought to eradicate the concept of “grace by good
works” infecting Puritan orthodoxy. She did not represent a forerunner of
modern feminism or freedom of conscience. Instead, she was a proponent
of a theocratic extremism that threatened the solidarity of the common-
wealth. What made the situation worse in the male-dominated society of
seventeenth-century New England was that a woman was making such
charges. Mrs. Hutchinson had both offended authority and sanctioned a
disruptive self-righteousness.
A pregnant Hutchinson was hauled before the General Court in 1637, and
for two days she sparred on equal terms with the magistrates and ministers.
Her skillful deflections of the charges and her ability to cite chapter-and-
verse biblical defenses of her actions led an exasperated Governor Winthrop
at one point to explode, “We do not mean to discourse with those of your
sex.” He found Hutchinson to be “a woman of haughty and fierce carriage, of
a nimble wit and active spirit, and a very voluble tongue.” As the trial contin-
ued, an overwrought Hutchinson was eventually lured into convicting her-
self by claiming direct revelations from God—blasphemy in the eyes of
orthodox Puritans.
Banished in 1638 as a leper not fit for “our society,” Hutchinson settled
with her family and about sixty followers on an island south of Providence,
near what is now Portsmouth, Rhode Island. But the arduous journey had
taken its toll. Hutchinson grew sick, and her baby was stillborn, leading her
critics in Massachusetts to assert that the “monstrous birth” was God’s way of
punishing her sins. Hutchinson’s spirits never recovered. After her husband’s
death, in 1642, she moved near New York City, then under Dutch jurisdiction,
and the following year she and six of her children were massacred during
78 • B RITAIN AND I TS C OLONIES (CH. 2)

an attack by Indians. Her fate, wrote a vindictive Winthrop, was “a special

manifestation of divine justice.”

N E W E N G L A N D E X PA N D S Connecticut had a more orthodox begin-

ning than Rhode Island. In 1633 a group from Plymouth settled in the Con-
necticut Valley. Three years later Thomas Hooker led three entire church
congregations from Massachusetts Bay to the Connecticut River towns of
Wethersfield, Windsor, and Hartford. In 1637 the inhabitants organized the
self-governing colony of Connecticut. Two years later the Connecticut Gen-
eral Court adopted the Fundamental Orders, a series of laws that provided
for a “Christian Commonwealth” like that of Massachusetts, except that
voting was not limited to church members. The Connecticut constitution
specified that the Congregational churches would be the colony’s official
religion, supported by governmental tax revenues and protected by the civil
authorities. The governor was commanded to rule according to “the word
of God.”
To the north of Massachusetts, most of what are now the states of New
Hampshire and Maine was granted in 1622 by the Council for New England
to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Captain John Mason, and their associates. In
1629, Mason and Gorges divided their territory, with Mason taking the
southern part, which he named New Hampshire, and Gorges taking the
northern part, which became the province of Maine. During the English
civil strife in the early 1640s, Massachusetts took over New Hampshire and
in the 1650s extended its authority to the scattered settlements in Maine.
This led to lawsuits, and in 1678 English judges decided against Massachu-
setts in both cases. In 1679, New Hampshire became a royal colony, but
Massachusetts continued to control Maine as its proprietor. A new Massa-
chusetts charter in 1691 finally incorporated Maine into Massachusetts.

INDIANS IN NEW ENGLAND

The English settlers who poured into New England found not a “virgin
land” of uninhabited wilderness but a developed region populated by over
100,000 Indians. The white colonists considered the Indians wild pagans
incapable of fully exploiting nature’s bounty. In their view, God meant for
the Puritans to take over indigenous lands as a reward for their piety and
hard work. The town meeting of Milford, Connecticut, for example, voted in
1640 that the land was God’s “and that the earth is given to the Saints; voted,
we are the Saints.”
 Indians in New England • 79

Algonquian ceremony celebrating harvest

As with most Indians, the Algonquians’ dependence on nature for survival shaped
their religious beliefs.

Indians coped with the newcomers in different ways. Many resisted, oth-
ers sought accommodation, and still others grew dependent upon European
culture. In some areas, indigenous peoples survived and even flourished in
concert with settlers. In other areas, land-hungry whites quickly displaced or
decimated the Indians. In general, the English colonists adopted a strategy
for dealing with the Indians quite different from that of the French and the
Dutch. Merchants from France and the Netherlands were not seeking gold
or sugar; they were preoccupied with exploiting the profitable fur trade. The
thriving commerce in animal skins—especially beaver, otter, and deer—not
only helped to spur exploration of the vast American continent, but it also
alternately enriched and devastated the lives of Indians. To facilitate their
acquisition of fur pelts from the Indians, the French and Dutch built perma-
nent trading outposts along the western frontier and established amicable
relations with the indigenous peoples in the region, who greatly outnum-
bered them. In contrast, the English colonists were more interested in
80 • B RITAIN AND I TS C OLONIES (CH. 2)

pursuing their “God-given” right to fish and farm. They sought to exploit the
Indians rather than deal with them on an equal footing. And they ensured
that the Indians, for the most part, lived separately in their own villages and
towns. Their goal was subordination rather than collaboration.

T H E I N D I A N S O F N E W E N G L A N D In Maine the Abenakis were

primarily hunters and gatherers dependent upon the natural offerings of the
land and waters. The men did the hunting and fishing; the women retrieved
the dead game and prepared it for eating. Women were also responsible
for setting up and breaking camp, gathering fruits and berries, and raising
the children. The Algonquian tribes of southern New England—the Massa-
chusetts, Nausets, Narragansetts, Pequots, and Wampanoags—were more
horticultural. Their highly developed agricultural system centered on three
primary crops: corn, beans, and pumpkins.
Initially the coastal Indians helped the white settlers develop a subsistence
economy. They taught the English settlers how to plant corn and use fish for
fertilizer. They also developed a flourishing trade with the newcomers,
exchanging furs for manufactured goods and “trinkets.” The various Indian
tribes of New England often fought among themselves, usually over dis-
puted land. Had they been able to forge a solid alliance, they would have
been better able to resist the encroachments of white settlers. As it was, they
were not only fragmented but also vulnerable to the infectious diseases
carried on board the ships transporting British settlers to the New World.
Smallpox epidemics devastated the indigenous population, leaving the
coastal areas “a widowed land.” Between 1610 and 1675 the Abenakis
declined from 12,000 to 3,000 and the southern New England tribes from
65,000 to 10,000. Governor William Bradford of Plymouth reported that the
Indians “fell sick of the smallpox, and died most miserably.” By the hundreds
they died “like rotten sheep.”

T H E P E Q U O T WA R Indians who survived the epidemics and refused to

yield their lands were forced out. In 1636, settlers in Massachusetts accused a
Pequot of murdering a colonist. Joined by Connecticut colonists, they
exacted their revenge by setting fire to a Pequot village on the Mystic River.
As the Indians fled their burning huts, the Puritans shot and killed them—
men, women, and children. The militia commander who ordered the mas-
sacre declared that God had guided his actions: “Thus the Lord was pleased
to smite our Enemies . . . and give us their land for an Inheritance.”
Sassacus, the Pequot chief, organized the survivors and attacked the Eng-
lish. During the Pequot War of 1637, the colonists and their Narragansett
 Indians in New England • 81

allies killed hundreds of Pequots in their village near West Mystic, in the
Connecticut River valley. The Puritan minister Cotton Mather later described
the slaughter as a “sweet sacrifice” and “gave the praise thereof to God.” The
English colonists captured most of the surviving Pequots and sold them into
slavery in Bermuda. Under the terms of the Treaty of Hartford (1638), the
Pequot Nation was dissolved. Only a few colonists regretted the massacre.
Roger Williams warned that the lust for land would become “as great a God
with us English as God Gold was with the Spanish.”

K I N G P H I L I P ’ S WA R After the Pequot War the prosperous fur trade

contributed to peaceful relations between Europeans and the remaining
Indians, but the relentless growth of the New England colonies and the
decline of the beaver population began to reduce the eastern tribes to rela-
tive poverty. The colonial government repeatedly encroached upon indige-
nous settlements, forcing them to embrace English laws and customs. By
1675 the Indians and English settlers had come to know each other well—
and fear each other deeply.
The era of peaceful coexistence that had begun with the Treaty of Hart-
ford in 1638 came to a bloody end during the last quarter of the seventeenth
century. Tribal leaders, especially the chief of the Wampanoags, Metacomet
(known to the colonists as King Philip), resented English efforts to convert
Indians to Christianity. During the mid–seventeenth century, the Puritans,
led by John Eliot, “Apostle to the Indians,” began an aggressive campaign
to win indigenous peoples over to Christianity. The missionaries insisted,
however, that the Indians must abandon their native cultural practices as
well as their spiritual beliefs. This meant resettling the indigenous converts
in what were called praying towns, not unlike the Catholic missions con-
structed in New Spain. The so-called “praying Indians” had to adopt English
names, cut their hair short, and take up farm work and domestic chores.
By 1674, some 1,100 indigenous converts were living in fourteen praying
towns. But most of the Indians of New England resisted such efforts. As
one of them asked a Puritan missionary, why should Indians convert to
English ways when “our corn is as good as yours, and we take more pleasure
than you?”
In the fall of 1674, John Sassamon, a “praying Indian” who had graduated
from Harvard College, warned the English that Metacomet and the Wam-
panoags were preparing for war. A few months later Sassamon was found
dead in a frozen pond. Colonial authorities convicted three Wampanoags
of murder and hanged them. Enraged Wampanoag warriors then attacked
and burned Puritan farms on June 20, 1675. Three days later an Englishman
82 • B RITAIN AND I TS C OLONIES (CH. 2)

King Philip’s War

A 1772 engraving by Paul Revere depicts Metacomet (King Philip), leader of the
Wampanoags.

shot a Wampanoag, and the Wampanoags retaliated by ambushing and

beheading a group of Puritans.
Both sides suffered incredible losses in what came to be called King Philip’s
War, or Metacomet’s War. The fighting killed more people and caused more
destruction in New England in proportion to the population than any Ameri-
can conflict since. Bands of warriors assaulted fifty towns. Within a year the
Indians were threatening Boston itself. The situation was so desperate that the
colonies instituted America’s first conscription laws, drafting into the militia
all males between the ages of sixteen and sixty. Finally, however, shortages of
food and ammunition and staggering casualties wore down indigenous resis-
tance. Metacomet’s wife and son were captured and sold into slavery in
Bermuda. Some of the tribes surrendered, a few succumbed to disease, while
others fled to the west. Those who remained were forced to resettle in villages
supervised by white settlers. Metacomet initially escaped, only to be hunted
down and killed in 1676. The victorious colonists marched his severed head to
 The English Civil War in America • 83

Plymouth, where it sat atop a pole for twenty years, a gruesome reminder of
the British determination to control the Indians. King Philip’s War devastated
the indigenous culture in New England. Combat deaths, deportations, and
flight cut the region’s Indian population in half. Military victory also enabled
the Puritan authorities to increase their political, economic, legal, and reli-
gious control over the 9,000 Indians who remained.

T H E E N G L I S H C I V I L WA R IN AMERICA

By 1640, English settlers in New England and around Chesapeake Bay

had established two great beachheads on the Atlantic coast, with the Dutch
colony of New Netherland in between. After 1640, however, the struggle
between king and Parliament in England distracted attention from coloniza-
tion, and migration to America dwindled to a trickle for more than twenty
years. During the English Civil War (1642–1646) and Oliver Cromwell’s
Puritan dictatorship (1653–1658), the struggling colonies were left pretty
much to their own devices.
In 1643, four of the New England colonies—Massachusetts Bay, Ply-
mouth, Connecticut, and New Haven—formed the New England Confeder-
ation to provide joint defense against the Dutch, French, and Indians. Two
commissioners from each colony met annually to transact business. In some
ways the confederation behaved like a sovereign power. It made treaties, and
in 1653 it declared war against the Dutch, who were accused of inciting the
Indians to attack Connecticut. Massachusetts, far from the scene of trouble,
failed to cooperate, greatly weakening the confederation. But the commis-
sioners continued to meet annually until 1684, when Massachusetts lost
its charter.
Virginia and Maryland remained almost as independent of English con-
trol as New England. At the behest of Governor William Berkeley, the Vir-
ginia burgesses (legislators) in 1649 denounced the Puritans’ execution of
King Charles and recognized his son, Charles II, as the lawful king. In 1652,
however, the assembly yielded to parliamentary commissioners and over-
ruled the governor. In return for the surrender, the commissioners let the
assembly choose its own council and governor. The colony grew rapidly in
population during its years of independent government, some of the growth
coming from the arrival of Royalists, who found a friendly haven in Angli-
can Virginia.
The parliamentary commissioners who won the submission of Virginia
proceeded to Catholic Maryland, where the proprietary governor faced
84 • B RITAIN AND I TS C OLONIES (CH. 2)

particular difficulties with his Protestant majority. At the governor’s sugges-

tion the assembly had passed the Maryland Toleration Act of 1649, an assur-
ance that Puritans would not be molested in the practice of their religion. In
1654 the commissioners revoked the Toleration Act and deprived Lord Balti-
more of his governmental rights, though not of his lands and revenues. Still,
the more extreme Puritan elements were dissatisfied, and a brief clash in
1654 brought religious civil war to Maryland and led to the deposing of the
governor. But Oliver Cromwell took the side of Lord Baltimore and restored
his full rights in 1657, whereupon the Toleration Act was reinstated. The act
deservedly stands as a landmark to human liberty, albeit enacted more out of
expediency than conviction.
Cromwell let the colonies go their own way, but he was not indifferent to
Britain’s North American empire. He fought trade wars with the Dutch, and
his navy harassed England’s traditional enemy, Catholic Spain, in the
Caribbean. In 1655 a British force wrested Jamaica from Spanish control.
The Restoration of King Charles II in 1660 led to an equally painless
restoration of previous governments in the colonies. Agents hastily dis-
patched by the colonies won reconfirmation of the Massachusetts charter in
1662 and the very first royal charters for Connecticut and Rhode Island in
1662 and 1663. All three retained their status as self-governing corporations.
Plymouth still had no charter, but it went unmolested. New Haven, however,
disappeared as a separate entity, absorbed into the colony of Connecticut.

SETTLING THE CAROLINAS

The Restoration of Charles II to the British throne in 1660 revived

interest in colonial expansion. Within twelve years the English would con-
quer New Netherland, settle Carolina, and nearly fill out the shape of the
colonies. In the middle region, formerly claimed by the Dutch, four new
colonies emerged: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. With-
out exception the new colonies were proprietary, awarded by the king to men
(“proprietors”) who had remained loyal to the monarchy during the civil war,
who had brought about his restoration, or in one case, to whom he was
indebted. In 1663, for example, King Charles II granted Carolina to eight
prominent allies, who became lords proprietors (owners) of the region.

THE CAROLINAS From the start Carolina comprised two widely sepa-
rated areas of settlement, which eventually became two distinct colonies.
The northernmost part, long called Albemarle, had been settled in the 1650s
 Settling the Carolinas • 85

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Added to Georgia,
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GULF 0 100 200 Miles
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How were the Carolina colonies created? What were the impedi-
ments to settling North Carolina? How did the lords proprietors
settle South Carolina? What were the major items traded by set-
tlers in South Carolina?

by colonists who had drifted southward from Virginia. For half a century,
Albemarle remained a remote scattering of farmers along the shores of Albe-
marle Sound. Albemarle had no governor until 1664, no assembly until
1665, and not even a town until a group of French Huguenots founded the
village of Bath on the Outer Banks in 1704.
The eight lords proprietors to whom the king had given Carolina
neglected Albemarle from the outset and focused on more promising sites to
the south. They recruited seasoned British planters from the Caribbean
island of Barbados to replicate in South Carolina the profitable West Indian
sugar-plantation system based on the labor of enslaved Africans. The first
British colonists arrived in South Carolina in 1669 at Charles Town (later
named Charleston). Over the next twenty years, half the South Carolina
colonists came from Barbados.
86 • B RITAIN AND I TS C OLONIES (CH. 2)

The government of South Carolina rested upon one of the most curious
documents of colonial history, the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina,
drawn up by one of the eight proprietors, Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, with
the help of his secretary, the philosopher John Locke. Its cumbersome frame
of government and its provisions for an elaborate nobility had little effect in
the colony except to encourage a practice of large land grants. From the
beginning, however, smaller headrights (land grants) were given to every
immigrant who could afford the cost of transit. The most enticing provision
was a grant of religious toleration, designed to encourage immigration,
which gave South Carolina a greater degree of religious freedom (extending
even to Jews and “heathens”) than England or any other colony except
Rhode Island and, once it was established, Pennsylvania. South Carolina
became a separate royal colony in 1719. North Carolina remained under the
proprietors’ rule for ten more years, until they transferred their governing
rights to the British Crown.

The eight English proprietors of South Car-

E N S L AV I N G I N D I A N S
olina wanted the colony to focus on producing commercial crops (staples).
Such production took time to develop, however. Land had to be cleared and

The Broiling of Their Fish over the Flame

In this drawing by John White, Algonquian men in North Carolina broil fish, a
dietary staple of coastal societies.
 Settling the Carolinas • 87

then crops planted, harvested, transported, and sold. These activities

required laborers. Some Carolina planters brought enslaved Africans and
white indentured servants with them from British-controlled islands in the
West Indies. Yet slaves and servants were expensive to purchase and support.
The quickest way to raise capital in the early years of South Carolina’s devel-
opment was through trade with Indians.
In the late seventeenth century, English merchants began traveling south-
ward from Virginia into the Piedmont region of Carolina, where they devel-
oped a prosperous trade with the Catawbas. By 1690, traders from Charles
Town, South Carolina, had made their way up the Savannah River to arrange
deals with the Cherokees, Creeks, and Chickasaws. Between 1699 and 1715,
Carolina exported to England an average of 54,000 deerskins per year. Euro-
peans, in turn, transformed the valuable hides into bookbindings, gloves,
belts, hats, and work aprons. The voracious demand for the soft skins almost
exterminated the deer population.
The growing trade with the English exposed indigenous peoples to conta-
gious diseases that decimated the population. Commercial activity also
entwined Indians in a dependent relationship with Europeans that would
prove disastrous to their traditional way of life. Beyond capturing and
enslaving Indians, the English traders began providing the Indians with
goods, firearms, and rum as incentives to persuade them to capture mem-
bers of rival tribes to be sold as slaves. Because indigenous captives often ran

Cherokee chiefs
A print depicting seven Cherokee chiefs who had been taken from Carolina to Eng-
land in 1730.
88 • B RITAIN AND I TS C OLONIES (CH. 2)

away, the traders preferred to ship them to New York, Boston, and the West
Indies and import enslaved Africans to work in the Carolinas.
The profitability of indigenous captives prompted a frenzy of slaving
activity among white settlers. Slave traders turned tribes against one another
in order to ensure a continuous supply of captives. As many as 50,000 Indi-
ans, most of them women and children, were sold as slaves in Charles Town
between 1670 and 1715. More enslaved Indians were exported during that
period than Africans were imported. Thousands more captured Indians cir-
culated through New England ports. The burgeoning trade in enslaved Indi-
ans triggered bitter struggles between tribes, gave rise to unprecedented
colonial warfare, and spawned massive internal migrations across the south-
ern colonies.
During the last quarter of the seventeenth century, the trade in enslaved
Indians spread across the entire Southeast. Slave raiding became the region’s
single most important economic activity and a powerful weapon in Britain’s
global conflict with France and Spain. During the early eighteenth century,
Indians armed with British weapons and led by English soldiers crossed into
Spanish territory in south Georgia and north Florida. They destroyed thir-
teen Catholic missions, killed several hundred Indians and Spaniards, and
enslaved over 300 indigenous men, women, and children. By 1710 the
Florida tribes were on the verge of extinction. In 1708, when the total popu-
lation of South Carolina was 9,580, including 2,900 Africans, there were
1,400 enslaved Indians.
The trade in enslaved Indians led to escalating troubles. Fears of slaving
raids disrupted the planting cycle in indigenous villages. Some tribes fled the
South altogether. In 1712 the Tuscaroras of North Carolina attacked Ger-
man and English colonists who had encroached upon their land. North
Carolina authorities appealed to South Carolina for aid, and the colony,
eager for more slaves, dispatched two expeditions made up mostly of Indian
allies—Yamasees, Cherokees, Creeks, and Catawbas—led by whites. In 1713,
they destroyed a Tuscarora town, executed 162 male warriors, and took 392
women and children captive for sale in Charles Town. The surviving Tus-
caroras fled north, where they joined the Iroquois Confederacy.
The Tuscarora War in North Carolina sparked more conflict in South
Carolina. The Yamasees felt betrayed when white traders paid them less for
their Tuscarora captives than they wanted. What made this shortfall so acute
was that the Yamasee owed debts to traders totaling 100,000 deerskins—
almost five years worth of hunting. To recover their debts, white traders
cheated Yamasees, confiscated their lands, and began enslaving their women
and children. In April 1715 the enraged Yamasees attacked coastal plantations
 Settling the Middle Colonies and Georgia • 89

and killed over 100 whites. Their vengeful assaults continued for months,
aided by Creeks. Most of the white traders were killed. Whites throughout
the coastal areas of South Carolina panicked; hundreds fled to Charles
Town. The governor mobilized all white and black males to defend the
colony; other colonies supplied weapons. Not until the governor persuaded
the Cherokees (with the inducement of many gifts) to join them against the
Yamasees and Creeks did the Yamasee War end—in 1717. The defeated
Yamasees fled to Spanish-controlled Florida. By then hundreds of whites
had been killed and dozens of plantations destroyed and abandoned. To pre-
vent another conflict, the colonial government outlawed all private trading
with Indians. Commerce between whites and indigenous peoples could now
occur only through a colonial agency created to end abuses and shift activity
from trading enslaved Indians to trading deerskins.
The end of the Yamasee War did not stop infighting among Indians, how-
ever. For the next ten years or so the Creeks and Cherokees engaged in a
costly blood feud, much to the delight of the English. One Carolinian
explained that their challenge was to figure out “how to hold both [tribes] as
our friends, for some time, and assist them in cutting one another’s throats
without offending either. This is the game we intend to play if possible.” The
French played the same brutal game, doing their best to excite hatred
between the Choctaws and the Chickasaws. Between 1700 and 1730 the
indigenous population in the Carolinas dwindled from 15,000 to just 4,000.

SETTLING THE MIDDLE COLONIES AND GEORGIA

N E W N E T H E R L A N D B E C O M E S N E W YO R K During the early sev-

enteenth century, having gained its independence from Spain, the tiny,
densely populated nation of the Netherlands (Holland) emerged as a mari-
time and financial giant. By 1670 the mostly Protestant Dutch had the
largest merchant fleet in the world and the highest standard of living. They
controlled northern European commerce and became one of the most
diverse societies in Europe. The Dutch Republic was a polyglot confedera-
tion that embraced diversity. It welcomed exiles from the constant religious
strife in Europe: Iberian and German Jews, French Protestants (Huguenots),
English Puritans, and Catholics from across Europe. The extraordinary suc-
cess of the Netherlands also proved to be its downfall, however. Like imperial
Spain, the Dutch Empire expanded too rapidly. Netherlanders dominated
European trade with China, India, Africa, Brazil, and the Caribbean, but
they could not efficiently manage their far-flung possessions. It did not take
90 • B RITAIN AND I TS C OLONIES (CH. 2)

long for European rivals to exploit the weak points in the lucrative Dutch
Empire. By the mid–seventeenth century, England and the Netherlands were
locked in ferocious commercial warfare.
In London, King Charles II resolved to pluck out that old thorn in the side
of the English colonies in America: New Netherland. The Dutch colony was
older than New England, having been planted when the two Protestant
powers allied in opposition to Catholic Spain. The Dutch East India Com-
pany (organized in 1602) had hired an English captain, Henry Hudson, to
explore America in hopes of finding a northwest passage to the spice-rich
Indies. Sailing along the upper coast of North America in 1609, Hudson had
discovered Delaware Bay. He also explored the river named for him, ventur-
ing 160 miles north to a point probably beyond what is now Albany, where he
and a group of Mohawks began a lasting trade relationship between the Dutch
and the Iroquois Nations. Like Virginia and Massachusetts, New Netherland
was created as a profit-making enterprise. In 1610 the Dutch established
lucrative fur-trading posts on Manhattan Island and upriver at Fort Orange
(later Albany). In 1626, Governor Peter Minuit purchased Manhattan from
the Indians for 60 gilders, or about $1000 in current values. The Dutch then
built a fort at the lower end of the island. The village of New Amsterdam,
which grew up around the fort, became the capital of New Netherland and
developed into a rollicking commercial powerhouse, in large part because of
its sheltered harbors and deepwater ports. Unlike their Puritan counterparts
in Massachusetts Bay, the Dutch in New Amsterdam were preoccupied more
with profits and freedoms than with piety and restrictions. They embraced
free enterprise and ethnic and religious pluralism.
Dutch settlements gradually dispersed in every direction in which furs
might be found. In 1638 a Swedish trading company established Fort
Christina at the site of present-day Wilmington, Delaware, and scattered a
few hundred settlers up and down the Delaware River. The Dutch, at the
time allied with the Swedes in the Thirty Years’ War, made no move to
challenge the claim until 1655, when a force outnumbering the entire
Swedish colony subjected them, without bloodshed, to the rule of New
Netherland. The chief contribution of the short-lived New Sweden to Amer-
ican culture was the idea of the log cabin, which the Swedes and a few
Finnish settlers had brought from the woods of Scandinavia.
Like the French, the Dutch were interested mainly in the fur trade rather
than agricultural settlements. The European demand for beaver hats created
huge profits. In 1629, however, the Dutch West India Company (organized
in 1623) decided that it needed a mass of settlers to help protect the colony’s
“front door” at the mouth of the Hudson River. It provided that any stock-
 Settling the Middle Colonies and Georgia • 91

holder might obtain a large estate (a patroonship) in exchange for peopling

it with fifty adults within four years. The “patroon” was obligated to supply
cattle, tools, and buildings. His tenants, in turn, paid him rent, used his
gristmill, gave him first option to purchase surplus crops, and submitted to
a court he established. It amounted to transplanting the feudal manor to the
New World, and it met with as little luck as similar efforts in Maryland and
South Carolina. Volunteers for serfdom were hard to find when there was
land to be had elsewhere; most settlers took advantage of the company’s
provision that one could have as farms (bouweries) all the lands one could
improve.
The New Netherland government was under the almost absolute control
of a governor sent out by the Dutch West India Company. The governors
were mostly stubborn autocrats, either corrupt or inept, and especially
clumsy at Indian relations. They depended upon a small army garrison for
defense, and the inhabitants (including a number of English on Long Island)

Castello Plan of New Amsterdam

A map of New Amsterdam in 1660, shortly before the English took the colony from
the Dutch and christened it New York City.
92 • B RITAIN AND I TS C OLONIES (CH. 2)

were hardly devoted to the Dutch government. New Amsterdam was one of
the most ethnically diverse colonial cities. Its residents included Swedes,
Norwegians, Spaniards, Sephardic Jews, free blacks, English, Germans, and
Finns—as well as Dutch. The polyglot colonists prized their liberties and
lived in a smoldering state of near mutiny against the colony’s governors. In
fact, in 1664 they showed almost total indifference when Governor Peter
Stuyvesant called them to arms against a threatening British fleet. Almost
defenseless, the old soldier Stuyvesant blustered and stomped about on his
wooden leg but finally surrendered without firing a shot and stayed on qui-
etly at his farm in what became the English colony of New York.
The English plan to conquer New Netherland had been hatched by the
Duke of York, later King James II. As lord high admiral and an investor in the
African trade, he had already harassed Dutch shipping and forts in Africa.
When he and his advisers counseled that New Netherland could easily be
conquered, his brother King Charles II simply granted the region to the
Duke of York as proprietor and permitted the hasty gathering of an invasion
force. The English thus transformed New Amsterdam into New York City
and Fort Orange into Albany. The Dutch, however, left a permanent imprint
on the land and the language: the Dutch vernacular faded, but place-names
such as Block Island, Wall Street (the original wall being for protection
against Indians), and Broadway (Breede Wegh) remained, along with family
names like Rensselaer, Roosevelt, and Van Buren. The Dutch presence lin-
gered, too, in the Dutch Reformed (Calvinist) Church; in words like boss,
cookie, crib, snoop, stoop, spook, and kill (for “creek”); and in the legendary
Santa Claus and in Washington Irving’s “Rip van Winkle.”
More important to the development of the American colonies were New
Netherland’s political principles, as embodied in the formal document
transferring governance of the colony from the Dutch to the British. Called
the Articles of Capitulation, the document provided a guarantee of individ-
ual rights unparalleled in the English colonies. The articles, which endorsed
free trade, religious liberty, and local political representation, were incorpo-
rated into the New York City Charter of 1686 and thereafter served as a
benchmark for disputes with Britain over colonial rights.

J U DA I S M I N N O RT H A M E R I C AIn September 1654, ten years before

the English took control of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, a French
ship arrived in New Amsterdam (New York) Harbor. On board were twenty-
three Sephardi, Jews of Spanish-Portuguese descent. Penniless and weary,
they had come seeking refuge from Brazil, where they had earlier fled from
Spain and Portugal after being exiled by the Catholic Inquisition. When
 Settling the Middle Colonies and Georgia • 93

Jewish heritage in colonial America

A seventeenth-century Jewish cemetery in New York City.

Portugal took Brazil from the Dutch, the Sephardi again had to flee the
Catholic Inquisition. They were the first Jewish settlers to arrive in North
America, and they were not readily embraced. Leading merchants as well as
members of the Dutch Reformed Church asked Peter Stuyvesant, the dictator-
ial Dutch director general of New Netherland, to expel them. Stuyvesant
despised Jews, Lutherans, Catholics, and Quakers. He characterized Jews as
“deceitful,” “very repugnant,” and “blasphemous.” If the Jews were allowed in,
then “we cannot refuse the Lutherans and Papists.” Stuyvesant’s employers at
the Dutch West India Company disagreed, however. Early in 1655 they
ordered him to accommodate the homeless Jews, explaining that he should
“allow every one to have his own belief, as long as he behaves quietly and
legally, gives no offense to his neighbor and does not oppose the government.”
The autocratic Stuyvesant grudgingly complied, but the Jews in New
Amsterdam thereafter had to fight for civil and economic rights, as well as
the right to worship in public. It would not be until the late seventeenth cen-
tury, years after the English took over New Netherland and renamed it New
York, that Jews could worship in public. Such restrictions help explain why
the American Jewish community grew so slowly. In 1773, over 100 years after
the first Jewish refugees arrived in New Amsterdam, only 242 Jews resided in
94 • B RITAIN AND I TS C OLONIES (CH. 2)

New York City, and Jews represented only one tenth of 1 percent of the entire
colonial population. On the eve of the American Revolution, there was not a
single rabbi in British America. Not until the nineteenth century would the
American Jewish community experience dramatic growth.

T H E I R O Q U O I S L E A G U E One of the most significant effects of Euro-

pean settlement in North America during the seventeenth century was the
intensification of warfare among Indians. The same combination of forces
that decimated the indigenous populations of New England and the Caroli-
nas affected the tribes around New York City and the lower Hudson River
valley. Dissension among Indians and their susceptibility to infectious dis-
ease left them vulnerable to exploitation by whites and other Indians.
In the interior of New York, however, a different situation arose. There the
tribes of the Iroquois (an Algonquian term signifying “Snake” or “Terrifying
Man”) forged an alliance so strong that the outnumbered Dutch and, later,
English traders were forced to work with Indians in exploiting the lucrative
beaver trade. By the early 1600s some fifty sachems (chiefs) governed the
12,000 members of the Iroquois League, or Iroquois Confederacy. The
sachems made decisions for all the villages and mediated tribal rivalries and
dissension within the confederacy.
When the Iroquois began to deplete the local game during the 1640s, they
used firearms supplied by their Dutch trading partners to seize the Canadian

Wampum belt
The diamond shapes at the center of this “covenant chain” belt indicate community
alliances. Wampum belts such as this one were often used to certify treaties or
record transactions.
 Settling the Middle Colonies and Georgia • 95

hunting grounds of the neighboring Hurons and Eries. During the so-called
Beaver Wars, the Iroquois defeated the other tribes and thereafter hunted the
beaver in the region to extinction. During the second half of the seventeenth
century, the relentless search for furs and captives led Iroquois war parties to
range far across what is today eastern North America. They gained control
over a huge area from the St. Lawrence River to Tennessee and from Maine
to Michigan. The Iroquois wars helped reorient the political relationships in
the whole eastern half of the continent, especially in the area from the Ohio
River valley northward across the Great Lakes Basin. Besieged by the Iro-
quois League, the western tribes forged defensive alliances with the French.
For over twenty years, warfare raged across the Great Lakes region. In
the 1690s the French and their Indian allies gained the advantage over the
Iroquois. They destroyed Iroquois crops and villages, infected them with small-
pox, and reduced the male population by more than a third. Facing extermina-
tion, the Iroquois made peace with the French in 1701. During the first half of
the eighteenth century, they maintained a shrewd neutrality in the struggle
between the two rival European powers, which enabled them to play the British
off against the French while creating a thriving fur trade for themselves.

NEW JERSEY Shortly after the conquest of New Netherland, the Duke of
York granted his lands between the Hudson and Delaware Rivers to Sir
George Carteret and Lord John Berkeley (brother of Virginia’s governor)
and named the territory for Carteret’s native Jersey, an island in the English
Channel. In 1676, by mutual agreement, the colony was divided by a diago-
nal line into East and West Jersey, with Carteret taking the east. Finally, in
1682, Carteret sold out to a group of twelve, including William Penn, who in
turn brought into the partnership twelve more proprietors, for a total of
twenty-four. In East Jersey, peopled at first by perhaps 200 Dutch who had
crossed the Hudson River, new settlements gradually arose: some disaffected
Puritans from New Haven founded Newark, Carteret’s brother brought a
group to found Elizabethtown (named for Queen Elizabeth), and a group of
Scots founded Perth Amboy. In the west, facing the Delaware River, a scatter-
ing of Swedes, Finns, and Dutch remained, soon to be overwhelmed by
swarms of English and Welsh Quakers, as well as German and Scots-Irish
settlers. In 1702, East and West Jersey were united as the single royal colony
of New Jersey.

P E N N S Y LVA N I A A N D D E L AWA R E The Quaker sect, as the Society

of Friends was called in ridicule (because they were supposed to “tremble at
the word of the Lord”), became the most influential of many radical
96 • B RITAIN AND I TS C OLONIES (CH. 2)

Moha
wk River

Albany MASSACHUSETTS
(Fort Orange)

Connecticut River
NEW YORK
(NEW NETHERLAND)
42° parallel (1613–1664)

CONNECTICUT

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P E N N S Y LVA N I A

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ive

law
aR
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Newark ND
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I SL A
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Elizabethtown
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lkil New York
NEW SWEDEN l
EAST (New Amsterdam)
Ri

er
v

(1638–1655) JERSEY
Philadelphia
Fort Christina NEW JERSEY
(Wilmington)
MARYLAND WEST
JERSEY AT L A N T I C
OCEAN
Delaware Bay
DELAWARE
Ches

VIRGINIA THE MIDDLE

apeak

COLONIES
e

0 50 100 Miles
Bay

0 50 100 Kilometers

Why was New Jersey divided in half? Why did Quakers choose to
settle in Pennsylvania? How did the relations between European
settlers and Indians in Pennsylvania differ from such relations in
the other colonies?

religious groups that emerged from the turbulence of the English Civil War.
Founded by George Fox in about 1647, the Quakers carried further than any
other group the doctrine of individual inspiration and interpretation—the
“inner light,” they called it. They discarded all formal sacraments and formal
ministry, refused deference to persons of rank, used the familiar thee and
thou in addressing everyone, refused to take oaths, claiming they were
contrary to Scripture, and embraced pacifism. Quakers were subjected to
intense persecution—often their zeal seemed to invite it—but never in-
flicted it upon others. Their tolerance extended to complete religious free-
dom for everyone, whatever one’s belief or disbelief, and to equality of the
sexes, including the full participation of women in religious affairs.
 Settling the Middle Colonies and Georgia • 97

Quaker meeting
The presence of women at this meeting is evidence of Quaker views on gender
equality.

The settling of English Quakers in West Jersey encouraged other Friends

to migrate, especially to the Delaware River side of the colony. And soon
across the river arose William Penn’s Quaker commonwealth, the colony of
Pennsylvania. Penn was the son of Admiral Sir William Penn, who had sup-
ported Parliament in the civil war. Young William was reared as a proper
gentleman, but as a student at Oxford University he had become a Quaker.
Upon his father’s death, Penn inherited a substantial estate, including pro-
prietary rights to a huge tract in America. The land was named, at the king’s
insistence, for Penn’s father: Pennsylvania (literally, “Penn’s Woods”).
When Penn assumed control of the area, there was already a scattering of
Dutch, Swedish, and English settlers on the west bank of the Delaware River.
But Penn soon made vigorous efforts to recruit more colonists. Unlike John
Winthrop in Massachusetts, Penn encouraged people of different religious
affiliations (as long as they believed in God) to settle in his new colony. He
98 • B RITAIN AND I TS C OLONIES (CH. 2)

assumed that believers, regardless of their particular denomination or theol-

ogy, would set aside their religious differences for the good of the common-
wealth (“the holy experiment”). He published glowing descriptions of the
colony, which were translated into German, Dutch, and French. By the end
of 1681, about 1,000 settlers were living in his province. By that time a town
was growing up at the junction of the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers. Penn
called it Philadelphia (“City of Brotherly Love”). Because of the generous
terms on which Penn offered land, the colony grew rapidly.
The relations between the Indians and the Quakers were cordial from the
beginning, because of the Quakers’ friendliness and Penn’s careful policy of
purchasing land titles from the Indians. Penn even took the trouble to learn
an indigenous language, something few colonists ever tried. For some fifty
years the settlers and the Indians lived side by side in peace.
The colony’s government, which rested on three Frames of Government
drafted by Penn, resembled that of other proprietary colonies except that the
freemen (taxpayers and property owners) elected the council members well as
the assembly. The governor had no veto—although Penn, as proprietor, did.
Penn hoped to show that a government could operate in accordance with
Quaker principles, that it could maintain peace and order without oaths or
wars, and that religion could flourish without government support and with
absolute freedom of conscience. Because of its tolerance, Pennsylvania became
a refuge not only for Quakers but also for a variety of dissenters—as well as
Anglicans—and early reflected the ethnic mixture of Scots-Irish and Germans
that became common to the middle colonies and the southern backcountry.
In 1682 the Duke of York also granted Penn the area of Delaware, another
part of the former Dutch territory. At first, Delaware became part of Penn-
sylvania, but after 1704 it was granted the right to choose its own assembly.
From then until the American Revolution, it had a separate assembly but
shared Pennsylvania’s governor.

GEORGIA Georgia was the last of the British continental colonies to be

established—half a century after Pennsylvania. During the seventeenth cen-
tury, settlers pushed southward into the borderlands between the Carolinas
and Florida. They brought with them enslaved Africans and a desire to win
the Indian trade from the Spanish. Each side used guns, goods, and rum to
influence the Indians, and the Indians in turn played off the English against
the Spanish in order to gain the most favorable terms.
In 1732, King George II gave the land between the Savannah and
Altamaha Rivers to the twenty-one trustees of Georgia. In two respects,
 Settling the Middle Colonies and Georgia • 99

Savannah, Georgia
The earliest known view of Savannah, Georgia (1734). The town’s layout was care-
fully planned.

Georgia was unique among the colonies: it was set up as a philanthropic

experiment and as a military buffer against Spanish Florida. General James E.
Oglethorpe, who accompanied the first colonists as resident trustee, repre-
sented both concerns: he served as a soldier who organized the defenses and
as a philanthropist who championed prison reform and sought a colonial
refuge for the poor and the religiously persecuted.
In 1733 a band of about 120 colonists founded Savannah on the coast
near the mouth of the Savannah River. Carefully laid out by Oglethorpe, the
old town, with its geometric pattern and numerous little parks, remains a
monument to the city planning of a bygone day. Protestant refugees from
Austria began to arrive in 1734, followed by Germans and German-speaking
Moravians and Swiss, who made the colony for a time more German than
English. The addition of Welsh, Highland Scots, Sephardic Jews, and others
gave the early colony a cosmopolitan character much like that of Charleston.
As a buffer against Florida, the colony succeeded, but as a philan-
thropic experiment it failed. Efforts to develop silk and wine production
foundered. Landholdings were limited to 500 acres, rum was prohibited, and
Why did European settlement lead to the expansion of hostilities
among the Indians? What were the consequences of the trade and
commerce between the English settlers and the southern indige-
nous peoples? How were the relationships between the settlers
and the members of the Iroquois League different from those
between settlers and tribes in other regions?
 c

s
102 • B RITAIN AND I TS C OLONIES (CH. 2)

the importation of slaves was forbidden, partly to leave room for servants
brought on charity, partly to ensure security. But the utopian rules soon col-
lapsed. The regulations against rum and slavery were widely disregarded
and finally abandoned. By 1759 all restrictions on landholding had been
removed.
In 1754 the trustees’ charter expired, and the province reverted to the
Crown. As a royal colony, Georgia acquired an effective government for the
first time. The colony developed slowly over the next decade but grew
rapidly in population and wealth after 1763. Instead of wine and silk, as was
Oglethorpe’s plan, Georgians exported rice, indigo, lumber, beef, and pork
and carried on a lively trade with the West Indies. The colony had inadver-
tently become a commercial success.

THRIVING COLONIES

By the early eighteenth century the English had outstripped both the
French and the Spanish in the New World. British America had become
the most populous, prosperous, and powerful region on the continent. By
the mid–seventeenth century, American colonists on average were better fed,
clothed, and housed than their counterparts in Europe, where a majority of
the people lived in destitution. But the English colonization of North Amer-
ica included failures as well as successes. Many settlers found only hard labor
and an early death in the New World. Others flourished only because they
exploited the Indians, indentured servants, or Africans.
The British succeeded in creating a lasting American empire because of
crucial advantages they had over their European rivals. The centralized con-
trol imposed by the monarchs of Spain and France eventually hobbled inno-
vation. By contrast, the enterprising British acted by private investment and
with a minimum of royal control. Not a single colony was begun at the direct
initiative of the Crown. In the English colonies poor immigrants had a much
greater chance of getting at least a small parcel of land. The English and
Dutch, unlike their rivals, welcomed people from a variety of nationalities
and dissenting religious sects who came in search of a new life or a safe
harbor. And a greater degree of self-government made the English colonies
more responsive to new circumstances—though they were sometimes stymied
by controversy.
The compact pattern of English settlement, whereby colonies were settled
contiguous to one another, contrasted sharply with Spain’s far-flung con-
quests and France’s far-reaching trade routes to the interior by way of the
 Thriving Colonies • 103

St. Lawrence and Mississippi Rivers. Geography reinforced England’s bent

for the concentrated settlement of its colonies. The rivers and bays that
indent the Atlantic seaboard served as communication arteries along which
colonies first sprang up, but no great river offered a highway to the far inte-
rior. About 100 miles inland in Georgia and the Carolinas, and nearer the
coast to the north, the fall line of the rivers presented rocky rapids that
marked the limit of navigation and the end of the coastal plain. About 100
miles beyond that, and farther back in Pennsylvania, stretched the rolling
expanse of the Piedmont, literally, “Foothills.” And the final western back-
drop of English America was the Appalachian Mountain range, some 200
miles inland from the coast in the South and reaching the coast at points in
New England, with only one significant break—up the Hudson and
Mohawk River valleys of New York. For 150 years the farthest outreach of
British settlement stopped at the slopes of those mountains. To the east lay
the wide expanse of ocean, which served not only as a highway for the trans-
port of people, ideas, commerce, and ways of life from Europe to America
but also as a barrier that separated old ideas from new, allowing the new to
evolve in a “new world.”
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• British Colonization Profit from minerals and exotic products was the over-
riding objective of the joint-stock Virginia Company, organized to finance the
1607 Jamestown venture. Proprietary colonies, such as Maryland and the Caroli-
nas, were given to individuals who desired wealth but did not usually become
colonists themselves. The colonies were also an outlet for Britain’s poor.
• Jamestown Hardships The early years of Jamestown were grim because food
was in short supply except when the Powhatans provided corn. Relations with
the Indians deteriorated, however, culminating in an Indian uprising in 1622.
English investors searched for profits from minerals and trade with Indians, not
from agriculture. A high mortality rate caused a scarcity of labor.
• Religion and Colonization Religion was the primary motivation for the found-
ing of several colonies. The Plymouth colony was founded by separatists on a
mission to build a Christian commonwealth outside the structure of the Angli-
can Church. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was created by Puritans who wished
to purify the established church. Rhode Island was established by Roger
Williams, a religious dissenter from Massachusetts. Maryland was founded as a
refuge for English Catholics. William Penn, a Quaker, founded Pennsylvania and
invited Europe’s persecuted religious sects to his colony. The Dutch, with their
policy of toleration, allowed members of all faiths to settle in New Netherland.
• Indian Relations Settler-Indian relations were complex. Trade with the
Powhatans in Virginia enabled Jamestown to survive its early years, but brutal
armed conflicts occurred as settlers invaded indigenous lands. Puritans retali-
ated harshly against indigenous resistance in the Pequot War of 1637 and in
King Philip’s War from 1675–1676. Only Roger Williams and William Penn
treated Indians as equals. Conflicts in the Carolinas—the Tuscarora and
Yamasee Wars—occurred because of trade of enslaved Indians and other abuses
by traders. France and Spain used indigenous peoples to further their imperial
ambitions, which allowed the Indians to play the European powers against each
another.
• British America By 1700, England was a great trading empire. British America
was the most populous and prosperous area of North America. Commercial
rivalry between the Dutch and the English led to war, during which the Dutch
colony of New Netherland surrendered to the English in 1664. Indigenous allies,
such as the Iroquois, traded pelts for English goods. By relying increasingly on
slave labor, the southern colonies provided England with tobacco and other
plantation crops.
 CHRONOLOGY

1607

1616
1619
Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English colony, is
established
Pocahontas marries John Rolfe
First Africans arrive in English America
1620 Plymouth colony is founded; Pilgrims agree to the
Mayflower Compact
1622 Indian uprising in Virginia
1630 Massachusetts Bay Colony is founded
1634 Settlement of Maryland begins
1637 Pequot War
1642–1651 English Civil War
1660 Restoration of the English monarchy
1675–1676 King Philip’s War
1676 Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia
1681 Pennsylvania is established
1733 Georgia is founded

KEY TERMS & NAMES

Puritans p. 55 proprietary colonies p. 66 King Philip, or Metacomet
p. 81
Virginia Company p. 56 John Winthrop p. 71
New Netherland p. 83
Chief Powhatan p. 58 Roger Williams p. 74
Iroquois League p. 94
Captain John Smith p. 58 Anne Hutchinson p. 76
Quakers p. 95
Bacon’s Rebellion p. 64 Pequot War p. 80

3
COLONIAL WAYS
OF LIFE

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• What were the social, ethnic, and economic differences among the
southern, middle, and New England colonies?
• What were the prevailing attitudes of English colonists toward
women?
• How important was indentured servitude to the development of
the colonies, and why had the system been replaced by slavery in
the South by 1700?
• How did the colonies participate in international and imperial
trade?
• What were the effects of the Enlightenment in America?
• How did the Great Awakening affect the colonies?

T he process of carving a new civilization out of an abundant

“New World” involved often violent encounters among
European, African, and Indian cultures. War, duplicity, dis-
placement, and enslavement were the tragic results. Yet on another level the
process of transforming the American continent was not simply a story of
conflict but also of accommodation, a story of diverse peoples and cultures
engaged in the everyday tasks of building homes, planting crops, trading
goods, raising families, enforcing laws, and worshipping their gods. Those
who colonized America during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
were part of a massive social migration occurring throughout Europe and
Africa. Everywhere, it seemed, people were moving from farms to villages,
from villages to cities, and from homelands to colonies. They moved for dif-
ferent reasons. Most Britons and Europeans were responding to powerful
social and economic forces as rapid population growth and the rise of com-
mercial agriculture squeezed people off the land. Many migrants traveled in
 The Shape of Early America • 107

search of political security or religious freedom. A tragic exception was the

Africans, who were captured and transported to new lands against their will.
Those who settled in colonial America were mostly young (over half were
under twenty-five), male, and poor. Almost half were indentured servants or
slaves, and during the eighteenth century England would transport some
50,000 convicts to the North American colonies. Only about a third of the
settlers came with their families. Once in America, many of the newcomers
kept moving, trying to take advantage of inexpensive western land or new
business opportunities. Whatever their status or ambition, this extraordi-
nary mosaic of adventurous people created America’s enduring institutions
and values, as well as its distinctive spirit and energy.

THE SHAPE OF E A R LY A M E R I C A

B R I T I S H F O L K WAY S The vast majority of early European settlers came

from the British Isles in four mass migrations over the seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries. The first wave involved some 20,000 Puritans who settled
Massachusetts between 1630 and 1641. A generation later a smaller group of
wealthy Royalist Cavaliers (aristocrats) and their indentured servants migrated
from southern England to Virginia. The third wave brought some 23,000
Quakers from the north Midlands of England to the colonies of West Jersey,
Pennsylvania, and Delaware. They professed a sense of spiritual equality, a sus-
picion of class distinctions and powerful elites, and a commitment to plain liv-
ing and high thinking. The fourth and largest surge of colonization occurred
between 1717 and 1775 and included hundreds of thousands of Celtic Britons
and Scots-Irish from northern Ireland; these were mostly poor, feisty, clannish
folk who settled in the rugged backcountry along the Appalachian Mountains.
It was long assumed that the strenuous demands of the American frontier
served as a great “melting pot” that stripped immigrants of their native identi-
ties and melded them into homogeneous Americans. Yet for all of the trans-
forming effects of the New World, British ways of life have persisted to this day.
Although most British migrants spoke a common language and shared the
Protestant faith, they carried with them—and retained—very different cultural
attitudes and customs. They spoke distinct dialects, cooked different foods, pre-
ferred different architectural styles, and organized their societies differently.

SEABOARD ECOLOGY One of the cherished legends of American history

has it that those settling the New World arrived to find an unspoiled wilder-
ness little touched by human activity. That was not the case, however. For
thousands of years, Indian hunting practices had produced what one scholar
108 • C OLONIAL WAYS OF L IFE (CH. 3)

has called the “greatest known loss

of wild species” in the continent’s
history. Over centuries the Indians
had regularly burned forests and
dense undergrowth in order to cre-
ate cropland, ease travel through
hardwood forests, and make way
for grasses, berries, and other for-
age for the animals they hunted.
This migratory “slash-and-burn”
agriculture increased the rate at
which plant nutrients were recy-
cled and allowed more sunlight to
reach the forest floor. These condi-
Colonial farm tions in turn created rich soil and
This plan of a newly cleared American ideal grazing grounds for elk, deer,
farm shows how trees were cut down and turkeys, bears, moose, and beavers.
the stumps left to rot. Equally important in shaping
the ecosystem of America was the
European attitude toward the environment. Colonists followed the Biblical
command to “subdue the earth.” Whereas the Indians tended to be migratory,
considering land and animals communal resources with spiritual signifi-
cance, to be shared and consumed only as necessary, most European
colonizers viewed natural resources as privately owned commodities to be
exploited for profit. White settlers thus quickly set about evicting Indians;
clearing, fencing, improving, and selling land; cutting timber for masts; and
growing surplus crops, trapping game, and catching fish for commercial
use. These practices transformed the seaboard environment. British ships
brought domesticated animals—cattle, oxen, sheep, goats, horses, and pigs—
that were unknown on the Atlantic seaboard. By 1650, English farm animals
outnumbered the colonists. As livestock herds grew, they often trespassed on
Indian lands. In 1666, a frustrated Maryland Indian told colonists, “Your hogs &
cattle injure us. You come too near us to live & drive us from place to place.
We can fly no farther. Let us know where to live & how to be secured for the
future from the hogs & cattle.”

P O P U L AT I O N G R O W T H England’s first footholds in America were

bought at a fearsome price: many settlers died in the first years. But once the
brutal seasoning phase was past and the colonies were on their feet, Virginia
and its successors grew rapidly. By 1750 the number of colonists had passed
 The Shape of Early America • 109

1 million; by 1775 it stood at about 2.5 million. The prodigious increase of

the colonial population did not go unnoticed. Benjamin Franklin, a keen
observer of many things, published in 1751 his Observations Concerning the
Increase of Mankind, in which he pointed out two facts of life that distin-
guished the colonies from Europe: land was plentiful and cheap, and labor
was scarce and expensive. The opposite conditions prevailed in the Old
World. From this reversal of conditions flowed many of the changes that
European culture underwent in America—not the least being that more
land and good fortune beckoned enterprising immigrants and induced set-
tlers to replenish the earth with large families. Where labor was scarce, chil-
dren could lend a hand and, once grown, find new land for themselves if
need be. Colonists tended, as a result, to marry and start families at an earlier
age than did their Old World counterparts.

B I R T H R AT E S A N D D E AT H R AT E S Given the better economic pros-

pects in the colonies, a greater proportion of white women married, and the
birthrate remained much higher than it did in Europe. In England the aver-
age age at marriage for women was twenty-five or twenty-six; in America it
dropped to twenty. Men also married younger in the colonies than in the
Old World. The birthrate rose accordingly, since women who married earlier
had time for about two additional pregnancies during their childbearing
years.
Equally responsible for the burgeoning colonial population was a much
lower death rate than that in Europe. After the difficult first years of settle-
ment, infants generally had a better chance of reaching maturity, and adults
had a better chance of reaching old age. In seventeenth-century New Eng-
land, apart from childhood mortality, men could expect to reach seventy
and women nearly that age.
This longevity resulted from several factors. Since the land was bountiful,
famine seldom occurred after the first year, and although the winters were
more severe than those in England, firewood was plentiful. Being younger
on the whole—the average age in the new nation in 1790 was sixteen—
Americans were less susceptible to disease than were Europeans. That they
were more scattered than in the Old World meant they were also less
exposed to infectious diseases. That began to change, of course, as cities grew
and trade and travel increased. By the mid–eighteenth century the colonies
were beginning to have levels of contagion much like those in Europe.
The greatest variations in these patterns occurred in the earliest years of
the southern colonies. During the seventeenth century, a high rate of mor-
tality and a chronic shortage of women in Jamestown meant that population
110 • C OLONIAL WAYS OF L IFE (CH. 3)

growth was dependent on the steady arrival of more colonists from Britain. In
the humid southern climate, English settlers contracted malaria, dysentery,
and a host of other diseases. The mosquito-infested rice plantations of the
Carolina Tidewater were especially unhealthy. And ships that docked along
Virginia rivers brought with their payloads unseen cargoes of smallpox,
diphtheria, and other infectious diseases.

S E X R AT I O S A N D T H E FA M I LY Whole communities of religious or

ethnic groups migrated more often to the northern colonies than to the
southern, bringing more women with them. Males, however, were most
needed in the early years of new colonies. In fact, as a pamphlet promoting
opportunities in America stressed, the new colonies needed “lusty labouring
men . . . capable of hard labour, and that can bear and undergo heat and
cold,” men adept with the “axe and the hoe.” Virginia’s seventeenth-century
sex ratio of two or three white males to each female meant that many men
never married, although nearly every adult woman did. Counting only the
unmarried, the ratio was about eight men for every woman.
A population made up largely of bachelors made for instability of a high
order in the first years. And the high mortality rates of the early years at
Jamestown further loosened family ties. A majority of the women who
arrived in the Chesapeake colonies during the seventeenth century were
unmarried indentured servants, most of whom died before the age of fifty.
While the first generations in New England proved to be long-lived, young
people in the seventeenth-century South were apt never to see their grand-
parents and in fact likely to lose one or both parents before reaching matu-
rity. Eventually, however, the southern colonies reverted to a more even gen-
der ratio, and family sizes approached those of New England. Thus, in
contrast to New Spain and New France, British America had far more
women, and this different sex ratio largely explains the difference in popula-
tion growth rates among the European empires competing in the New
World.

WO M E N I N T H E C O L O N I E S Most colonists brought to America

deeply rooted convictions about the inferiority of women. As one minister
stressed, “the woman is a weak creature not endowed with like strength and
constancy of mind.” The prescribed role of women was clear: to obey and serve
their husbands, nurture their children, and endure the taxing labor required to
maintain their households. Governor John Winthrop insisted that a “true wife”
would find contentment only “in subjection to her husband’s authority.” Both
 The Shape of Early America • 111

social custom and legal codes ensured that most women in most colonies could
not vote, preach, hold office, attend public schools or colleges, bring lawsuits,
make contracts, or own property.
Yet there were exceptions to these prevailing gender roles. Circum-
stances often required or enabled women to exercise leadership outside the
domestic sphere. Elizabeth Lucas Pinckney (1722?–1793), for example,
emerged as one of America’s most enterprising horticulturalists. Born in
the West Indies, raised on the island of Antigua, and educated in England,
she moved with her family to Charleston, South Carolina, at age fifteen.
The following year her father, a British army officer and colonial adminis-
trator, was called back to Antigua. He left young Eliza to care for her ailing
mother and younger sister—and to manage three plantations worked by
slaves. Intelligent and plucky, Eliza decided to try growing indigo, a West
Indian plant that produced a much-coveted blue dye for coloring fabric.
Within six years she had reaped a bonanza. Exporting indigo became fabu-
lously profitable for her and for other planters on the Carolina coast. She
later experimented with other crops, such as flax, hemp (used in making
rope and twine), and silk.

WO M E N A N D R E L I G I O N During the colonial era, women played a

crucial, if restricted, role in religious life. No denomination allowed women to
be ordained as ministers. Only the Quakers let women hold church offices and
preach (“exhort”) in public. Puritans cited biblical passages claiming that God
required “virtuous” women to submit to male authority and remain “silent” in
congregational matters. Governor John Winthrop demanded that women
“not meddle in such things as are proper for men” to manage.
Women who challenged ministerial authority were usually prosecuted and
punished. Yet by the eighteenth century, as is true today, women made up the
overwhelming majority of church members. Their disproportionate atten-
dance at church services and revivals worried many ministers. A feminized
church was presumed to be a church in decline. In 1692 the magisterial
Boston minister Cotton Mather observed that there “are far more Godly
Women in the world than there are Godly Men.” In explaining this phenome-
non, Mather put a new twist on the old notion of women being the weaker
sex. He argued that the pain associated with childbirth, which had long been
interpreted as the penalty women paid for Eve’s sinfulness, was in part what
drove women “more frequently, & the more fervently” to commit their lives
to Christ.
In colonial America the religious roles of black women were quite differ-
ent from those of their white counterparts. In most West African tribes,
112 • C OLONIAL WAYS OF L IFE (CH. 3)

The First, Second, and Last Scene of Mortality

Prudence Punderson’s needlework (ca. 1776) shows the domestic path, from
cradle to coffin, followed by most colonial women.

women were not subordinate to men, and women frequently served as

priests and cult leaders. Furthermore, some enslaved Africans had been
exposed to Christianity or Islam in Africa, through slave traders and mis-
sionaries. Most of them, however, tried to sustain their traditional African
religion once they arrived in the colonies. In America, black women (and
men) were often excluded from church membership for fear that Christian-
ized slaves might seek to gain their freedom. To clarify the situation, Virginia
in 1667 passed a law specifying that children of slaves would be slaves even if
they had been baptized as Christians.

“ WO M E N ’ S WO R K ” In the eighteenth century, “women’s work” typi-

cally involved activities in the house, garden, and yard. Farm women usually
rose at four in the morning and prepared breakfast by five-thirty. They then
fed and watered the livestock, woke the children, churned butter, tended the
 The Shape of Early America • 113

garden, prepared lunch, played with the children, worked the garden again,
cooked dinner, milked the cows, got the children ready for bed, and cleaned
the kitchen before retiring, at about nine. Women also combed, spun,
spooled, wove, and bleached wool for clothing, knit linen and cotton,
hemmed sheets, pieced quilts, made candles and soap, chopped wood, hauled
water, mopped floors, and washed clothes. Female indentured servants in the
southern colonies commonly worked as field hands, weeding, hoeing, and
harvesting.
Despite the laws and traditions that limited the sphere of women, the
scarcity of labor in the colonies created opportunities. In the towns, women
commonly served as tavern hostesses and shopkeepers and occasionally also
worked as doctors, printers, upholsterers, painters, silversmiths, tanners, and
shipwrights—often, but not always, they were widows carrying on their hus-
bands’ trade.
One of the most lucrative trades among colonial women was the oldest:
prostitution. Many servants took up prostitution after their indenture was
fulfilled. All of the colonial port cities hosted thriving brothels. They catered
especially to sailors and soldiers, but men from all walks of life, married and
unmarried, frequented what were called “bawdy houses” or, in Puritan
Boston, “disorderly houses.” Local authorities frowned on such activities. In
Massachusetts convicted prostitutes were stripped to the waist, tied to the
back of a cart, and whipped as it moved through the town. In South Carolina,
several elected public officials in the seventeenth century were dismissed
because they were caught “lying with wenches.” New York City officials
ordered raids on brothels in 1753. Some two dozen “ladies of pleasure” were
arrested, and five of them were subjected to a public whipping. Some
enslaved women whose owners expected sexual favors turned the tables by
demanding compensation.
The colonial environment did generate slight improvements in the status
of women. The acute shortage of women in the early years made them more
highly valued than they were in Europe, and the Puritan emphasis on a well-
ordered family life led to laws protecting wives from physical abuse and
allowing for divorce. In addition, colonial laws allowed wives greater control
over property that they had contributed to a marriage or that was left after a
husband’s death. But the age-old notion of female subordination and domes-
ticity remained firmly entrenched in colonial America. As a Massachusetts
boy maintained in 1662, the superior aspect of life was “masculine and eter-
nal; the feminine inferior and mortal.”
114 • C OLONIAL WAYS OF L IFE (CH. 3)

SOCIETY AND ECONOMY IN THE SOUTHERN

COLONIES

As the southern colonies matured, inequalities of wealth became more

pronounced and social life grew more stratified. The wealthy increasingly
became a class apart, distinguished by their sumptuous living and their dis-
dain for their social “inferiors,” both white and black.

R E L I G I O N It has often been said that Americans during the seven-

teenth century took religion more seriously than they have at any time
since. That may have been true, but many early Americans—especially in
the southern colonies—were not active communicants. One estimate
holds that fewer than one in fifteen residents of the southern colonies was
a church member. After 1642, Virginia governor William Berkeley decided
that his colony was to be officially Anglican, and he sponsored laws requir-
ing “all nonconformists . . . to depart the colony.” Puritans and Quakers
were hounded out. By the end of the seventeenth century, Anglicanism
predominated in the Chesapeake region, and it proved especially popular
among the large landholders. In the early eighteenth century it became the
established (official) church throughout the South. The tone of religious
belief and practice in the eighteenth-century South was less demanding
than that in Puritan New England or Quaker Pennsylvania. As in England,
colonial Anglicans tended to be more conservative, rational, and formal in
their modes of worship than their Puritan, Quaker, or Baptist counter-
parts. Anglicans stressed collective rituals over personal religious experi-
ence. They did not require members to give a personal, public, and often
emotional account of their conversion. Nor did they expect members to
practice self-denial. Anglicans preferred ministers who stressed the reason-
ableness of Christianity, the goodness of God, and the capacity of
humankind to practice benevolence.

CROPS The southern colonies had one unique economic advantage: the
climate. The warm weather and plentiful rainfall enabled the colonies to
grow exotic staples (profitable market crops such as tobacco and rice) prized
by the mother country. Virginia, as King Charles I put it, was “founded upon
smoke.” Tobacco production soared during the seventeenth century. “In Vir-
ginia and Maryland,” wrote Governor Leonard Calvert in 1629, “Tobacco as
our Staple is our All, and indeed leaves no room for anything else.” After
1690, rice was as much the profitable staple crop in South Carolina as
tobacco was in Virginia. Planters discovered that the translucent grain was
 Society and Economy in the Southern Colonies • 115

Virginia plantation wharf

Southern colonial plantations were constructed with easy access to oceangoing
vessels, as shown on this 1730 tobacco label.

perfectly suited to the growing conditions in the semi-tropical coastal areas

known as the low country. Rice loves water; it flourishes in warm, moist
soils, and it thrives when visited by frequent rains or watered by regular irri-
gation. The daily rise and fall of tidewater rivers perfectly suited a crop that
required the alternate flooding and draining of fields. In addition, southern
pine trees provided lumber and key items for the maritime industry. The
resin from pine trees could be boiled to make tar, which was in great demand
for waterproofing ropes and caulking the seams of wooden ships. From their
early leadership in the production of pine tar, North Carolinians would earn
the nickname of Tar Heels. In the Carolinas a cattle industry presaged life
on the Great Plains—with cowboys, roundups, brandings, and long drives to
the market.

L A B O R Voluntary indentured servitude accounted for probably half the

white settlers (mostly from England, Ireland, or Germany) in all the colonies
outside New England. The name derived from the indenture, or contract, by
116 • C OLONIAL WAYS OF L IFE (CH. 3)

Indentured servants
An advertisement from the Virginia Gazette, October 4,
1779, for indentured servants. The people whose services
are being offered secured a life in America, but at a steep
price. Servants endured years of labor before their con-
tracts expired and they were granted their freedom.

which a person promised to work for a fixed number of years in return for
transportation to America. Not all the servants went voluntarily. The Lon-
don underworld developed a flourishing trade in “kids” and “spirits,” who
were “kidnapped” or “spirited” into servitude in America. After 1717, by act
of Parliament, convicts guilty of certain major crimes could escape the
hangman by relocating to the colonies.
Once in the colonies, servants contracted with masters. Their rights were
limited. As a Pennsylvania judge explained in 1793, indentured servants
occupied “a middle rank between slaves and free men.” They could own
property but could not engage in trade. Marriage required the master’s per-
mission. Runaway servants were hunted down and punished just as runaway
slaves were. Masters could whip servants and extend their indentures for bad
behavior. Many servants died from disease or the exhaustion of cultivating
tobacco in the broiling sun and intense humidity. In due course, however,
usually after four to seven years, the indenture ended, and the servant
claimed the “freedom dues” set by custom and law: money, tools, clothing,
food, and occasionally small tracts of land. Some former servants did very
 Society and Economy in the Southern Colonies • 117

well for themselves. In 1629 seven members of the Virginia legislature were
former indentured servants. Others, including Benjamin Franklin’s grand-
mother, married the men who had originally bought their services. Many
servants died before completing their indenture, however, and most of those
who served their term remained relatively poor thereafter.

C O L O N I A L S L AV E R Y Colonial America increasingly became a land of

white opportunity and black slavery. Africans were the largest ethnic group
to come to British America during the colonial era. Black slavery evolved
slowly in the Chesapeake Bay region during the early seventeenth century.
Some of the first Africans in America were treated as indentured servants,
with a limited term of servitude. Those few African servants who worked out
their term of indenture gained freedom, and some of them, as “free blacks,”
acquired slaves and white indentured servants. Gradually, however, with
racist rationalizations based on color difference, lifelong servitude for black
slaves became the custom—and law—of the land. Slaves cost more to buy
than servants, but they served for life. By the 1660s colonial legislative
assemblies had legalized lifelong slavery.

R AC I A L P R E J U D I C E African slavery had economic, political, and cul-

tural effects in the Americas that would be felt far into the future and would
lead to tragic conflicts. Today it is hard to understand how common racist

Slavery
A newspaper advertisement placed by Ignatius Davis of Fredericktown, Maryland,
in 1741, offering a reward for the capture of a runaway slave.
118 • C OLONIAL WAYS OF L IFE (CH. 3)

attitudes were in early American society. Slavery was not considered an

abomination in the seventeenth century. Most Europeans viewed race-based
slavery as a normal aspect of everyday life in an imperfect world; few consid-
ered it a moral issue. They instead believed that God determined one’s “sta-
tion in life.” Slavery was thus considered a “personal misfortune,” but not
something to worry about. It would not be until the late eighteenth century
that large numbers of white Europeans and Americans began to be exposed
to moral arguments against slavery and began to embrace a new culture of
compassion, often motivated by religious ideals.
Questions about the beginnings of slavery still have a bearing on the pres-
ent. Did a deep-rooted color prejudice lead to race-based slavery, for
instance, or did the practice of slavery produce the racial prejudice? Slavery
in the American colonies evolved because of the pervasive demand for more
laborers, and the English thereafter joined a global African slave trade that
had been established by the Portuguese and Spanish more than a century
before—the very word negro is Spanish for “black.” English settlers often
enslaved Indian captives, but they did not enslave captured Europeans.
Color was the crucial difference, or at least the crucial rationalization used to
justify the heinous institution.
The English in the seventeenth century associated the color black with
darkness and evil; they stamped the different appearance, behavior, and cus-
toms of Africans as “savagery.” Most of the self-serving qualities that colonial
Virginians imputed to blacks to justify slavery were the same qualities that
the English assigned to their own poor to explain their lowly status: their
alleged bent for laziness, treachery, and stupidity, among other shortcom-
ings. Similar traits, moreover, were imputed by ancient Jews to the Canaan-
ites and by the Mediterranean peoples of a later date to the Slavic captives
sold among them. The names Canaanite and Slav both became synonymous
with slavery—the latter lingers in the very word for the practice. Through-
out history, dominant peoples have repeatedly assigned ugly traits to those
they bring into subjugation. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
American colonists readily rationalized enslaving Africans because they
were deemed both “heathens” and “aliens.”
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the incredibly profitable
sugar-based economies of the French and British West Indies and Portuguese
Brazil had the most voracious appetite for enslaved Africans. By 1675 the
British West Indies had over 100,000 slaves while the colonies in North Amer-
ica had only about 5,000. But as profitable crops such as tobacco, rice, and
indigo became established in Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, the
demand for mostly male Indians or, especially, African slaves grew. Though
 Society and Economy in the Southern Colonies • 119

British North America took only 5 percent of the total slaves imported to the
Western Hemisphere during more than three centuries of that squalid traffic,
it offered better chances for survival, if few for human fulfillment.
As overall living conditions improved in the colonies, slave mortality
improved. By 1730 the black slave population in Virginia and Maryland had
become the first in the Western Hemisphere to achieve a self-sustaining rate of
population growth. By 1750 about 80 percent of the slaves in the Chesapeake
region had been born there. The natural increase of blacks in America approx-
imated that of whites by the end of the colonial period. During the colonial
era, slavery was recognized in all the colonies but was most prevalent in the
southern colonies. Almost 90 percent of the black slaves transported to the
American mainland went to the southern colonies. South Carolina had a black
majority through the eighteenth century. As a visitor observed, “Carolina
looks more like a negro country than like a country settled by white people.”

AFRICAN ROOTS The transport of Africans across the Atlantic to the

Americas was the largest forced migration in world history. Over 10 million
people made the journey, so many that it changed the trajectory of Africa’s
development. The vast majority of Africans were taken to Brazil or the West
Indian islands. Only 5 percent of them—including twice as many men as
women—were taken to British North America, often in ships built in New
England and owned by merchants in Boston and Newport. Most of the
enslaved were young—between the ages of fifteen and thirty.
Such aggregate statistics can be misleading, however. Enslaved Africans are
so often lumped together as a social group that their great ethnic diversity
is overlooked. They came from lands as remote from each other as Angola is
from Senegal. They spoke as many as fifty different languages and wor-
shipped many different gods. Some lived in large kingdoms, and others in
dispersed villages. All of them prized their kinship ties. Trade networks criss-
crossed the African continent. Africans during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries experienced almost constant civil wars among competing tribes
and kingdoms. Still, the varied peoples of sub-Saharan Africa did share simi-
lar kinship and political systems. Like the Indian cultures, the African soci-
eties were often matrilineal: property and social status descended through the
mother rather than the father. When a couple married, the wife did not
leave her family; the husband left his family to join that of his bride.
West African tribal kingdoms were organized hierarchically. Priests and the
nobility lorded over the masses of farmers and craftspeople. Below the masses
were the slaves, typically war captives, criminals, or debtors. Slaves in African
cultures, however, did have certain rights. They could marry and have children.
 120 • C OLONIAL WAYS OF L IFE (CH. 3)

EUROPE
NORTH ENGLISH
AMERICA COLONIES

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How were Africans captured and enslaved? What were some of the experiences
faced by most Africans on the Middle Passage? How did enslaved African Americans
create a new culture?

Some of them were adopted by the families that “owned” them. Their servitude
was not always permanent, nor were children automatically slaves by virtue of
their parentage, as would be the case in the Americas.
The West African economy centered on hunting, fishing, and farming.
Men and women typically worked alongside each other in the fields. Reli-
gious belief served as the spine of West African life. Virtually all tribal groups
believed in a supreme Creator and an array of lesser gods tied to specific
natural forces, such as rain, fertility, and animal life. West Africans were pan-
theistic in that they believed that spirits resided in trees, rocks, and streams.
 Society and Economy in the Southern Colonies • 121

People who died were also subjects of reverence, because they served as
mediators between the living and the gods.
Africans preyed upon Africans, however, for centuries, rival tribes had
conquered, kidnapped, enslaved, and sold one another. “I must [acknowl-
edge] the shame of my own countrymen,” wrote an African who was cap-
tured and sold into slavery. He was “first kidnapped and betrayed by those of
my own complexion.” Slavery in Africa, however, was more benign than the
culture of slavery that developed in North America. In Africa, slaves were
not isolated as a distinct caste; they also lived with their captors, and their
children were not automatically enslaved. The involvement of Europeans in
commercial slavery changed that. Although European Christians disavowed
enslaving fellow Christians, they had no qualms about enslaving “pagans” or
Muslims. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, African middle-
men brought captives (debtors, thieves, war prisoners, and those who
refused to convert to Islam) to dozens of “slave forts” along the Atlantic
coast, where they were subjected to humiliating physical inspections before
being sold to European slave traders. To reduce the threat of rebellion,
traders split up family and tribal members. Once purchased, the millions of
people destined for slavery in the Americas were branded on the back or
buttocks with a company mark, shackled, and loaded onto horrific slave
ships, where they were packed tightly like animals below deck. “Rammed like
herring in a barrel,” wrote one white, slaves were “chained to each other hand
and foot, and stowed so close, that they were not allowed above a foot-and-
a-half for each in breadth.” The Africans then endured a four-week to six-
month Atlantic voyage, known as the Middle Passage. It was so brutal that
one in six captives died en route. Almost one in every ten slave ships experi-
enced a revolt during the crossing. On average, twenty-five Africans were
killed in such uprisings. Far more died of disease. Some committed suicide
by jumping off the ships.
Slavery in the Western Hemisphere was driven by high profits and ratio-
nalized by a pervasive racism. Race-based slavery entailed the dehumaniza-
tion of an entire class of human beings who, in the eyes of white Europeans,
were justifiably deprived of their dignity and honor. Once in America,
Africans were treated like property (“chattel”), herded in chains to public
slave auctions, where they were sold to the highest bidder. They were often
barefoot, ill-clothed, and poorly housed and fed. Their most common role
was to dig ditches, drain swamps, build dams, clear, plant, and tend fields.
On large southern plantations, “gangs” of slaves cultivated tobacco and rice.
They were often quartered in barracks, fed in bulk, like livestock, and issued
work clothes and unsized shoes so uncomfortable that many slaves preferred
122 • C OLONIAL WAYS OF L IFE (CH. 3)

Slave ship
One in six Africans died while crossing the Atlantic in ships like this one, from an
American diagram ca. 1808.

to go barefoot. Colonial laws allowed whites to use brutal means to disci-

pline slaves and enforce their control over them. They were whipped,
branded, shackled, castrated, or sold away, often to the Caribbean islands. A
1669 Virginia law declared that accidentally killing a slave during punish-
ment would not be considered a felony. During a three-year period a South
Carolina overseer killed five slaves while whipping them. Slaves convicted of
trying to burn barns or houses were often burned at the stake. The wealthy
Virginia planter William Byrd II confessed that the “unhappy effect of own-
ing many Negroes is the necessity of being severe.”
Enslaved Africans, however, found ingenious ways to resist being “mas-
tered.” Some rebelled against their captors, resisting work orders, sabotaging
crops and stealing tools, feigning illness or injury, or running away. Colonial
newspapers were sprinkled with notices about runaway slaves. A Georgia
slaveowner asked readers to be on the lookout for “a negro fellow named
Mingo, about 40 years old, and his wife Quante, a sensible wench about
20 with her child, a boy about 3 years old, all this country born.” If caught,
 Society and Economy in the Southern Colonies • 123

runaways faced certain punishment—whipping, branding, and even the

severing of an Achilles tendon. Runaways also faced uncertain freedom.
Where would they run to in a society governed by whites and ruled by
racism? In a few cases, slaves organized armed rebellions, stealing weapons,
burning and looting plantations, and occasionally killing their captors. Cap-
tured slave rebels faced ghastly retribution; many were hanged or burned at
the stake. In 1739 some twenty slaves attacked a store in Stono, South Car-
olina, south of Charleston. They killed the owner, seized weapons, and
headed toward promised freedom in Spanish Florida, gathering more
recruits along the way. Within a few days, the insurgent slaves had killed
twenty-five whites, whereupon the militia caught up with them. Most of the
rebels were killed, and in the weeks that followed, some sixty more were cap-
tured by enraged planters who “cut off their heads and set them up at every
Mile Post.”

SLAVE CULTURE In 1700 there were enslaved Africans in every American

colony, and they constituted 11 percent of the total population (it would be
more than 20 percent by 1770). But slavery in British North America dif-
fered greatly from region to region. Africans were a tiny minority in New
England (about 2 percent) and in the middle colonies (about 8 percent).
Because there were no large plantations in New England and fewer slaves
were owned, “family slavery” prevailed, with masters and slaves usually liv-
ing under the same roof. Slaves in the northern colonies performed a variety
of tasks, outside and inside. In the southern colonies, slaves were far more
numerous, and most of them worked on farms and plantations.
Most slaves in the northern colonies lived in towns or cities, and their
urban environs gave them more opportunities to move about. For many
years before the American Revolution, New York City had more slaves than
any other American city. By 1740, it was second only to Charleston in the
percentage of slaves in its population. Most of the enslaved blacks came to
Manhattan via the Caribbean sugar islands rather than directly from Africa.
As the number of slaves increased in the congested city, racial fears and ten-
sions mounted—and occasionally exploded. In 1712 several dozen slaves
revolted; they started fires and then used swords, axes, and guns to kill
whites as they fought the fires. Called out to restore order, the militia cap-
tured twenty-seven slaves. Six committed suicide, and the rest were exe-
cuted; some were burned alive. New York officials thereafter passed a series
of ordinances—a black code—strictly regulating slave behavior. Any slave
caught with a weapon, for example, would be whipped, and owners could
punish their slaves as they saw fit, as long as they did not kill them.
124 • C OLONIAL WAYS OF L IFE (CH. 3)

African cultural heritage in the south

The survival of African culture among enslaved Americans is evident in this late-
eighteenth-century painting of a South Carolina plantation. The musical instru-
ments and pottery are of African (probably Yoruban) origin.

Yet the punitive regulations did not prevent another major racial incident.
In the bitterly cold March of 1741, city dwellers were aghast at a rash of suspi-
cious fires across the city, including one at the governor’s house. Their worst
fear was that the fires were the result of a slave conspiracy. “The Negroes are
rising!” shouted terrified whites. The frantic city council launched a frenzied
investigation to find and punish the “villains.” The self-promoting prosecutors
proved adept at eliciting formulaic confessions. Mary Burton, a sixteen-year-
old indentured servant, told authorities that there was indeed a conspiracy
among slaves and poor whites to “burn the whole town” and kill the white
men among its 11,000 residents. Some 2,000 of the city’s residents were
enslaved blacks.
The plotters (“seducers of the slaves”) were supposedly led by John Hugh-
son, a white trafficker in stolen goods who owned the tavern where Mary
 Society and Economy in the Southern Colonies • 125

Burton worked. His wife, two slaves, and a prostitute were charged as co-
conspirators. Despite their denials, all were convicted and hanged. The accu-
sations continued amid an atmosphere of public hysteria, which turned a
slave revolt into a papal plot. Attracting particular suspicion were people
with ties to the Spanish colonies or Catholicism, since England was then at
war with Spain, and the Spanish had offered freedom to any slave who
defected. Within weeks over half of the adult male slaves in the city were in
jail. Five Spanish blacks were hanged. Mary Burton then implicated John
Ury, a recently arrived teacher whom she claimed was in fact a Jesuit priest
and Spanish spy who instigated the conspiracy to burn Manhattan. He, too,
was hanged. Mary Burton, meanwhile, kept naming more conspirators. The
Conspiracy of 1741 ended when some of the most prominent New Yorkers
were named as plotters. In the end, twenty-one people—seventeen slaves
and four whites—were hanged; thirteen blacks were burned at the stake.
Seventy-two other blacks were deported.
Such organized resistance to the abuses and indignities of slavery was
rare—in large part because the likelihood of success was so small and the
punishments so severe. Much more common were subtler forms of resis-
tance and accommodation adopted by enslaved Africans brought to the
Americas.
In the process of being forced into lives of bondage in a new world,
diverse blacks from diverse homelands forged a new identity as African
Americans while leaving entwined in the fabric of American culture more
strands of African heritage than historians and anthropologists can ever dis-
entangle, including new words that entered the language, such as tabby, tote,
cooter, goober, yam, and banana and the names of the Coosaw, Pee Dee, and
Wando Rivers.
Most significant are African influences in American music, folklore, and
religious practices. On one level, slaves used such cultural activities to dis-
tract themselves from their servitude; on another level they used songs, sto-
ries, and religious preachings to circulate coded messages expressing their
distaste for masters or overseers.
Africans brought with them to America powerful kinship ties. Even
though most colonies outlawed slave marriages, many owners believed that
slaves would work harder and be more stable if allowed to form families.
Though many families were broken up when members were sold to different
owners, slave culture retained its powerful domestic ties. It also developed
gender roles distinct from those of white society. Most enslaved women were
by necessity field workers as well as wives and mothers responsible for child-
rearing and household affairs. Since they worked in proximity to enslaved
126 • C OLONIAL WAYS OF L IFE (CH. 3)

men, they were treated more equally (for better or worse) than were most of
their white counterparts.

S L AV E E C O N O M Y Enslaved workers were eventually used in virtually

every activity within the expanding colonial economy. To be sure, the vast
majority worked as agricultural workers, often performing strenuous labor
from dawn to dusk in oppressive heat and humidity. As Jedidiah Morse, a
prominent Charleston minister, admitted in the late eighteenth century, “No
white man, to speak generally, ever thinks of settling a farm, and improving
it for himself, without negroes.” During the eighteenth century, the demand
for slaves soared in the southern colonies. In 1750 the vast majority of slaves
in British America resided in Virginia and Maryland, about 150,000 com-
pared with 60,000 in South Carolina and Georgia and only 33,000 in all of
the northern colonies. As the number of slaves grew, so, too, did the variety
of their labors and the need for different skills. Virginia and Maryland
planters, for example, favored slaves from areas of Africa where the cultiva-
tion of yams was similar to the cultivation of tobacco. Fulani tribesmen from
West Africa were prized as cattle herdsmen. South Carolina rice planters, the
wealthiest group in British North America, purchased slaves from Africa’s
“Rice Coast,” especially Gambia, where rice cultivation was commonplace.
As Governor John Drayton explained, an enslaved African could “work for
hours in mud and water” cultivating rice “while to a white this kind of labor
would be almost certain death.” Using only hand tools, slaves, often called
“saltwater” Africans, transformed the landscape of coastal South Carolina
and Georgia. They first removed massive bald cypress, tupelo, and sweet
gum trees from freshwater swamps infested with snakes, alligators, and mos-
quitoes. They then drained the water, leveled the land, and enclosed the
newly squared fields with earth embankments and dikes. Floodgates on the
dikes allowed workers to drain or flood the field as needed.
Owners of slaves from the lowlands of Africa used their talents as boat-
men in the coastal waterways. Some slaves had linguistic skills that made
them useful interpreters. In a new colonial society forced to construct itself,
slaves became skilled artisans: blacksmiths, carpenters, coopers, bricklayers,
and the like. Many enslaved women worked as household servants and
midwives.

COLONIAL TRADE English customs records showed that for the years
1698 to 1717, South Carolina and the Chesapeake colonies enjoyed a favor-
able balance of trade with England. But the surplus revenues earned on goods
sold to England were more than offset by “invisible” charges by English
 Society and Economy in New England • 127

“middlemen”: freight payments to shippers; commissions, storage charges,

and interest payments to English merchants; insurance premiums; inspection
and customs duties; and outlays to purchase indentured servants and slaves.
Thus began a pattern that would plague southern agriculture for centuries.
Planters’ investments went into land and slaves while the more profitable
enterprises of shipping, trade, investment, and manufacture were conducted
by outsiders.
If one distinctive feature of the South’s agrarian economy was a ready
market in England, another was a trend toward large-scale production.
Those who planted tobacco discovered that it quickly exhausted the soil,
thereby giving an advantage to the planter who had extra fields in which to
plant beans and corn or to leave fallow. With the increase of the tobacco
crop, moreover, a fall in prices meant that economies of scale might come
into play—the large planter with the lower cost per unit might still make a
profit. Gradually he would extend his holdings along the riverfronts and
thereby secure the advantage of direct access to the oceangoing vessels that
plied the waterways of the Chesapeake Bay, discharging goods from London
and taking on tobacco. So easy was the access, in fact, that the Chesapeake
colonies never required a city of any size as a center of commerce, and
the larger planters functioned as merchants and harbormasters for their
neighbors.

SOCIETY AND ECONOMY IN NEW ENGLAND

There was remarkable diversity among the American colonies during

the seventeenth century and after. The prevalence of slavery, for example,
was much less outside the southern colonies. Other environmental, social,
and economic factors also contributed to striking differences between New
England and the middle Atlantic and southern regions.

T O W N S H I P S New England was born Protestant; its civic life had a

stronger social and religious purpose than elsewhere. Seventeenth-century
Puritans saw themselves as living under the special care of God; they saw no
distinction between church and state in their holy commonwealth. The close
ties between Puritanism and politics established the American tradition of
public life being consistently influenced by religious forces. New England
towns shaped by English precedent and Puritan policy also were adapted to
the environment of a rock-strewn land, confined by sea and mountains and
unfit for large-scale commercial agriculture.
128 • C OLONIAL WAYS OF L IFE (CH. 3)

Unlike the settlers in the southern colonies or in Dutch New York, few
New England colonists received huge tracts of land. Township grants were
usually awarded to organized groups. A group of settlers, often already gath-
ered into a church, would petition the general court for a town (what else-
where was commonly called a township) and then divide its acres according
to a rough principle of equity—those who invested more or had larger fami-
lies or greater status might receive more land—retaining some pasture and
woodland in common and holding some for later arrivals. In some early
cases the towns arranged each settler’s land in separate strips after the
medieval practice, but over time the land was commonly divided into sepa-
rate farms distant from the close-knit village. By the early eighteenth century
the colonies were using their remaining land as a source of revenue, selling
townships, more often than not to land speculators.

D W E L L I N G S A N D D A I LY L I F E The first colonists in New England

initially lived in caves, tents, or “English wigwams,” but they soon built sim-
ple frame houses clad with hand-split clapboards. The roofs were steeply
pitched to reduce the buildup of snow and were covered with thatched

Housing in Colonial New England

This frame house, built in the 1670s, belonged to Rebecca Nurse, one of the
women hanged as a witch in Salem Village in 1692.
 Society and Economy in New England • 129

grasses or reeds. By the end of the seventeenth century, most New England
homes were plain but sturdy dwellings centered on a fireplace. Some had
glass windows brought from England. The interior walls were often plas-
tered and whitewashed, but the exterior boards were rarely painted. It was
not until the eighteenth century that most houses were painted, usually a
dark “Indian” red. New England homes were not commonly painted white
until the nineteenth century. The interiors were dark, illuminated only by
candles or oil lamps, both of which were expensive; most people usually
went to sleep soon after sunset.
Family life revolved around the main room on the ground floor, called the
hall, where meals would be cooked in a large fireplace. Food would be served
at a table of rough-hewn planks, called the board. The father was sometimes
referred to as the chair man because he sat in the only chair (hence the origin
of the term chairman of the board). The rest of the family usually stood to
eat or sat on stools or benches. People in colonial times ate with their hands
and wooden spoons. Forks were not introduced until the eighteenth century.
The fare was usually corn, boiled meat, and vegetables washed down with
beer, cider, rum, or milk. Corn bread was a daily staple, as was cornmeal
mush, known as hasty pudding. Colonists also relished succotash, an Indian
meal of corn and kidney beans cooked in bear grease.

E N T E R P R I S E Early New England farmers and their families led hard

lives. Simply clearing rocks from the glacier-scoured soil might require sixty
days of hard labor per acre. The growing season was short, and no staple
(profitable) crops grew in that harsh climate. The crops and livestock were
those familiar to the English countryside: wheat, barley, oats, some cattle,
pigs, and sheep.
Many New Englanders turned to the sea for their livelihood. Cod, a com-
mercial fish that can weigh hundreds of pounds, had been a regular element
of the European diet for centuries, and the waters off the New England coast
had the heaviest concentrations of cod in the world. Whales, too, abounded
in New England waters and supplied oil for lighting and lubrication, as well
as ambergris, a waxy substance used in the manufacture of perfumes.
The New England fisheries, unlike the farms, supplied a product that
could be profitably exported to Europe, with lesser grades of fish going to
the West Indies as food for slaves. Fisheries encouraged the development of
shipbuilding, and experience at seafaring spurred transatlantic commerce.
A growing trade with Britain and Europe encouraged wider contacts in the
Atlantic world and prompted a self-indulgent materialism and cosmopoli-
tanism that clashed with the Puritan ideal of plain living and high thinking.
130 • C OLONIAL WAYS OF L IFE (CH. 3)

Profitable fisheries
Fishing for, curing, and drying codfish in Newfoundland
in the early 1700s. For centuries the rich fishing grounds of
the North Atlantic provided New Englanders with a
prosperous industry.

In 1714 a worried Puritan deplored the “great extravagance that people are
fallen into, far beyond their circumstances, in their purchases, buildings,
families, expenses, apparel, generally in the whole way of living.”

SHIPBUILDING The abundant forests of New England represented a

source of enormous wealth. Old-growth trees were especially prized for use
as ships’ masts and spars. Early on, the British government claimed the
tallest and straightest American trees, mostly white pines and oaks, for
use by the Royal Navy. At the same time, British officials encouraged the
colonists to develop their own shipbuilding industry. American-built ships
quickly became prized for their quality and price. It was much less expensive
to purchase ships built in America than to transport American timber to
Britain for ship construction, especially since a large ship might require the
timber from as many as 2,000 trees.
Nearly a third of all British ships were made in the colonies. Shipbuilding
was one of colonial America’s first big industries, and it in turn nurtured
many related businesses: timbering, sawmills, iron foundries, sail lofts, fish-
eries, and taverns. Constructing a large ship required as many as thirty
skilled trades and 200 workers. The vessel’s hull was laid out by master
 Society and Economy in New England • 131

shipwrights, talented maritime carpenters who used axes and adzes to cut
and fit together the pieces to form the keel, or spine of the hull. Caulkers
made the ship watertight by stuffing the seams with oakum, a loose hemp
fiber that was sealed with hot tar.
As the new ship took shape, rope makers created the ship’s extensive rig-
ging. After the coils of rope were spun, they were dipped in heated tar to pre-
serve them from saltwater rot. Sailmakers, meanwhile, fashioned sails out of
canvas, laying them out in large lofts. Other craftsmen produced the dozens
of other items needed for a sailing vessel: Blacksmiths forged iron anchors,
chains, hinges, bolts, rudder braces, and circular straps that secured sections
of a mast to each other. Block makers created the dozens of metal-strapped
wooden pulleys needed to hoist sails. Joiners built hatches, ladders, lockers,
and furnishings. Painters finished the trim and interiors. Ship chandlers
provided lamps, oil, and candles. Instrument makers fashioned compasses,
chronometers, and sextants for navigation.
Such skilled workers were trained in the apprentice-journeyman system
then common in England. A master craftsman taught an apprentice the
skills of his trade in exchange for wages. After the apprenticeship period,
lasting from four to seven years, a young worker would receive a new suit of
clothes from the master craftsman and then become a journeyman, literally
moving from shop to shop, working for wages as he honed his skills. Over
time, journeymen joined local guilds and became master craftsmen, who
themselves took on apprentices.

Architectural drawings used in shipbuilding

An architectual drawing of a ship from eighteenth-century New England.
132 • C OLONIAL WAYS OF L IFE (CH. 3)

It took four to six months to build a major sailing ship. The ship christen-
ings and launchings were festive occasions that attracted large crowds and
dignitaries. Shops and schools would often close to enable workers and stu-
dents to attend. All of the workers joined the celebration. The ceremony
would begin with a clergyman blessing the new vessel. Then the ship’s owner
or a senior member of the crew would “christen” the ship before ropes were
cut and blocks removed to allow the hull to slide into the water.

TRADE By the end of the seventeenth century, the American colonies had
become part of a complex North Atlantic commercial network, trading not
only with the British Isles and the British West Indies but also—and often
illegally—with Spain, France, Portugal, Holland, and their colonies. Out of
necessity the American colonists imported manufactured goods from
Europe: hardware, machinery, paint, instruments for navigation, wine, and
various household items. The colonies thus served as an important market
for goods from the mother country. The colonies were blessed with abun-
dant natural resources—land, furs, deerskins, timber, fish, tobacco, indigo,
rice, and sugar, to mention a few—but they lacked capital (money to invest
in new enterprises) and laborers.
The mechanism of trade in New England and the middle colonies differed
from that in the South in two respects: the lack of staple crops to exchange
for English goods was a relative disadvantage, but the success of the region’s
own shipping and commercial enterprises worked in their favor. After 1660,
in order to protect England’s agriculture and fisheries, the British govern-
ment placed prohibitive duties (taxes) on certain major colonial exports—
fish, flour, wheat, and meat—while leaving the door open to timber, furs,
and whale oil, products in great demand in the home country. New York and
New England between 1698 and 1717 bought more from England than they
sold to England, incurring an unfavorable trade balance.
The northern colonies addressed the import/export imbalance partly by
using their own ships and merchants, thus avoiding the “invisible” charges
by British middlemen, and by finding other markets for the staples excluded
from England, thus acquiring goods or coins to pay for imports from the
mother country. American lumber and fish therefore went to southern
Europe for money or in exchange for wine; lumber, rum, and provisions
went to Newfoundland; and all of these and more went to the sugar-producing
island colonies in the West Indies, which became the most important trad-
ing outlet of all. American merchants could sell fish, bread, flour, corn, pork,
bacon, beef, and horses to West Indian planters. In return, they got gold,
 Society and Economy in New England • 133

sugar, molasses, rum, indigo, dyewoods, and other products, many of which
went eventually to England.
These circumstances gave rise to the famous “triangular trade” (more a
descriptive convenience than a uniform pattern), in which New Englanders
shipped rum to the west coast of Africa, where they bartered for slaves; took
the enslaved Africans to the West Indies; and returned home with various
commodities, including molasses, from which they manufactured rum. In
another version they shipped provisions to the West Indies, carried sugar
and molasses to England, and returned with goods manufactured in Europe.
The colonies suffered from a chronic shortage of hard currency (coins),
which drifted away to pay for imports and shipping charges. Merchants tried

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ATLANTIC TRADE ROUTES

Major trade routes
Intercoastal trade routes

How was overseas trade in the South different from that in New England and the
middle colonies? What was the “triangular trade”? What were North America’s most
important exports?
134 • C OLONIAL WAYS OF L IFE (CH. 3)

various ways to get around the shortage of gold or silver coins. Some
engaged in barter, using commodities such as tobacco or rice as currency. In
addition, most of the colonies at one time or another issued bills of credit,
on promise of payment later (hence the dollar “bill”), and most set up “land
banks” that issued paper money for loans to farmers who used their land for
collateral. Colonial farmers knew that printing paper money inflated crop
prices, and they therefore asked for more and more paper money. Thus
began in colonial politics what was to become a recurrent issue in later
times, the complex question of currency inflation. Whenever the issue arose,
debtors (often farmers) commonly favored growth in the money supply,
which would make it easier for them to pay long-term debts, whereas credi-
tors favored a limited money supply, which would increase the value of their
capital. British merchants wanted gold or silver, and they convinced Parlia-
ment to outlaw paper money in New England in 1751 and throughout the
colonies in 1764.

T H E U N P U R I TA N I C A L P U R I TA N S New England was settled by

religious fundamentalists; the Puritans looked to the Bible for authority and
inspiration. They read the Bible daily and memorized its passages and sto-
ries. The Christian faith was a living source of daily inspiration for most
New Englanders. Yet the conventional stereotype of the dour Puritan, hostile
to anything that gave pleasure, is false. Puritans wore colorful clothing,
enjoyed secular music, and imbibed prodigious quantities of rum. “Drink is
in itself a good creature of God,” said the Reverend Increase Mather, “but the
abuse of drink is from Satan.” If found incapacitated by reason of strong
drink, a person was subject to arrest. A Salem man, for example, was tried
for staggering into a house where he “eased his stomak in the Chimney.”
Repeat offenders were forced to wear the letter D in public.
Moderation in all things except piety was the Puritan guideline, and it
applied to sexual activity as well. Puritans openly acknowledged natural
human desires. Of course, sexual activity outside the bounds of marriage
was strictly forbidden. Seventeenth-century New England court records are
filled with cases of adultery and fornication. A man found guilty of inter-
course with an unwed woman could be jailed, whipped, fined, disfranchised,
and forced to marry the woman. Female offenders were also jailed and
whipped, and in some cases adulterers were forced to wear the letter A in
public. The abundance of sex offenses is explained in part by the dispropor-
tionate number of men in the colonies. Many were unable to find a wife and
were tempted to satisfy their sexual desires outside marriage.
 Society and Economy in New England • 135

C H U R C H A N D S TAT E The Puritans who settled Massachusetts, unlike

the Separatists of Plymouth, proposed only to form a purified version of the
Anglican Church. They were called Nonseparating Congregationalists. That
is, they remained loyal to the Church of England, the unity of church and
state, and the principle of compulsory religious uniformity. But their
remoteness from England led them to adopt a congregational form of
church government identical with that of the Pilgrim Separatists and for
that matter little different from the practice of Anglicans in the southern
colonies.
In the Puritan version of John Calvin’s theology, God had voluntarily
entered into a covenant, or contract, with worshippers through which they
could secure salvation. By analogy, therefore, an assembly of true Christians
could enter into a congregational covenant, a voluntary union for the com-
mon worship of God. From this idea it was a short step to the idea of people
joining together to form a government. The early history of New England
included several examples of such limited steps toward constitutional govern-
ment: the Mayflower Compact, the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony,
the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, and the informal arrangements
whereby the Rhode Island settlers governed themselves until they secured a
charter in 1663.
The covenant theory contained certain kernels of democracy in both
church and state, but democracy was no part of Puritan political thought,
which like so much else in Puritan belief began with an emphasis on original
sin. Humanity’s innate depravity made government necessary. The Puritan
was more of a biblical fundamentalist than a political democrat, dedicated to
seeking the will of God, not the will of the people. The ultimate source of
authority was not majority rule but the Bible. Biblical passages often had to
be interpreted, however. Hence, most Puritans looked to ministers to explain
God’s will. By law, every town had to collect taxes to support a church. And
every community member was required to attend midweek and Sunday
religious services. The average New Englander heard 7,000 sermons in a
lifetime.
Religion exercised a pervasive influence over the life of New England
towns, but unlike the Church of England and the British government in New
England, church and government were technically separate. Although Puri-
tan New England has often been called a theocracy, individual congregations
were entirely separate from the state—except that the residents were taxed to
support the churches. And if not all inhabitants were official church mem-
bers, all were nonetheless required to attend church services.
136 • C OLONIAL WAYS OF L IFE (CH. 3)

DIVERSITY AND SOCIAL STRAINS Despite long-enduring myths,

New England towns were not always pious, harmonious, and self-sufficient
utopias populated by praying Puritans. Several communities were founded
not as religious refuges but as secular centers of fishing, trade, or commer-
cial agriculture. The animating concerns of residents in such commercial
towns tended to be more entrepreneurial than spiritual. After a Puritan min-
ister delivered his first sermon to a congregation in the Massachusetts port
of Marblehead, a crusty fisherman admonished him: “You think you are
preaching to the people of the Bay. Our main end was to catch fish.”
In many of the godly inland communities, social strains increased as time
passed, a consequence primarily of population pressure on the land and
increasing disparities of wealth. “Love your neighbor,” said Benjamin
Franklin, “but don’t pull down your fence.” Initially fathers exercised strong
authority over sons through their control of the land. They kept their sons
and their families in the town, not letting them set up their own households
or get title to their farmland until they reached middle age. In New England,
as elsewhere, fathers tended to subdivide their land among all the male chil-
dren. But by the eighteenth century, with land scarcer, the younger sons were
either getting control of the property early or moving on. Often they were
forced out, with family help and blessings, to seek land elsewhere or new
kinds of work in the commercial cities along the coast or inland rivers. With
the growing pressure on land in the settled regions, poverty and social ten-
sion increased in what had once seemed a country of unlimited opportunity.
The emphasis on a direct accountability to God, which lies at the base of
all Protestant theology, itself caused a persistent tension and led believers to
challenge authority in the name of private conscience. Massachusetts
repressed such “heresy” in the 1630s, but it resurfaced during the 1650s
among Quakers and Baptists, and in 1659–1660 the Puritan colony hanged
four Quakers who persisted in returning after they had been expelled.
These acts caused such revulsion—and an investigation by the British
government—that they were not repeated, although people deemed heretics
continued to face harassment and persecution.
More damaging to the Puritan utopia was the gradual erosion of religious
fervor. More and more children of the “visible saints” found themselves
unable to give the required testimony of spiritual regeneration. In 1662 an
assembly of Boston ministers created the “Half-Way Covenant,” whereby
baptized children of church members could be admitted to a “halfway”
membership and secure baptism for their own children in turn. Such partial
members, however, could neither vote in church nor take communion.
A further blow to Puritan control came with the Massachusetts royal charter
 Society and Economy in New England • 137

Puritan town
A hand-colored woodcut depicting seventeenth-century New England colonists.

of 1691, which required toleration of religious dissenters and based the right
to vote in public elections on property rather than church membership.

THE DEVIL IN NEW ENGLAND The strains accompanying Massa-

chusetts’s transition from Puritan utopia to royal colony reached a tragic cli-
max in the witchcraft hysteria at Salem Village (now the town of Danvers) in
1692. Belief in witchcraft was widespread throughout Europe and New Eng-
land in the seventeenth century. Prior to the dramatic episode in Salem,
almost 300 New Englanders (mostly middle-aged women) had been accused
of practicing witchcraft, and more than 30 had been hanged. New England
was, in the words of Cotton Mather, “a country . . . extraordinarily alarum’d
by the wrath of the Devil.”
Still, the Salem episode was unique in its scope and intensity. During the win-
ter of 1691–1692, several adolescent girls became fascinated with the for-
tunetelling and voodoo practiced by Tituba, a West Indian slave owned by a
minister. The entranced girls began to behave oddly—shouting, barking, grovel-
ing, and twitching for no apparent reason. When asked who was tormenting
them, the girls replied that three women—Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah
138 • C OLONIAL WAYS OF L IFE (CH. 3)

Osborne—were Satan’s servants.

Authorities thereupon arrested the
three accused women. At a special
hearing, the “afflicted” girls rolled
on the floor in convulsive fits as the
accused women were questioned.
Tituba not only confessed to the
charge but also listed others in the
community who she claimed were
performing the devil’s work. Within
a few months the Salem Village jail
was filled with townspeople—men,
women, and children—all accused
of practicing witchcraft.
As the accusations and execu-
tions spread, leaders of the Massa-
chusetts Bay Colony began to worry
that the witch hunts were out of
control. The governor intervened
The Wonders of the Invisible World
when his own wife was accused of
Title page of the 1693 London edition of
serving the devil. He disbanded
Cotton Mather’s account of the Salem
witchcraft cases. Mather, a prominent the special court in Salem and
Boston minister, advocated the admission of ordered the remaining suspects
“spectral” evidence in witchcraft trials and released. A year after it had
warned his congregation that the devil’s begun, the frenzy was finally over.
legions were assaulting New England.
Nineteen people (including some
men married to women who had been convicted) had been hanged, one
man—the courageous Giles Corey—was pressed to death with heavy stones
for refusing to sacrifice family and friends to the demands of the court, and
more than one hundred others were jailed. Nearly everybody responsible for
the Salem executions later recanted, and nothing quite like it happened in
the colonies again.
What explains Salem’s witchcraft hysteria? It may have represented
nothing more than theatrical adolescents trying to enliven the dreary rou-
tine of everyday life. Yet adults pressed the formal charges against the
accused and provided most of the testimony. This fact has led some schol-
ars to speculate that long-festering local feuds and property disputes may
have triggered the prosecutions. More recently, historians have focused
on the most salient feature of the accused witches: most of them were
women. Many of the supposed witches, it turns out, had in some way
 Society and Economy in the Middle Colonies • 139

defied the traditional roles assigned to females. Some had engaged in

business transactions outside the home; others did not attend church;
some were curmudgeons. Most of them were middle-aged or older and
without sons or brothers. They thus stood to inherit property and live
independently. The notion of autonomous spinsters flew in the face of
prevailing social conventions.
Still another interpretation stresses the hysteria caused by frequent Indian
attacks occurring just north of Salem, along New England’s northern fron-
tier. Some of the participants in the witch trials were girls from Maine who
had been orphaned by indigenous violence. The terrifying threat of Indian
attacks created a climate of fear that helped fuel the witchcraft hysteria. “Are
you guilty or not?” the Salem magistrate John Hathorne demanded of
fourteen-year-old Abigail Hobbs in 1692. “I have seen sights and been
scared,” she answered.
Whatever the precise cause, the witchcraft controversy reflected the pecu-
liar social dynamics of the Salem community. Late in 1692, as the hysteria in
Salem subsided, several of the afflicted girls were traveling through nearby
Ipswich when they encountered an old woman resting on a bridge.
“A witch!” they shouted and began writhing as if possessed. But the people
of Ipswich were unimpressed. Passersby showed no interest in the theatrics.
Unable to elicit either sympathy or curiosity, the bewitched girls picked
themselves up and continued on their way.

SOCIETY AND ECONOMY IN THE MIDDLE

COLONIES

Both geographically and culturally, the middle colonies stood between

New England and the South, blending their own influences with elements
derived from the older regions on either side. In so doing, they more com-
pletely reflected the diversity of colonial life and more fully foreshadowed
the pluralism of the American nation than the other regions did.

AN ECONOMIC MIX The primary crops in the middle colonies were

those of New England but more bountiful, owing to more fertile soil and a
longer growing season. They developed surpluses of foodstuffs for export to
the plantations of the South and the West Indies: wheat, barley, oats, and
other cereals, flour, and livestock. Three great rivers—the Hudson, the
Delaware, and the Susquehanna—and their tributaries gave the middle
140 • C OLONIAL WAYS OF L IFE (CH. 3)

colonies ready access to the backcountry and the extremely profitable fur
trade with Indians. As a consequence, the region’s bustling commerce
rivaled that of New England, and indeed Philadelphia in time supplanted
Boston as the largest city in the colonies.
Land policies in the middle colonies followed the headright system of the
South. In New York the early royal governors carried forward, in practice
if not in name, the Dutch device of the patroonship, granting influential
men (called patroons) vast estates on Long Island and throughout the Hud-
son and Mohawk River valleys. The patroons lorded over self-contained
domains farmed by tenants who paid fees to use the landlords’ mills, ware-
houses, smokehouses, and wharves. But with free land available elsewhere,
New York’s population languished, and the new waves of immigrants sought
the promised land of Pennsylvania.

A N U N R U LY E T H N I C M I X In the makeup of their population, the

middle colonies of British North America stood apart from both the mostly
English Puritan settlements and the biracial plantation colonies to the
south. In New York and New Jersey, for instance, Dutch culture and language
lingered, along with the Dutch Reformed Church. Along the Delaware River
the few Swedes and Finns, the first settlers, were overwhelmed by the influx
of English and Welsh Quakers, followed in turn by Germans, Irish, and
Scots-Irish. By the mid-eighteenth century, the middle colonies were the
fastest growing area in North America.
The Germans came to America (primarily Pennsylvania) mainly from the
war-torn Rhineland region of Europe. (Until German unification, in 1871, eth-
nic Germans—those Europeans speaking German as their native language—
lived in a variety of areas and principalities in central Europe.) William
Penn’s recruiting brochures encouraging settlement in Pennsylvania circu-
lated throughout central Europe in German translation, and his promise of
religious freedom appealed to persecuted sects, especially the Mennonites,
German Baptists whose beliefs resembled those of the Quakers.
In 1683 a group of Mennonites founded Germantown, near Philadelphia.
They were the vanguard of a swelling migration in the eighteenth century
that included Lutherans, Reformed Calvinists, Moravians, and members of
other evangelical German sects, a large proportion of whom paid their way
as indentured servants, or “redemptioners,” as they were commonly
called. West of Philadelphia they created an expanding belt of German set-
tlements in which the “Pennsylvania Dutch” (a corruption of Deutsch,
meaning “German”) predominated, as well as a channel for the dispersion of
German populations throughout the colonies. The relentless waves of
 Society and Economy in the Middle Colonies • 141

German immigrants during the eighteenth century alarmed many English

colonists. Benjamin Franklin expressed the fear of many that the Germans
“will soon . . . outnumber us.”
The feisty Scots-Irish began to arrive later and moved still farther out into
the backcountry throughout the eighteenth century. (“Scotch-Irish” is an
enduring misnomer for Ulster Scots or Scots-Irish, mostly Presbyterians
transplanted from Scotland to northern Ireland to give that Catholic coun-
try a more Protestant tone.) During the eighteenth century these people
were more often called “Irish” than “Scots-Irish,” a term later preferred by
their descendants. Catholic-Protestant tensions, political persecution, and
economic disaster caused a quarter-million migrants from northern Ireland
to settle in America during the eighteenth century. Most arrived in Philadel-
phia, then gravitated to the backwoods of Pennsylvania before streaming
southward into the fertile valleys stretching southwestward into Virginia and
western Carolina. Land was the great magnet attracting the waves of Scots-
Irish settlers. They were, said a recruiting agent, “full of expectation to have
land for nothing” and were “unwilling to be disappointed.” In most cases, the
lands they “squatted on” were owned and occupied by Indians. In 1741 a
group of Delaware Indians protested to Pennsylvania authorities that the
Scots-Irish intruders were taking “our land” without giving “us anything for
it.” If the government did not intervene, the Indians threatened, then they
would “drive them off.”
The Scots-Irish and Germans became the largest non-English elements in
the colonies. Other minority ethnic groups enriched the population in New
York and the Quaker colonies: Huguenots (Protestants whose religious free-
dom had been revoked in Catholic France in 1685), Irish, Welsh, Swiss, and
Jews. New York had inherited from the Dutch a tradition of ethnic and reli-
gious tolerance, which had given the colony a diverse population before the
English conquest: French-speaking Walloons (a Celtic people of southern Bel-
gium), French, Germans, Danes, Portuguese, Spaniards, Italians, Bohemians,
Poles, and others, including some New England Puritans. The Sephardic Jews who
landed in New Amsterdam in 1654 quickly founded a synagogue there.

T H E B A C KC O U N T R Y Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century became

the great distribution point for the different ethnic groups of European
origin, just as the Chesapeake Bay region and Charleston, South Carolina,
became the distribution points for African peoples. Before the mid–
eighteenth century, settlers in the Pennsylvania backcountry had trespassed
across Indian lands and reached the Appalachian mountain range.
Rather than crossing the steep ridges, the Scots-Irish and Germans filtered
 Quebec

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What attracted German immigrants to the middle colonies? Why did

the Scots-Irish spread across the Appalachian backcountry? What
major population changes were reflected in the 1790 census?
 Colonial Cities • 143

southward down the Shenandoah River valley of Virginia and on into the
Carolina and Georgia backcountry. Germans were the first white settlers in
the upper Shenandoah Valley, and Scots-Irish filled the lower valley. Feisty,
determined, and rugged, the Germans and Scots-Irish settlers confiscated
Indian lands, built robustly evangelical churches, and established con-
tentious rustic communities along the frontier of settlement.

COLONIAL CITIES

During the seventeenth century the American colonies remained in

comparative isolation from one another, evolving distinctive folkways and
unfolding separate histories. Residents of Boston, New York, Philadelphia,
and Charleston were more likely to keep in close touch with people in Lon-
don than with one another. Since commerce was their chief purpose, colo-
nial cities hugged the coastline or, like Philadelphia, sprang up on rivers that
could be navigated by oceangoing vessels. Never holding more than 10 per-
cent of the colonial population, the large coastal cities exerted a dispropor-
tionate influence on commerce, politics, and culture. By the end of the
colonial period, Philadelphia, with some 30,000 people, was the largest city
in the colonies and second only to London in the British Empire. New York
City, with about 25,000, ranked second; Boston numbered 16,000; Charles-
ton, 12,000; and Newport, Rhode Island, 11,000.

T H E S O C I A L A N D P O L I T I C A L O R D E R The urban social elite was

dominated by wealthy merchants and a middle class of retailers, innkeepers,
and artisans. Almost two thirds of the urban male workers were artisans,
people who made their living at handicrafts. They included carpenters and
coopers (barrel makers), shoemakers and tailors, silversmiths and black-
smiths, sailmakers, stonemasons, weavers, and potters. At the bottom of the
pecking order were sailors and unskilled workers.
Class stratification in the cities became more pronounced as time passed.
One study of Boston found that in 1687 the richest 15 percent of the popula-
tion held 52 percent of the taxable wealth; by 1771 the top 15 percent held
about 67 percent and the top 5 percent contributed some 44 percent of the
city’s wealth. In Philadelphia and Charleston the concentration of wealth
was even more pronounced.
Colonial cities were busy, crowded, and dangerous. Frequent fires led to
building codes, restrictions on burning rubbish, and the organization of fire
companies. Rising crime and violence required formal police departments.
144 • C OLONIAL WAYS OF L IFE (CH. 3)

Colonists brought with them to

America the English principle of
public responsibility for the
poor and homeless. The number
of Boston’s poor receiving public
assistance rose from 500 in 1700 to
4,000 in 1736; in New York the
number rose from 250 in 1698 to
5,000 in the 1770s. Most of the
public assistance went to “out-
door” relief in the form of money,
food, clothing, and fuel. Alms-
houses were built to house the
destitute.

THE URBAN WEB Transit

within and between colonial cities
The Rapalje Children was initially difficult. The first
John Durand (ca. 1768). These children of roads were Indian trails, which
a wealthy Brooklyn merchant wear clothing were widened with travel, then
typical of upper-crust urban society.
made into roads. Land travel was
initially by horse or by foot. The first public stagecoach line opened in 1732.
Taverns were an important aspect of colonial travel, as movement at night
was treacherous. (During the colonial era it was said that when the Spanish
settled an area, they would first build a church; the Dutch, in their settle-
ments, would first construct a fort; and the English, in theirs, would first
erect a tavern.) By the end of the seventeenth century, there were more tav-
erns in America than any other business. Indeed, taverns became the most
important social institution in the colonies—and the most democratic. By
1690 there were fifty-four taverns in Boston alone, half of them operated by
women. Colonial taverns and inns were places to drink, relax, read a newspa-
per, play cards or billiards, gossip about people or politics, learn news from
travelers, or conduct business. Local ordinances regulated them, setting
prices and usually prohibiting them from serving liquor to African Ameri-
cans, Indians, servants, or apprentices.
In 1726 a concerned Bostonian wrote a letter to the community, declaring
that “the abuse of strong Drink is becoming Epidemical among us, and it is
very justly Supposed . . . that the Multiplication of Taverns has contributed
not a little to this Excess of Riot and Debauchery.” Despite the objections by
some that crowded taverns engendered disease and unruly behavior, colonial
 Colonial Cities • 145

Taverns
A tobacconist’s business card from 1770 captures the atmosphere of late-
eighteenth-century taverns. Here men in a Philadelphia tavern converse while
they drink ale and smoke pipes.

taverns and inns continued to proliferate. By the mid–eighteenth century,

they would become the gathering place for protests against British rule.
The eighteenth century was a period of rapid expansion and soaring
population growth in British North America, during which the colonies
grew much more diverse. A rough estimate of the national origins of the
white population as of 1790 found it to be 61 percent English; 14 percent
Scottish and Scots-Irish; 9 percent German; 5 percent Dutch, French, and
Swedish; 4 percent Irish; and 7 percent miscellaneous or unassigned. If one
adds to the 3,172,444 whites in the 1790 census the 756,770 nonwhites,
without even considering uncounted Indians, it seems likely that only
about half the nation’s inhabitants, perhaps fewer, could trace their origins
to England.
More reliable mail delivery gave rise to newspapers in the eighteenth cen-
tury. Before 1745 twenty-two newspapers had been started: seven in New
England, ten in the middle colonies, and five in the South. An important
landmark in the progress of freedom of the press was John Peter Zenger’s
trial for publishing criticisms of New York’s governor in his newspaper, the
New York Weekly Journal. Zenger was imprisoned for ten months and
brought to trial in 1735. English common law held that one might be pun-
ished for “libel,” or criticism that fostered “an ill opinion of the government.”
146 • C OLONIAL WAYS OF L IFE (CH. 3)

Zenger’s lawyer startled the court with his claim that the editor had pub-
lished the truth—which the judge ruled an unacceptable defense. The jury,
however, held the editor not guilty. The libel law remained standing as
before, but editors thereafter were emboldened to criticize officials more
freely.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT IN AMERICA

By the middle of the eighteenth century, the thirteen colonies were

rapidly growing and maturing. Schools and colleges were springing up, and
the standard of living was rising as well. More and more colonists had easier
access to the latest consumer goods—and the latest ideas percolating in
Europe. Through their commercial contacts, newspapers, and other chan-
nels, colonial cities became centers for the dissemination of new ideas. Most
significant was a burst of intellectual activity known as the Enlightenment
that originated in Europe and soon spread to the colonies. Like the Renais-
sance, the Enlightenment celebrated rational inquiry, scientific research, and
individual freedom. Curious people wanted to dissect the workings of
nature by close observation, scientific experimentation, and precise calcula-
tion. Unlike their Renaissance predecessors, however, many enlightened
thinkers during the eighteenth century were willing to discard orthodox reli-
gious beliefs in favor of more “rational” ideas and ideals.

D I S C O V E R I N G T H E L AW S O F N AT U R E One manifestation of the

Enlightenment was a scientific revolution in which the ancient view of an
earth-centered universe, which reinforced Christian mythology, was over-
thrown in the early sixteenth century by the controversial heliocentric (sun-
centered) solar system proposed by the Polish cleric Nicolaus Copernicus.
His discovery that the earth orbits the sun was more than controversial; in
an age governed by religious orthodoxy, it was heretical.
The climax to the scientific revolution came with Sir Isaac Newton’s the-
ory of gravitation, which he announced in 1687. Newton challenged biblical
notions of the cosmos by depicting a mechanistic universe moving in accor-
dance with natural laws that could be grasped by human reason and
explained by mathematics. He implied that natural laws govern all things—
the orbits of the planets and the orbits of human relations: politics, econom-
ics, and society. Reason could make people aware, for instance, that the
natural law of supply and demand governs economics or that the natural
 The Enlightenment in America • 147

rights to life, liberty, and property determine the limits and functions of
government.
When people carried Newton’s scientific outlook to its ultimate logic, as
the Deists did, the idea of natural law reduced God from a daily presence to a
remote Creator who planned the universe and set it in motion but no longer
interacted with the earth and its people. Evil in the world, in this view,
results not from original sin and innate depravity so much as from igno-
rance, an imperfect understanding of the laws of nature. The best way, there-
fore, to improve both society and human nature was by the application and
improvement of Reason, which was the highest Virtue (Enlightenment
thinkers often capitalized both words).

T H E AG E O F R E A S O N I N A M E R I C A Such illuminating ideas pro-

foundly affected the climate of thought in the eighteenth century. The
premises of Newtonian science and the Enlightenment, moreover, fitted the
American experience, which placed a premium on observation, experiment,
reason, and the need to think anew. America was therefore especially recep-
tive to the new science. Benjamin Franklin epitomized the Enlightenment
in the eyes of both Americans and Europeans. Born in Boston in 1706, a
descendant of Puritans, Franklin left home at the age of seventeen, bound
for Philadelphia. There, before he was twenty-four, he owned a print shop,
where he edited and published the Pennsylvania Gazette. When he was
twenty-six, he published Poor Richard’s Almanack, a collection of homely
maxims on success and happiness. Before he retired from business, at the age
of forty-two, Franklin, among other achievements, had founded a library,
organized a fire company, helped start the academy that became the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania, and organized a debating club that grew into the
American Philosophical Society.
Franklin was devoted to science and the scientific method. Skeptical and
curious, pragmatic and irreverent, he was a voracious reader and an inventive
genius. His wide-ranging experiments traversed the fields of medicine, meteo-
rology, geology, astronomy, and physics, among others. He developed the
Franklin stove, the lightning rod, and a glass harmonica.
Franklin’s love of commonsensical reason and his pragmatic skepticism
clashed with prevailing religious beliefs. Although raised as a Presbyterian,
he became a freethinker who had no patience with religious orthodoxy and
sectarian squabbles. Franklin prized reason over revelation. He was not bur-
dened with anxieties regarding the state of his soul. Early on, he abandoned
the Calvinist assumption that God had predestined salvation for a select few.
148 • C OLONIAL WAYS OF L IFE (CH. 3)

He grew skeptical of the divinity of

Jesus and the authenticity of the Bible
as God’s word. Franklin quit attend-
ing church as a young man. Like the
European Deists, he came to believe
in a God that had created a universe
animated by natural laws, laws that
inquisitive people could discern
through the use of reason.
Benjamin Franklin and other like-
minded thinkers, such as Thomas Jef-
ferson and James Madison, derived an
outlook of hope and optimism from
modern science and Enlightenment
rationalism. Unlike Calvinists, they
believed people have the capacity,
Benjamin Franklin through rational analysis, to unlock
A champion of reason, Franklin was an the mysteries of the universe and
inventor, philosopher, entrepreneur, thereby shape their own destinies.
and statesman.
“The rapid Progress true Science now
makes,” as Franklin wrote, led him to
regret being “born too soon.” Jefferson concurred. He, too, envisioned a
bright future for humankind: “As long as we may think as we will and speak as
we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement.” The evangeli-
cal religiosity of traveling revivalists disgusted Jefferson. His “fundamental
principle” was that reason, not emotion and “blindfolded fear,” should
inform decision making: “We are saved by our good works, which are within
our power, and not by our faith, which is not in our power.” Jefferson warned
against those “despots” in religion and politics who resisted change and still
wanted to dictate belief.
Such enlightened thinking, founded on freedom of thought and expres-
sion, could not have been more different from the religious assumptions
that had shaped Puritan New England in the seventeenth century. The
eighteenth-century Enlightenment thus set in motion intellectual forces in
the colonies that challenged the “truthfulness” of revealed religion and the
logic of Christian faith. Those modern forces, however, would inspire stern
resistance among the defenders of religious orthodoxy.

E D U C AT I O N I N T H E C O L O N I E SWhite colonial Americans were

among the most literate people in the world. Almost ninety percent of men
 The Enlightenment in America • 149

(more than in England) could

read. For the colonists at large,
education in the traditional ideas
and manners of society—even lit-
eracy itself—remained primarily
the responsibility of family and
church. The modern conception
of free public education was slow
in coming and failed to win uni-
versal acceptance until the twenti-
eth century. Yet colonists were
concerned from the beginning
that steps needed to be taken to
educate their young.
Conditions in New England
proved most favorable for the
establishment of schools. The
Puritan emphasis on reading
Scripture, which all Protestants Colonial education
shared to some degree, implied an A page from the rhymed alphabet of The
obligation to ensure literacy. And New England Primer, a popular American
the compact towns of New Eng- textbook first published in the 1680s.
land made schools more feasible
than they were among the scattered settlers of the southern colonies. In 1647
the Massachusetts Bay Colony enacted the famous “ye olde deluder Satan”
act (designed to thwart the evil one), which required every town of fifty or
more families to set up a grammar school (a “Latin school” that could pre-
pare a student for college). Although the act was widely evaded, it did signify
a serious attempt to promote education.
The Dutch in New Netherland were as interested in education as the New
England Puritans. In Pennsylvania the Quakers never heeded William Penn’s
instructions to establish public schools, but they did finance a number of
private schools, where practical as well as academic subjects were taught. In
the southern colonies, efforts to establish schools were hampered by the
more scattered population and, in parts of the backcountry, by indifference
and neglect. Some of the wealthiest southern planters and merchants sent
their children to England or hired tutors. In some places wealthy patrons or
the people collectively managed to raise some kind of support for “old field”
schools (primitive one-room buildings usually made of logs) and academies
at the secondary level.
150 • C OLONIAL WAYS OF L IFE (CH. 3)

T H E G R E AT AWA K E N I N G

Religion was put on the defensive by the rational emphases of the

Enlightenment and the growing materialism of eighteenth century life. But
religious fervor has always shown remarkable resilience in the face of new ideas
and secular forces. During the early eighteenth century, the American colonies
experienced a widespread revival of religious zeal. Hundreds of new congrega-
tions were founded between 1700 and 1750. Most Americans (85 percent) lived
in colonies with an “established” church, meaning that the government offi-
cially sanctioned—and collected taxes to support—a single official denomina-
tion. Anglicanism was the established church in Virginia, Maryland, Delaware,
and the Carolinas. Congregationalism was the official faith in New England. In
New York, Anglicanism vied with the Dutch Reformed Church for control.
Pennsylvania had no single state-supported church, but Quakers dominated
the legislative assembly. New Jersey and Rhode Island had no official denomi-
nation and hosted numerous sects.
Most colonies with an established church organized religious life on the
basis of well-regulated local parishes, which defined their borders and
defended them against dissenters and heretics. No outside preacher could
enter the parish and speak in public without permission. Then, in the 1740s,
the parish system was thrown into turmoil by the arrival of outspoken trav-
eling (itinerant) evangelists, who claimed that the parish ministers were
incompetent. The evangelists also insisted that Christians must be “reborn” in
their convictions and behavior; traditional creeds or articles of faith were
unnecessary for rebirth. By emphasizing the individualistic strand embedded
in Protestantism, the so-called Great Awakening ended up invigorating—
and fragmenting—American religious life. Unlike the Enlightenment, which
affected primarily the intellectual elite, the Great Awakening appealed to the
masses and spawned Protestant evangelicalism. It was the first popular move-
ment before the American Revolution that spanned all thirteen colonies. As
Benjamin Franklin observed of the Awakening, “Never did the people show
so great a willingness to attend sermons. Religion is become the subject of
most conversation.”

F I R S T S T I R R I N G S During the early eighteenth century the currents of

rationalism stimulated by the Enlightenment aroused concerns among
orthodox believers in Calvinism. Many pesople seemed to be drifting away
from the moorings of piety. And out along the fringes of settlement, many of
the colonists were unchurched. On the frontier, people had no minister to
preach to them or administer sacraments or perform marriages. According
 The Great Awakening • 151

to some ministers, these pioneers had lapsed into a primitive and sinful life,
little different from that of the “heathen” Indians. By the 1730s the sense of
religious decline had provoked the Great Awakening.
In 1734–1735 a remarkable spiritual revival occurred in the congregation
of Jonathan Edwards, a Congregationalist minister in Northampton, in
western Massachusetts. One of America’s most brilliant philosophers and
theologians, Edwards had entered Yale College in 1716, at age thirteen, and
graduated as valedictorian four years later. In 1727, Edwards was called to
serve the Congregational church in Northampton. He was shocked at the
town’s tepid spirituality. Edwards claimed that the young people of
Northampton were addicted to sinful pleasures, such as “night walking and
frequenting the tavern”; they indulged in “lewd practices” that “exceedingly
corrupted others.” Christians, he believed, had become preoccupied with
making and spending money. Religion had lost its emotional force. Edwards
lambasted Deists for believing that “God has given mankind no other light
to walk by but their own reason.” Edwards resolved to restore deeply felt
spirituality. “Our people,” he said, “do not so much need to have their heads
stored [with new knowledge] as to have their hearts touched.” His own vivid
descriptions of the torments of hell and the delights of heaven helped rekin-
dle spiritual fervor among his congregants. By 1735, Edwards could report
that “the town seemed to be full of the
presence of God; it never was so full of
love, nor of joy.” To judge the power of
the religious awakening, he thought,
one need only observe that “it was no
longer the Tavern” that drew local
crowds, “but the Minister’s House.”
The Great Awakening saved souls
but split churches. At about the same
time that Jonathan Edwards was pro-
moting revivals in New England,
William Tennent, an Irish-born Pres-
byterian revivalist, was stirring souls
in Pennsylvania. He and his sons
shocked Presbyterian officials by
claiming that many of the local minis-
Jonathan Edwards
ters were “cold and sapless”; they
One of the foremost preachers of the
showed no evidence of themselves Great Awakening, Edwards dramati-
having experienced a convincing con- cally described the torments that
version experience, nor were they awaited sinners in the afterlife.
152 • C OLONIAL WAYS OF L IFE (CH. 3)

willing to “thrust the nail of terror into sleeping souls.” Tennent’s oldest son,
Gilbert, defended their aggressive (and often illegal) tactics by explaining
that he and other traveling evangelists invaded parishes only when the “set-
tled ministry” showed no interest in the “Getting of Grace and Growing in
it.” The Tennents caused great consternation because they and other unau-
thorized ministers offered a compelling fire-and-brimstone alternative to
the settled parish preachers. They promoted a passionate piety, and they
refused to accept the prevailing structure of denominations and clerical
authority. Competition was emerging in colonial religious life.
The great catalyst of the Great Awakening was a young English minister,
George Whitefield, whose reputation as a spellbinding evangelist preceded him
to the colonies. Congregations were lifeless, he claimed, “because dead men
preach to them.” Too many ministers were “slothful shepherds and dumb dogs.”
His objective was to restore the fires of religious fervor to American congrega-
tions. In the autumn of 1739, Whitefield, then twenty-five, arrived in Philadel-
phia and began preaching to huge crowds. After visiting Georgia, he made a
triumphal procession northward to New England, drawing thousands and
releasing “Gales of Heavenly Wind” that blew gusts throughout the colonies.
The cross-eyed Whitefield enthralled audiences with his golden voice, flam-
boyant style, and unparalleled eloquence. Even the skeptical Benjamin Franklin,
who went to see Whitefield preach in
Philadelphia, was so carried away that
he emptied his pockets into the collec-
tion plate. Whitefield urged his listeners
to experience a “new birth”—a sudden,
emotional moment of conversion and
salvation. By the end of his sermon, one
listener reported, the entire congrega-
tion was “in utmost Confusion, some
crying out, some laughing, and Bliss still
roaring to them to come to Christ, as
they answered, I will, I will, I’m coming,
I’m coming.”
Jonathan Edwards took advantage
of the commotion stirred up by White-
field to spread his own revival gospel
George Whitefield
throughout New England. The Awak-
The English minister’s dramatic elo-
quence roused American congregants,
ening reached its peak in 1741 when
inspiring many to experience a Edwards delivered his most famous
religious rebirth. sermon at Enfield, Massachusetts (in
 The Great Awakening • 153

present-day Connecticut). Titled “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” it

represented a devout appeal to repentance. Edwards reminded his congregation
that hell is real and that God’s vision is omnipotent, his judgment certain. He
noted that God “holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or
some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked . . .
he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire.” When
Edwards finished, he had to wait several minutes for the congregants to quiet
down before leading them in a closing hymn.
The Great Awakening encompassed a worldwide resurgence of evangelical
Protestantism and “enthusiastic” expressions of faith. Women, both white
and black, were believed to be more susceptible to fits of spiritual emotion
than men. The Tennents, Whitefield, and other traveling evangelists thus
targeted women because of their spiritual virtuosity. Whitefield and the
other ecstatic evangelists believed that conversion required a visceral, emo-
tional experience.
Convulsions, shrieks, and spasms were the physical manifestation of the
Holy Spirit at work, and women seemed more willing to let the Spirit move
them. Some of the revivalists, especially Baptists, initially loosened traditional
restrictions on female participation in worship. Scores of women served as lay
exhorters, including Bathsheba Kingsley, who stole her husband’s horse in 1741
to spread the gospel among her rural neighbors after receiving “immediate rev-
elations from heaven.” Similarly, Mary Reed of Durham, New Hampshire, so
enthralled her minister with her effusions of the Holy Spirit that he allowed her
to deliver spellbinding testimonials to the congregation every Wednesday
evening for two months. Such ecstatic piety was symptomatic of the Awaken-
ing’s rekindling of religious enthusiasm. Yet most ministers who encouraged
public expressions of female piety refused to embrace the more controversial
idea of allowing women to participate in congregational governance. Churches
remained male bastions of political authority.
Edwards and Whitefield were selfless promoters of Christian revivalism
who insisted on the central role of the emotions in spiritual life. They
inspired many imitators, some of whom carried emotional evangelism to
extremes. Once unleashed, spiritual enthusiasm is hard to control. In many
ways the Awakening backfired on those who had intended it to bolster
church discipline and social order. Some of the revivalists began to stir up
those at the bottom of society—laborers, seamen, servants, slaves, and farm
folk. The Reverend James Davenport, for instance, a fiery New England Con-
gregationalist, set about shouting, raging, and stomping on the devil,
beseeching his listeners to renounce the established clergy and become the
agents of their own salvation. The churched and unchurched flocked to his
154 • C OLONIAL WAYS OF L IFE (CH. 3)

theatrical sermons. Seized by terror and ecstasy, they groveled on the floor or
lay unconscious on the benches, much to the chagrin of more traditional
churchgoers. Critics of the Awakening decried the emotionalism generated
by the revivalists. They were especially concerned that evangelicals were
encouraging “women, yea, girls to speak” at revivals. One critic of “female
exhorters” reminded congregations of the scriptural commandment “let
your women keep silence in the churches.”

PIETY AND REASON The Great Awakening undermined many of the

established churches by emphasizing that individuals could receive God’s
grace without the assistance of traditional clergy. It also gave people more
religious choices, splitting the Calvinistic churches. Presbyterians divided
into the “Old Side” and the “New Side,” Congregationalists into “Old Light”
and “New Light.” New England religious life would never be the same.
Jonathan Edwards lamented the warring factions. We are “like two armies,”
he said, “separated and drawn up in battle array, ready to fight one another.”
Church members chose sides and either dismissed their ministers or
deserted them. Many of the New Lights went over to the Baptists, and others
flocked to Presbyterian or, later, Methodist groups, which in turn divided
and subdivided into new sects.
New England Puritanism disintegrated amid the emotional revivals of the
Great Awakening. The precarious balance in which the founders had held
the elements of emotionalism and reason collapsed. In addition, the Puritan
ideal of religious uniformity was shattered. The crusty Connecticut Old
Light Isaac Stiles denounced the “intrusion of choice into spiritual matters.”
In Anglican Virginia some fifty Baptist evangelists were jailed for disturbing
the peace during the Great Awakening. New England subsequently attracted
more and more Baptists, Presbyterians, Anglicans, and other denominations
while the revival frenzy scored its most lasting victories along the frontiers of
the middle and southern colonies. In the more sedate churches of Boston,
moreover, the principle of rational religion gained the upper hand in a reac-
tion against the excesses of revival emotion. Boston ministers such as
Charles Chauncey and Jonathan Mayhew found Puritan theology too for-
bidding. To them the concept that people could be forever damned by pre-
destination was irrational.
In reaction to taunts that the “born-again” revivalist ministers lacked learn-
ing, the Awakening gave rise to the denominational colleges that became char-
acteristic of American higher education. The three colleges already in exis-
tence had their origins in religious motives: Harvard College, founded in 1636
because the Puritans dreaded “to leave an illiterate ministry to the church
 The Great Awakening • 155

when our present ministers shall lie in the dust”; the College of William and
Mary, created in 1693 to strengthen the Anglican ministry; and Yale College,
set up in 1701 to educate the Puritans of Connecticut, who believed that Har-
vard was drifting from the strictest orthodoxy. The College of New Jersey, later
Princeton University, was founded by Presbyterians in 1746. In close succes-
sion came King’s College (1754) in New York, later renamed Columbia Uni-
versity, an Anglican institution; the College of Rhode Island (1764), later
called Brown University, which was Baptist; Queens College (1766), later
known as Rutgers, which was Dutch Reformed; and Dartmouth College
(1769), which was Congregationalist and the outgrowth of a school for Indi-
ans. Among the colonial colleges, only the University of Pennsylvania,
founded as the Academy of Philadelphia in 1751, arose from a secular impulse.
The Great Awakening subsided by 1750, although revivalism in Virginia
continued unabated for another twenty years. The Awakening, like its coun-
terpart, the Enlightenment, influenced the American Revolution and set in
motion powerful currents that still flow in American life. It implanted in
American culture the evangelical impulse and the emotional appeal of
revivalism. The movement weakened the status of the old-fashioned clergy
and state-supported churches, encouraged believers to exercise their own
judgment, and thereby weakened habits of deference generally. By encourag-
ing the proliferation of denominations, it heightened the need for toleration
of dissent. But in some respects the counterpoint between the Awakening
and the Enlightenment, between the urgings of the spirit and the logic of
reason, led by different roads to similar ends. Both movements emphasized
the power and right of individual decision making, and both aroused mil-
lennial hopes that America would become the promised land in which
people might attain the perfection of piety or reason, if not both.
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Colonial Differences Agriculture diversified: tobacco was the staple crop in Vir-
ginia, and rice and naval stores were the staples in the Carolinas. Family farms
and a mixed economy characterized the middle and New England colonies,
while plantation agriculture based on slavery became entrenched in the South.
By 1790, German, Scots-Irish, Welsh, and Irish immigrants had settled in the
middle colonies, along with members of religious groups such as Quakers, Jews,
Huguenots, and Mennonites.
• Women in the Colonies English colonists brought their belief systems with
them, including convictions about the inferiority of women. The initial shortage
of women gave way to a more equal gender ratio as women immigrated—alone
and in family groups—thereby enabling a dramatic population growth in the
colonies.
• Indentured Servants In response to the labor shortage in the early years, Vir-
ginia relied on indentured servants. By the end of the seventeenth century,
enslaved Africans had replaced indentured servants in the South. With the sup-
ply of slaves seeming inexhaustible, the Carolinas adopted slavery as its primary
labor source.
• Triangular Trade British America sent raw materials, such as fish and furs, to
England in return for manufactured goods. The colonies participated in the tri-
angular trade with Africa and the Caribbean, building ships and exporting man-
ufactured goods, especially rum, while “importing” slaves from Africa.
• The Enlightenment The attitudes of the Enlightenment were transported along
the trade routes. Isaac Newton’s scientific discoveries culminated in the belief
that Reason could improve society. Benjamin Franklin, who believed that people
could shape their own destinies, became the face of the Enlightenment in
America.
• The Great Awakening Religious diversity in the colonies increased. By the 1730s
a revival of faith, the Great Awakening, swept through the colonies. New congre-
gations formed, as evangelists, who insisted that Christians be “reborn,” chal-
lenged older sects. Individualism, not orthodoxy, was stressed in this first popu-
lar movement in America’s history.
 CHRONOLOGY

1619
1636
1662
First Africans arrive at Jamestown
Harvard College is established
Puritans initiate the “Half-Way Covenant”
1662 Virginia enacts law declaring that children of slave women are
slaves
1691 Royal charter for Massachusetts is established
1692 Salem witchcraft trials
1730s–1740s Great Awakening
1735 John Peter Zenger is tried for seditious libel
1739 Stono Uprising
1739 George Whitefield preaches his first sermon in America, in
Philadelphia
1741 Jonathan Edward preaches “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry
God”

KEY TERMS & NAMES

Elizabeth Lucas Pinckney triangular trade p. 133 Great Awakening p. 150
p. 111
“Half-Way Covenant” Jonathan Edwards p. 151
staple crop, or cash crop p. 136
p. 114 George Whitefield p. 152
Enlightenment p. 146
indentured servants
p. 116 Benjamin Franklin p. 147

4
FROM COLONIES
TO STATES

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• How did the British Empire administer the economy of its

colonies?
• How were colonial governments structured, and how independent
were they of the mother country?
• What were the causes of the French and Indian War?
• How did victory in the French and Indian War affect the British
colonies in North America?
• How and why did British colonial policy change after 1763?
• What were the main motivations and events that led to a break
with the mother country?

T hree great European powers—Spain, France, and England––

took the lead in conquering and colonizing North America
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The English
differed from the Spanish and French in the degree of freedom they initially
allowed their colonies. Unlike New France and New Spain, New England was
in effect a self-governing community. There was much less control by the
mother country in part because England was a less authoritarian, less mili-
taristic, and less centralized nation-state than Spain or France. The monar-
chy shared power with Parliament, and citizens enjoyed specified rights and
privileges. In 1606, for example, the Virginia Company took care in drawing
up its charter to ensure that the colonists who settled in America would
enjoy all the “liberties, franchises, and immunities” of English citizens.
But colonists did not have all the rights of English citizens. The English gov-
ernment insisted that the Americans contribute to the expense of maintaining
 English Administration of the Colonies • 159

the colonies but did not give them a voice in shaping administrative policies.
Such inconsistencies spawned growing grievances and tensions. By the
mid–eighteenth century, when Britain tried to tighten its control of the
colonies, it was too late. Americans had developed a far more powerful sense
of their rights than any other colonial people, and in the 1770s they resolved to
assert and defend those rights against the English government’s efforts to limit
them.

E N G L I S H A D M I N I S T R AT I O N OF THE COLONIES

Throughout the colonial period, the British monarchy was the source
of legal authority in America. The English Civil War (1642–1646) had pro-
found effects in the colonies. It fractured loyalties as colonists divided their
support between the king and Parliament. The civil war also sharply reduced
the inflow of money and people from England to America, created great
confusion about the colonial relationship to the mother country, and kept
the English government from effectively overseeing colonial affairs. The vic-
tory of Oliver Cromwell’s army over royalist forces in the civil war led to the
creation during the 1650s of the Puritan Commonwealth and Protectorate.
As England’s ruler, Cromwell showed little interest in regulating the Ameri-
can colonies, but he had a lively concern for colonial trade. In 1651, there-
fore, Parliament adopted the first in a series of Navigation Acts designed to
increase the nation’s commercial revenues by restricting the economic
freedom of its colonies in ways that would also take commerce away from
their Dutch enemies. The act of 1651 required that all goods imported to
England or the colonies from Asia and Africa be carried only in ships built in
England and owned by Englishmen, ships that also would be captained and
crewed by a majority of English sailors. Colonial merchants resented such
new regulations because they had benefited from Dutch shippers that
charged only two thirds as much as English ships to transport American
products across the Atlantic. English colonists in sugar-rich Barbados and
tobacco-rich Virginia and Maryland initially defied the new law, only to
relent when the English government dispatched warships to enforce the new
requirements. By 1652, England and the Netherlands were at war, the first of
three maritime conflicts that erupted between 1652 and 1674.

T H E M E R C A N T I L E S Y S T E M The Navigation Act of 1651 reflected the

prevailing emphasis of the English and European governments upon an eco-
nomic and political policy known as the mercantile system. Mercantilism
160 • FROM COLONIES TO STATES (CH. 4)

grew out of the prolonged warfare among the major European nations as well
as the growing importance of acquiring foreign colonies. It centered on
the belief that international power and influence depended upon a nation’s
wealth and its ability to become economically self-sufficient. A nation, the
theory went, could gain wealth only at the expense of another nation—by
seizing its gold and silver and dominating its trade. Trade wars began to sup-
plant religious wars. Under mercantilism, the government controlled all
economic activities, limiting foreign imports so as to preserve a favorable
balance of trade whereby exports exceeded imports. This required that the
government promote domestic manufacturers, through subsidies and
monopolies if need be. Mercantilism also required a nation to acquire
colonies that would enrich the mother country by providing the raw materi-
als for goods manufactured in the mother country, goods that would be sold
at home as well as to its colonists.
It was such mercantilist assumptions that prompted England to create
more Navigation Acts to tighten its control over commerce with its
colonies. After the English monarchy was restored in 1660, the new royalist
Parliament passed the Navigation Act of 1660, which ordered that all trade
between the colonies be carried in English ships, three quarters of whose
crews now must be English. The act also specified that certain products from
the colonies were to be shipped only to England or to other English colonies.
The list of “enumerated” products initially included tobacco, cotton, indigo,
ginger, and sugar. Rice, hemp, masts, copper, and furs, among other items,
were added later. Not only did England (and its colonies) become the sole
outlet for those “enumerated” colonial exports, but the Navigation Act of
1663 declared that all colonial imports from Europe to America must stop
first in England, be offloaded, and have a tax paid on them before their
reshipment to the colonies. The Navigation Acts, also called the British Acts
of Trade, gave England a monopoly over the incredibly profitable tobacco
and sugar produced in Maryland, Virginia, and the British-controlled
islands of the West Indies. The acts also increased customs revenues col-
lected in England, channeled all colonial commerce through English mer-
chants (rather than Europeans), enriched English shipbuilders, and required
that only English-owned ships with a majority of English crews could con-
duct trade with Great Britain.
Over time these Navigation Acts ensured that the commercial activities of
the American colonies became ever more important to the economic
strength of the British Empire. In one respect the new regulations worked as
planned: the English by 1700 had supplanted the Dutch as the world’s leading
 English Administration of the Colonies • 161

Boston from the southeast

This view of eighteenth-century Boston shows the importance of shipping and its
regulation in the colonies, especially in Massachusetts Bay.

maritime power. Virtually all of the colonial trade by then was carried in
British ships and passed through British ports on its way to Europe. And by
1700 British North America was prospering at a rate unsurpassed around
the world. What the English government did not predict or fully understand
was that the Navigation Acts would arouse growing resentment, resistance,
and rebellion in the colonies. Colonial merchants and shippers loudly com-
plained that the Navigation Acts were burdensome and costly. But the
British paid no heed. Slowly and erratically, the English government was
developing a more coherent imperial policy exercising greater control over
its wayward transatlantic colonies, and for a while, this policy worked.
The actual enforcement of the Navigation Acts was spotty, however.
Americans found ingenious ways to avoid the regulations. Smuggling was
rampant. In 1675, Charles II designated the Lords of Trade, a new govern-
ment agency, to force the colonies to abide by the mercantile system. The
royal governors in the colonies thereafter reported to the Lords of Trade.
During the 1670s, the government appointed collectors of customs duties
(fees levied on imports/exports) in all the colonies. In 1678 a defiant Massa-
chusetts legislature declared that the Navigation Acts had no legal standing
in the colony. Six years later, in 1684, the Lords of Trade tried to teach the
rebellious colonists a lesson by annulling the charter of Massachusetts.
162 • FROM COLONIES TO STATES (CH. 4)

THE DOMINION OF NEW ENGLAND In 1685, King Charles II died

and was succeeded by his brother, the Duke of York, as James II, the first
Catholic sovereign since the death of Queen Mary in 1558. To impress upon
the colonies their subordinate status and institute tighter regulatory con-
trols, the new king approved a proposal to consolidate the New England
colonies into a single royal colony called the Dominion of New England that
would undermine the authority of Puritanism and abolish elected assem-
blies. The Dominion was to have a government named by royal authority; a
governor and council would rule without any legislative assembly. In 1686
the newly appointed royal governor, the authoritarian Sir Edmund Andros,
arrived in Boston to take control of the new Dominion of New England. A
rising resentment greeted Andros’s measures. Andros levied taxes, sup-
pressed town governments, enforced the Navigation Acts, and punished
smugglers. Most ominous of all, Andros and his lieutenants took control of a
Puritan church in Boston and began using it for Anglican services.

T H E G L O R I O U S R E VO L U T I O N I N A M E R I C A The Dominion of
New England was scarcely established before the Glorious Revolution
erupted in England in 1688. When news reached Boston that James II had
fled to France and that William was the new king of England, the city staged
its own bloodless revolution. Merchants, ministers, and militias (citizen-
soldiers) mobilized to arrest the hated Governor Andros and his aides, seize
a royal ship in Boston harbor, and remove Massachusetts from the hated
Dominion. The other colonies that had been absorbed into the Dominion
followed suit. All were permitted to revert to their former status except
Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth, which, after some delay, were united
under a new charter in 1691 as the royal colony of Massachusetts Bay.
The new British monarchs, William and Mary, were determined to
reassert royal control in America. To that end, they appointed new royal gov-
ernors in Massachusetts, New York, and Maryland. In Massachusetts the new
governor was given authority to veto acts of the assembly, and he removed
the Puritans’ religious qualification for voting. Maryland did not remain a
royal colony long; it reverted to proprietary status in 1715, after the fourth
Lord Baltimore became Anglican. Pennsylvania had an even briefer career as
a royal colony, from 1692 to 1694, before reverting to William Penn’s propri-
etorship. New Jersey became a royal province in 1702, South Carolina in
1719, North Carolina in 1729, and Georgia in 1752.
The Glorious Revolution had significant long-term effects on American
history in that the Bill of Rights and the Act of Toleration, passed in England
in 1689, influenced attitudes and events in the colonies. Even more significant,
 English Administration of the Colonies • 163

the overthrow of James II set a precedent for the removal of a hated

monarch. The justification for revolution appeared in 1690 when the Eng-
lish philosopher John Locke published his Two Treatises on Government,
which had an enormous impact on political thought in the colonies. Locke
refuted the prevailing theories of the “divine” right of kings to govern with
absolute power. He also insisted that people are endowed with “natural
rights” to life, liberty, and property. The need to protect those “natural”
rights led people to establish governments. When rulers failed to protect the
property and lives of their subjects, Locke argued, the people had the right—
in extreme cases—to overthrow the monarch and change the government.

AN EMERGING COLONIAL SYSTEM Many colonists were disap-

pointed when William and Mary, the new British monarchs, strengthened
the Navigation Acts. The Act to Prevent Frauds and Abuses of 1696 required
colonial governors to enforce the trade laws, allowed customs officials to use
“writs of assistance” (general search warrants that did not have to specify the
place to be searched), and ordered that accused smugglers be tried in royal
“admiralty” courts (because colonial juries habitually refused to convict
their peers). Admiralty cases were decided by judges whom the royal gover-
nors appointed.
From 1696 to 1725, the Board of Trade sought to impose more efficient
royal control over the colonies. But colonists continued to resist. They lob-
bied against the various Navigation Acts, challenged them in court, and
resisted them by smuggling, bribery, fraudulent bookkeeping, and even vio-
lence. The fifty or so British customs officials struggled to police hundreds of
American vessels operating along a thousand miles of jagged coastline.
After the death of Queen Anne, in 1714, efforts to enforce the commercial
restrictions and collect customs duties waned. The throne went in turn to
George I (r. 1714–1727) and George II (r. 1727–1760), German princes who
were next in the Protestant line of succession by virtue of descent from
James I. Under these monarchs, the cabinet emerged as the central agency of
royal administration. Robert Walpole, the long-serving prime minister
(1721–1742) and lord of the treasury, believed that the American colonies
should be let alone to export needed raw materials (timber, tobacco, rice,
indigo) and to buy various manufactured goods from the mother country.
Under Walpole’s leadership Britain followed a policy of “a wise and salutary
neglect” that gave the colonies greater freedom to pursue their economic
interests and claim greater political freedoms. What he did not realize was
that such “salutary neglect” would create among many colonists an inde-
pendent attitude that would blossom into revolution.
164 • FROM COLONIES TO STATES (CH. 4)

THE HABIT OF S E L F- G OV E R N M E N T

Government within the diverse American colonies evolved without

plan. In broad outline, the governor, council, and assembly in each colony
corresponded to the king, lords, and commons in England. Over the years
certain anomalies appeared as colonial governments diverged from that of
England. On the one hand, the governors retained powers and prerogatives
that the king had lost in the course of the seventeenth century. On the other
hand, the assemblies acquired powers, particularly with respect to govern-
ment appointments, that Parliament had yet to gain for itself.

P O W E R S O F T H E R O YA L G O V E R N E R S English monarchs never

vetoed acts of Parliament after 1707, but the colonial royal governors, most
of whom were mediocre or incompetent, still held an absolute veto over the
assemblies. As chief executives, the governors could appoint and remove
officials, command the militia, and grant pardons. In these respects their
authority resembled the Crown’s, for the king still exercised executive
authority and had the power to name administrative officials. For the king,
those powers often strengthened an effective royal influence in Parliament,
since the king could appoint members or their friends to lucrative offices.
While this arrangement might seem a breeding ground for corruption or
tyranny, it was often viewed in the eighteenth century as a stabilizing influ-
ence, especially by the king’s friends. But it was an influence less and less
available to the governors as the authorities in England more and more drew
the control of colonial patronage into their own hands.

P OW E R S O F T H E C O LO N I A L A S S E M B L I E S The English colonies

in America, unlike their counterparts under Spanish rule, benefited from
elected legislative assemblies. Whether called the House of Burgesses (Vir-
ginia), Delegates (Maryland), Representatives (Massachusetts), or simply
the assembly, the “lower” houses were chosen by popular vote in counties,
towns, or, in South Carolina, parishes. Not all colonists could vote, however.
Only male property owners could vote, based upon the notion that only
men who held a tangible “stake in society” could vote responsibly. Because
property holding was widespread in America, a greater proportion of the
population could vote in the colonies than anywhere else in the world.
Women, Indians, and African Americans were excluded from the political
process—as a matter of course—and continued to be excluded for the most
part into the twentieth century. Members of the colonial assemblies tended
to be wealthy, prominent figures, but there were exceptions. One unsympa-
 Troubled Neighbors • 165

thetic colonist observed in 1744 that the New Jersey Assembly “was chiefly
composed of mechanicks and ignorant wretches; obstinate to the last
degree.”
The most profound political trend during the early eighteenth century
was the growing power exercised by the colonial assemblies. Like Parliament,
the assemblies controlled the budget by their right to vote on taxes and
expenditures, and they held the power to initiate legislation. Most of the
colonial assemblies also exerted leverage on the royal governors by control-
ling their salaries. Throughout the eighteenth century the assemblies
expanded their power and influence, sometimes in conflict with the gover-
nors, sometimes in harmony with them. Self-government in America
became first a habit, then a “right.” By the mid–eighteenth century, the
American colonies had become largely self-governing

TROUBLED NEIGHBORS

S PA N I S H A M E R I C A I N D E C L I N E By the start of the eighteenth cen-

tury, the Spanish controlled a huge colonial empire spanning much of North
America. Yet their sparsely populated settlements in the borderlands north
of Mexico were small and weak when compared with the North American
colonies of the other European powers. The Spanish failed to create thriving
colonies in what is now the American Southwest for several reasons. The
region lacked the gold and silver that attracted the Spanish to Mexico and
Peru. In addition, the Spanish were distracted by their need to control the
perennial unrest among the Indians and the mestizos (people of mixed
Indian and European ancestry). Moreover, the Spaniards who led the colo-
nization effort in the Southwest failed to produce settlements with self-
sustaining economies. Instead, the Spanish concentrated on building
Catholic missions and forts and looking—in vain—for gold. Whereas the
French and the English based their Indian policies on trade (which included
supplying Indians with firearms), Spain emphasized the conversion of
indigenous peoples to Catholicism, forbade manufacturing within its
colonies, and strictly limited trade with the Indians.

NEW FRANCE French settlements in the New World differed consider-

ably from both the Spanish and the English models. The French settlers were
predominantly male but much smaller in number than the English and
Spanish settlers. Although the population of France was three times that
of Spain, only about 40,000 French came to the New World during the
166 • FROM COLONIES TO STATES (CH. 4)

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This forced the French to develop

cooperative relationships with the Indians. Unlike the English colonists, the
French typically established fur-trading outposts rather than farms, mostly
along the St. Lawrence River, on land not claimed by Indians. They thus did
not have to confront initial hostility from Indians; they lived among them.
French traders sometimes served as mediators among rival Great Lakes
tribes. This diplomatic role gave them much more influence among the
Indians than their English counterparts had.
French settlement of North America began when the enterprising Samuel de
Champlain landed on the shores of the St. Lawrence River in 1603 and, two
years later, at Port Royal, Acadia, in Canada. In 1608, a year after the English
landed at Jamestown, Champlain led another expedition, during which he
founded Quebec. While Acadia remained a remote outpost, New France
expanded well beyond Quebec, from which Champlain pushed his explo-
rations up the great river and into the Great Lakes as far as Lake Huron, and
southward to the lake that still bears his name. There, in 1609, he joined a band
of Huron and Algonquian allies in a fateful encounter. When an Iroquois war
party attacked Champlain’s group, the French explorer shot and killed two
chiefs, and the Indians fled. The episode ignited in the Iroquois a hatred for the
French that the English would capitalize upon. The vengeful Iroquois stood as a
buffer against French plans to move southward from Canada toward the Eng-
lish colonies and as a constant menace on the flank of the French waterways to
the interior. For over a century, in fact, Indians determined the military balance
of power within North America. In 1711 the governor general of New France
declared that “the Iroquois are more to be feared than the English colonies.”
Until his death, in 1635, Champlain governed New France under a trading
company that won a profitable monopoly of the huge fur trade. But a provi-
sion that limited the population to French Catholics stunted the growth of
New France. Neither the enterprising, seafaring Huguenots (Protestants) of
coastal France nor foreigners of any faith were allowed to populate the coun-
try. New France therefore remained a scattered patchwork of dependent
peasants, Jesuit missionaries, priests, soldiers, officials, and coureurs de bois
(literally, “runners of the woods”), who roamed the interior in quest of furs.
In 1663, King Louis XIV changed New France into a royal colony and dis-
patched new settlers, including shiploads of young women. The government
provided tools and livestock for farmers and nets for fishermen. The popula-
tion grew from about 4,000 in 1665 to about 15,000 in 1690.

FRENCH LOUISIANA From the Great Lakes, French explorers moved

southward down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. They named
the vast area along the mighty river Louisiana, after King Louis XIV. Settlement
 Troubled Neighbors • 167

Champlain in New France

Samuel de Champlain firing at a group of Iroquois, killing two chiefs (1609).

of the Louisiana country finally began in 1699, when Pierre Le Moyne,

sieur d’Iberville, established a colony near Biloxi, Mississippi. The main set-
tlement then moved to Mobile Bay and, in 1710, to the present site of
Mobile, Alabama. For nearly half a century the driving force in Louisiana
was Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, sieur de Bienville, a younger brother of
Iberville. Bienville arrived with settlers in 1699, when he was only nineteen,
and left the colony for the last time in 1743, when he was sixty-three. Some-
times called the Father of Louisiana, he served periodically as governor, and
in 1718 he founded New Orleans, which shortly thereafter became the capi-
tal. Louisiana, first a French royal colony, then a proprietary colony, and then
a corporate colony, again became a royal province in 1731.
“France in America had two heads,” the historian Francis Parkman wrote,
“one amid the snows of Canada, the other amid the canebrakes of Louisiana.”
The French thus had one enormous advantage over their English rivals: access to
the great inland rivers that led to the heartland of the continent. In the Illi-
nois region, scattered French settlers began farming the fertile soil, and
Jesuits established missions at places such as Terre Haute (High Land) and
Des Moines (Some Monks). Because of geography as well as deliberate policy,
however, French America remained largely a vast wilderness traversed by a
mobile population of traders, trappers, missionaries—and, mainly, Indians.
In 1750, when the English colonials numbered about 1.5 million, the total
French population was no more than 80,000. Yet in some ways the French had
 168 • FROM COLONIES TO STATES (CH. 4)

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Mobile THE FRENCH IN NORTH AMERICA

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New Orleans
(Spanish) French possessions
Spanish possessions
GULF OF MEXICO Disputed territory
0 500 Miles Marquette and Jolliet’s route, 1673
La Salle’s route, 1682
0 500 Kilometers

Where were the largest French settlements in North America? How were they differ-
ent from the Spanish and English colonies? Describe the French colonization of
Louisiana.
 The Colonial Wars • 169

Jesuits in New France

Founded in 1539, the Jesuits sought to covert Indians to Catholicism, in part to
make them more reliable trading and military partners.

the edge on the British. They offered European goods to Indians in return for
furs and encroached far less upon indigenous lands. They thereby won Native
American allies against the English. French governors could mobilize for
action without any worry about rebellious colonial assemblies or ethnic and
religious diversity. The British may have had the greater population, but their
separate colonies often worked at cross-purposes.

T H E C O L O N I A L WA R S

For most of the seventeenth century, the Spanish, French, Dutch, and
British empires in North America developed in relative isolation from each
other. By the end of the century, however, the rivalries among the European
nations began to spill over into the Americas. The Glorious Revolution of
1688 worked an abrupt reversal in English diplomacy, as the new King
William III, a Protestant, was an ardent foe of Catholic France’s Louis XIV.
William’s ties to the Netherlands and England helped to form a Grand
Alliance of European nations against the French in a transatlantic war
known in the American colonies as King William’s War (1689–1697).
170 • FROM COLONIES TO STATES (CH. 4)

King William’s War was the first

of four great wars fought in
Europe and the colonies over the
next seventy-four years. In each
case, England and its European
allies were aligned against Catholic
France or Spain and their allies. By
far the most significant of the four
conflicts was the last one, the
Seven Years’ War (called in North
America the French and Indian
War, which in fact lasted nine
years in America, from 1754 to
1763). In all four of the wars
except the Seven Years’ War, the
battles in America were but a
sideshow accompanying massive
warfare in Europe. Although the
wars involved many nations,
From La Roque’s Encyclopédie des Voyages
including Indian tribes on both
An Iroquois warrior in an eighteenth-
sides, they centered on the implaca-
century French engraving.
ble struggle for global supremacy
between the British and the French, a struggle that ended up profoundly shift-
ing the international balance of power among the great powers of Europe. By
the end of the eighteenth century, Spain would be in decline, while France and
Great Britain fought for supremacy.
The prolonged international warfare during the eighteenth century had a
devastating effect on New England, especially Massachusetts, for it was clos-
est to the battlefields of French Canada. The wars also had profound conse-
quences for England that would reshape the contours of its relationship with
America. Great Britain emerged from the wars as the most powerful nation in
the world, solidifying its control over Ireland and Scotland in the process.
International commerce became even more essential to the expanding British
Empire, thus making the American colonies even more strategically signifi-
cant. The wars with France led the English government to build a huge navy
and massive army, which created an enormous government debt that led to
new efforts to wring more government revenue from the British people. Dur-
ing the early eighteenth century, the changes in English financial policy and
political culture led critics in Parliament to charge that traditional liberties
were being usurped by a tyrannical central government. After the French and
Indian War, American colonists began making the same point.
 The Colonial Wars • 171

T H E F R E N C H A N D I N D I A N WA R The French and Indian War was

the climactic conflict between Britain and France in North America. It was
sparked by competing claims over the ancestral Indian lands in the sprawl-
ing Ohio River valley, the “most fertile country of America.” Indians, Vir-
ginians, Pennsylvanians, and the French in Canada had long squabbled over
who owned the region. In the early 1750s enterprising Virginians, including
George Washington’s two half-brothers, had formed the Ohio Company, a
business venture to develop some 200,000 acres in western Pennsylvania.
The incursion by the Virginians infuriated the French. Like the British, they
believed that whoever controlled the “Ohio Country” would control North
America, and that the area’s Indians would determine the military balance of
power. Both nations recruited Indian tribes as allies.
To defend their interests in the Ohio River valley, the French built forts in
what is now western Pennsylvania. When the Virginia governor learned of
the French fortifications, he sent an ambitious twenty-one-year-old Virginia
militia officer, Major George Washington, to warn the French to leave the
area. With an experienced guide and a few others, Washington made his way
by horseback, foot, canoe, and raft the 450 miles to Fort Le Boeuf (just south
of Lake Erie, in northwest Pennsylvania) in late 1753. He gave the French
commander a note from the Virginia governor demanding that the French
withdraw from the Ohio Country. After the French captain rejected the
request, Washington trudged home through deepening snow, having accom-
plished nothing despite “as fatiguing a journey as it is possible to conceive.”
In the spring of 1754, Washington led 150 inexperienced volunteers and
Iroquois allies back across the Alleghenies. Their mission was to build a fort
at the convergence of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio Rivers (where
the city of Pittsburgh later developed). After two months of difficult travel,
Washington learned that French soldiers had beaten him to the strategic site
and erected Fort Duquesne, named for the French governor of Canada.
Washington decided to make camp about forty miles from the fort and await
reinforcements. The next day, the Virginians ambushed a French scouting
party. Ten French soldiers were killed, including the commander, and twenty-
one were captured. The Indians tomahawked and scalped several of the
wounded soldiers as a stunned Washington looked on. The mutilated soldiers
were the first fatalities in what would become the French and Indian War.
George Washington and his troops, reinforced by more Virginians and
British soldiers dispatched from South Carolina, hastily constructed a stockade
at Great Meadows, dubbed Fort Necessity, which a large force of vengeful
French soldiers attacked during a rainstorm a month later, on July 3, 1754. After
a daylong battle, Washington surrendered, having seen a third of his 300 men
killed or wounded. France was now in undisputed control of the Ohio Country.
 172 • FROM COLONIES TO STATES (CH. 4)

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What was the significance of the siege of Fort Necessity? What was the Plan of Union?
How did the three-pronged offensive of 1759 lead to a British victory in North America?

George Washington’s blundering expedition triggered a series of events that

would ignite a protracted world war. As a British politician exclaimed, “the volley
fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America set the world on fire.”

THE ALBANY CONGRESS In London, government officials already

had taken notice of the conflict in the backwoods of North America and had
called commissioners from all the colonies as far south as Maryland to a
meeting in Albany, New York, to confer about the growing tensions with the
French and with Indian tribes in Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania.
The Albany Congress (June 19–July 10, 1754), which was meeting when the
first shots sounded at Great Meadows, ended with little accomplished. The
 The Colonial Wars • 173

The first American political cartoon

Benjamin Franklin’s exhortation to the colonies to unite
against the French in 1754 would become popular again
twenty years later, when the colonies faced a different threat.

congress is remembered mainly for its bold Plan of Union, worked out by a
committee led by Benjamin Franklin. The innovative plan called for a cen-
tral colonial government led by a chief executive as well as a legislature with
forty-eight members chosen by the colonial assemblies. This federal body
would oversee matters of defense, Indian relations, and trade and settlement
in the West, and it would levy taxes to support its programs. It must have
been a good plan, Franklin reasoned, because the various assemblies
thought it gave too much power to the Crown, and the Crown thought it
gave too much freedom to the colonies. At any rate, the colonial assemblies
either rejected or ignored it. Franklin later mused that had the Albany Plan
of Union been adopted, there may never have been a need for the American
Revolution. Franklin’s proposal, however, did have a lasting significance in
that it would be the model for the form of governance (Articles of Confeder-
ation) created by the Continental Congress in 1777.

RISING TENSIONS In London the government decided to force a

showdown with the “presumptuous” French in North America. In June 1755
a British fleet captured the French forts on Nova Scotia along the Atlantic
coast of Canada and expelled thousands of Roman Catholic residents, called
Acadians. The Acadians were put on ships and scattered throughout the
colonies, from Maine to Georgia. Hundreds of them eventually found their
174 • FROM COLONIES TO STATES (CH. 4)

way to French Louisiana, where they became the Cajuns (a corruption of

Acadians), many of whose descendants still speak French.
In 1755 the British government also dispatched over a thousand troops to
Virginia to dislodge the French from the Ohio Country. The arrival of
unprecedented numbers of “redcoat” soldiers on American soil would
change the dynamics of British North America. Although the colonists
endorsed the use of force against the French, they later would oppose the use
of British soldiers to enforce colonial regulations.

B R A D D O C K ’ S D E F E AT The British commander in chief of North

American operations, Major General Edward Braddock, was a seasoned,
stubborn, overconfident officer. Neither he nor his troops had any experience
fighting in the American wilderness. The imperious Braddock viewed Indi-
ans with contempt, and his cocksure ignorance would prove fatal. With the
addition of some colonial troops, including George Washington as a volun-
teer, Braddock’s force hacked a 125-mile road through the rugged mountains
from the upper Potomac River in Maryland to the vicinity of Fort Duquesne.
Braddock’s army was on the verge of success when, on July 9, 1755, six miles
from Fort Duquesne, their failure to recruit Indian scouts led them into an
ambush. The surrounding woods suddenly came alive with Ojibwas and
French militiamen. Beset on three sides by concealed enemies, the British
troops—dressed in bright-red woolen uniforms in the summer heat—stood
their ground for most of the afternoon before retreating in disarray. General
Braddock was mortally wounded. George Washington, his own coat riddled
by four bullets, helped other officers contain the rout and lead a hasty retreat.
Though they lost 23 of their own, the French and their Native American
allies killed 63 of 86 British officers (including Braddock), 914 out of 1,373
soldiers, and captured the British cannons, supplies, and secret papers. It
was one of the worst British defeats of the eighteenth century. Twelve of the
wounded British soldiers left behind on the battlefield were stripped, bound,
and burned at the stake by Indians. A devastated George Washington wrote
his brother that the British army had “been scandalously beaten by a trifling
body of men.” The vaunted redcoats “broke & run as sheep before Hounds,”
but the Virginians “behaved like Men and died like Soldiers.”

A WO R L D WA R Braddock’s stunning defeat sent shock waves through

the colonies. Emboldened by the news, Indians allied with the French
launched widespread assaults on frontier farms throughout western Penn-
sylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, burning houses and barns, and killing or
capturing hundreds of men, women, and children. Newly arrived French
 The Colonial Wars • 175

troops assaulted British garrisons along the Great Lakes. It was not until May
1756, however, that England and France formally declared war on each
other, and the French and Indian War in America bled into what would
become the Seven Years’ War in Europe. A truly world war, it would eventu-
ally be fought on four continents and three oceans around the globe. The
onset of war brought into office a new British government, with the elo-
quent William Pitt as prime minister. His exceptional ability and self-
assurance matched his towering ego. “I know that I can save England and no
one else can,” he announced. His jaunty bluntness instilled confidence at
home and abroad.
Pitt decided that North America should be the primary battleground in
the world war with France. He eventually mobilized some 45,000 British
troops in Canada and America, half of whom were American colonists. In
1759 the French and Indian War reached its climax with a series of resound-
ing British triumphs on land and at sea around the world. The most decisive
British victory was at Quebec, the gateway to Canada. Thereafter, the war in
North America dragged on until 1763, but the rest was a process of mopping
up. In the South, where little significant action had occurred, belated fight-
ing flared up between the Carolina settlers and the Cherokee Nation. A force
of British regulars and colonial militia broke Cherokee resistance in 1761.
On October 25, 1760, King George II, as was his habit, arose at 6 A.M.,
drank his morning chocolate, and then died on his toilet as the result of a
ruptured artery. The twenty-two-year-old, inexperienced grandson he des-
pised thereupon ascended the throne
as George III. Initially timid and
insecure, the boyish king soon proved
himself to be a strong leader. He
quickly dismissed the inner circle of
politicians who had dominated his
grandfather’s reign and replaced them
with a compliant group called the
“king’s friends.” He then oversaw the
military defeat of France and Spain
and the signing of a magisterial peace
treaty that made Great Britain the
ruler of an enormous world empire
and a united kingdom brimming with
confidence and pride. No nation in George III
1763 was larger or richer or militarily At age thirty-three, the young king of a
as strong. victorious empire.
 176 • FROM COLONIES TO STATES (CH. 4)

T H E T R E AT Y O F PA R I S The Treaty of Paris, signed in February 1763,

brought an end to the world war and to the French Empire in North Amer-
ica. In winning the long war against France and Spain, Great Britain had
gained a vast global empire. Victorious Britain took all of France’s North
American possessions east of the Mississippi River: all of Canada and all of
what was then called Spanish Florida (including much of present-day
Alabama and Mississippi).
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NORTH AMERICA, 1713

England
France 0 500 1000 Miles NEW
Spain GRANADA
0 500 1000 Kilometers

What events led to the first clashes between the French and the British in the late
seventeenth century? Why did New England suffer more than other regions of North
America during the wars of the eighteenth century? What were the long-term finan-
cial, military, and political consequences of the wars between France and Britain?
 The Colonial Wars • 177

In compensation for its loss of Florida in the Treaty of Paris, Spain

received the vast Louisiana Territory (including New Orleans and all French
land west of the Mississippi River) from France. Unlike the Spanish in
Florida, however, few of the French settlers left Louisiana after 1763. The
French government encouraged the settlers to work with their new Spanish
governors to create a Catholic bulwark against further English expansion.
Spain would hold title to Louisiana for nearly four decades but would never
succeed in erasing the territory’s French roots. The French-born settlers

UNEXPLORED
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(France) (France)
BRITISH
NORTH AMERICA, 1763 HONDURAS CARIBBEAN SEA

England NEW
Spain GRANADA
Proclamation line 0 500 1000 Miles NEW
of 1763 GRANADA
0 500 1000 Kilometers

How did the map of North America change between 1713 and 1763? How did Spain
win Louisiana? What were the consequences of the British winning all the land east
of the Mississippi?
178 • FROM COLONIES TO STATES (CH. 4)

always outnumbered the Spanish. The loss of Louisiana left France with no
territory on the continent. British power reigned supreme over North Amer-
ica east of the Mississippi River.
The triumph in what England called the Great War saw Americans cele-
brating as joyously as Londoners in 1763. Colonists were proud members of
the vast new British Empire. Most Americans, as Benjamin Franklin
explained, “submitted willingly to the government of the Crown.” He him-
self proudly proclaimed, “I am a Briton.”
But Britain’s spectacular military success also created future problems.
Humiliated France thirsted for revenge against an “arrogant” Britain. Vic-
tory was also costly. Britain’s national debt doubled during the war. The
cost of maintaining the North American empire, including the permanent
stationing of British soldiers in the colonies, was staggering. Simply taking
over the string of French forts along the Great Lakes and in the Ohio and
Mississippi river valleys would require 10,000 additional British soldiers.
Even more soldiers would be needed to manage the rising tensions gener-
ated by continuing white encroachment into Indian lands in the trans-
Appalachian West. And the victory required that Britain devise ways to
administer (and finance the supervision of) half a billion acres of new colo-
nial territory. How were the vast, fertile lands (taken from Indians) in the
Ohio Country to be “pacified” of Indian conflict, exploited, settled, and
governed? The British may have won a global empire as a result of the Seven
Years’ War, but their grip on the American colonies would grow ever weaker
as the years passed.

M A NAG I N G A N EW E M P I R E No sooner was the Treaty of Paris

signed than King George III set about reducing the huge national debt
caused by the prolonged world war. In 1763 the average Briton paid 26
shillings a year in taxes; the average American colonist paid only one
shilling. The British government’s efforts to force colonists to pay their share
of the financial burden set in motion a chain of events that would lead to
revolution and independence. That Americans bristled at efforts to get them
to pay their “fair share” of the military expenses led British officials to view
them as selfish and self-centered. At the same time, the colonists who fought
in the French and Indian War and celebrated the British victory soon grew
perplexed at why the empire they served, loved, and helped to secure seemed
determined to treat them as “slaves” rather than citizens. “It is truly a miser-
able thing,” said a Connecticut minister in December 1763, “that we no
sooner leave fighting our neighbors, the French, but we must fall to quarrel-
ing among ourselves.”
 The Colonial Wars • 179

P O N T I AC ’ S R E B E L L I O N American colonists were rabid expansion-

ists. With the French out of the way and vast new western lands to exploit,
they looked to the future with confidence. Already the population of America
in 1763 was a third the size of Great Britain’s—and was growing more
rapidly. No sooner had the Seven Years’ War ended than land speculators
began squabbling over disputed claims to sprawling tracts of Indian–owned
land west of the Appalachian Mountains.
The Peace of Paris did not in fact bring peace to North America. News of
the treaty settlement devastated those Indians who had been allied with the
French. Their lands were being given over to the British without consultation.
The Shawnees, for instance, demanded to know “by what right the French
could pretend” to transfer their ancestral lands to the British. In a desperate
effort to recover their lands, Indians struck back in the spring of 1763, cap-
turing most of the British forts around the Great Lakes and in the Ohio River
valley—and killing hundreds of British soldiers in the process. They also
raided colonial settlements in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, destroy-
ing hundreds of homesteads and killing several thousand people.
The widespread Indian attacks in the spring and summer of 1763 came to
be called Pontiac’s Rebellion because of the prominent role played by the
charismatic Ottawa chieftain. The attacks convinced most colonists that all
Indians must be killed or removed. The British government took a different
stance, negotiating an agreement with the Indians that allowed redcoats to
reoccupy the frontier forts in exchange for a renewal of the generous trading
and gift giving long practiced by the French. Still, as Chief Pontiac stressed,
the Indians denied the legitimacy of the British claim to their territory under
the terms of the Treaty of Paris. He told a British official that the “French
never conquered us, neither did they purchase a foot of our Country, nor
have they a right to give it to you.”
To keep peace with the Indians, King George III issued the Proclamation
of 1763, which drew an imaginary line along the crest of the Appalachian
Mountains from Canada in the north to Georgia in the south, beyond which
white settlers (“our loving subjects”) were forbidden to go. For the first time,
American territorial expansion was to be controlled by royal officials—and
10,000 British soldiers were dispatched to the frontier to enforce the new
rule. Yet the proclamation line was ineffective. Land-hungry settlers defied
the prohibitions and pushed across the Appalachian ridges into Indian
country. The Proclamation of 1763 was the first of a series of efforts by the
British government to more effectively regulate the American colonies. Little
did the king and his ministers know that their efforts at efficiency would
spawn a revolution.
180 • FROM COLONIES TO STATES (CH. 4)

R E G U L AT I N G THE COLONIES

GRENVILLE’S COLONIAL POLICY Just as the Proclamation of

1763 was being drafted, a new British ministry had begun to grapple with
the complex problems of imperial finances. The new chief minister, George
Grenville, was a strong-willed accountant whose humorless self-assurance
verged on pomposity. King George III came to despise him, but the king
needed the dogged Grenville because they agreed on the need to cut govern-
ment expenses, reduce the national debt, and generate more revenue from
the colonies.
In developing new policies regulating the American colonies, Grenville
took for granted the need for British soldiers to defend the western frontier.
Because the average Briton paid twenty-six times the average annual taxes
paid by Americans (the “least taxed people in the world”), Grenville—and
most other Britons—reasoned that the “spoiled” Americans should share
more of the cost of the troops providing their defense. He also resented the
large number of American merchants who defied British trade regulations
by engaging in rampant smuggling. So Grenville ordered to colonial officials
to tighten the enforcement of the Navigation Acts, and he dispatched war-
ships to capture American smugglers. He also set up a new maritime, or
vice-admiralty, court in the Canadian port of Halifax, granting its single
judge jurisdiction over all the American colonies and ensuring that there
would be no juries of colonists sympathetic to smugglers. Under Grenville,
the period of “salutary neglect” in the enforcement of the Navigation Acts
was abruptly coming to an end, causing American merchants (and smug-
glers) great annoyance.
Strict enforcement of the Molasses Act of 1733 posed a serious threat to
New England’s prosperity. Making rum from molasses, a syrup derived from
sugarcane, was quite profitable. Grenville recognized that the long-neglected
molasses tax, if enforced, would devastate a major colonial industry. So he
put through the American Revenue Act of 1764, commonly known as the
Sugar Act, which cut the duty on molasses in half. Reducing the duty, he
believed, would reduce the temptation to smuggle or to bribe customs offi-
cers. But the Sugar Act also levied new duties on imports into America of
textiles, wine, coffee, indigo, and sugar. The new revenues generated by the
Sugar Act, Grenville estimated, would help defray “the necessary expenses of
defending, protecting, and securing, the said colonies and plantations.”
The Sugar Act was momentous. For the first time, Parliament had
adopted so-called external duties designed to raise revenues in the colonies
and not merely intended to regulate trade. As such, it was an example of Par-
 Regulating the Colonies • 181

liament trying to “tax” the colonists without their consent. Critics of the
Sugar Act pointed out that British subjects could only be taxed by their
elected representatives in Parliament. Because the colonists had no elected
representatives in Parliament, the argument went, Parliament had no right
to impose taxes on them.
Another of Grenville’s regulatory measures, the Currency Act of 1764,
originated in the complaints of London merchants about doing business
with Americans, especially Virginians. The colonies had long faced a chronic
shortage of “hard” money (gold and silver coins, called specie), which kept
flowing overseas to pay debts in England. To meet the shortage of specie,
they issued their own paper money or, as in the case of Virginia planters,
used tobacco as a form of currency. British creditors feared payment in a
currency of such fluctuating value, however. To alleviate their fears,
Grenville prohibited the colonies from printing more paper money. This
caused the value of existing paper money to plummet. As a Philadelphia
newspaper lamented, “The Times are Dreadful, Dismal, Doleful, Dolorous,
and DOLLAR-LESS.” The deflationary impact of the Currency Act, com-
bined with new duties on commodities and stricter enforcement, jolted a
colonial economy already suffering a postwar decline and a surge in popula-
tion, many of them new immigrants—mostly poor, young, male, and hungry
for opportunity. This surge of enterprising people could not be contained
within the boundaries of the existing colonies—or by royal decrees.

T H E S TA M P A C T As prime minister, George Grenville excelled at doing

the wrong thing—repeatedly. The Sugar Act, for example, did not produce
additional net revenue for Great Britain. Its administrative costs were four
times greater than the additional revenue it generated. Yet Grenville com-
pounded the problem by pushing through an even more provocative measure
to raise money in America: a stamp tax. On February 13, 1765, Parliament
passed the Stamp Act, which created revenue stamps to be purchased and
affixed to every form of printed matter used in the colonies: newspapers,
pamphlets, bonds, leases, deeds, licenses, insurance policies, college diplo-
mas, even playing cards. The requirement was to go into effect November 1,
nine months later. The Stamp Act affected all the colonists, not just New Eng-
land merchants, and it was the first outright effort by Parliament to place a
direct—or “internal”—tax specifically on American goods and services
rather than an “external” tax on imports and exports—all for the purpose of
generating revenue for the British treasury rather than regulating trade.
That same year, Grenville completed his new system of colonial regula-
tions when he persuaded Parliament to pass the Quartering Act. In effect it
182 • FROM COLONIES TO STATES (CH. 4)

was yet another tax. The Quartering Act required the colonies to feed and
house British troops. It applied to all colonies but affected mainly New York
City, the headquarters of the British forces. The new act raised troubling
questions in the colonies. Why was it necessary for British soldiers to be sta-
tioned in colonial cities in peacetime? Was not the Quartering Act another
example of taxation without representation, as the colonies had neither
requested the troops nor been asked their opinion on the matter? Some
colonists decided that the Quartering Act was an effort to use British soldiers
to tyrannize the Americans.

THE IDEOLO GICAL RESPONSE Grenville’s revenue measures out-

raged Americans. Unwittingly, he had stirred up a storm of protest and set in
motion a profound exploration of colonial rights and imperial relations.
From the start of English settlement in America, free colonists had come to
take for granted certain essential principles and practices: self-government,
religious freedom, economic opportunity, and territorial expansion. All of
those deeply embedded values seemed threatened by Britain’s efforts to
tighten its control over the colonies after 1763. The tensions between the
colonies and mother country began to take on moral and spiritual overtones
associated with the old Whig principle that no Englishman could be taxed
without his consent through representative government. Americans opposed
to English policies began to call themselves true Whigs and label the king
and his “corrupt” ministers as “Tories.”
In 1764 and 1765, American Whigs decided that Grenville was imposing
upon them the very chains of tyranny from which Parliament had rescued
England in the seventeenth century. A standing army—rather than a militia—
was the historic ally of despots, yet now with the French defeated and
Canada under English control, thousands of British soldiers remained in the
colonies. For what purpose—to protect the colonists or to subdue them?
Other factors heightened colonial anxiety. Among the fundamental rights of
English people were trial by jury and the presumption of innocence, but the
new admiralty court in Halifax excluded juries and put the burden of proof
on the defendant. Most important, English citizens had the right to be taxed
only by their elected representatives. Now, however, Parliament was usurp-
ing the colonial assemblies’ power of the purse strings. This could lead only
to tyranny and enslavement, critics argued. Sir Francis Bernard, the royal
governor of Massachusetts, correctly predicted that the new stamp tax
“would cause a great Alarm & meet much Opposition” in the colonies.
Indeed, the seed of American independence was planted by the fiery debates
over the stamp tax.
 Regulating the Colonies • 183

PROTEST IN THE COLONIES The Stamp Act aroused a ferocious

response among the colonists. In a flood of pamphlets, speeches, and resolu-
tions, critics repeated a slogan familiar to all Americans: “no taxation without
representation.” A Connecticut minister attributed the Stamp Act to a “selfish
and venal spirit of corruption” that required more revenue solely “to add fuel
to ungodly lusts . . . all manner of unrighteousness and oppression, debauch-
ery and wickedness.” Through the spring and summer of 1765, resentment
boiled over at meetings, parades, bonfires, and other demonstrations. The
protesters, calling themselves Sons of Liberty, met underneath “liberty
trees”—in Boston a great elm; in Charleston, South Carolina, a live oak.
In mid-August 1765, nearly three months before the Stamp Act was to
take effect, a Boston mob sacked the homes of the lieutenant governor and
the local customs officer in charge of enforcing the stamp tax. Thoroughly
shaken, the Boston stamp agent resigned, and stamp agents throughout the
colonies were hounded out of office. By November 1, its effective date, the
Stamp Act was a dead letter. Colonists by the thousands signed nonimporta-
tion agreements, promising not to buy imported British goods as a means of
exerting leverage in London.
Opposition to the Stamp Act
In protest of the Stamp Act, which was to take effect the next day, The Pennsylva-
nia Journal printed a skull and crossbones on its masthead.
184 • FROM COLONIES TO STATES (CH. 4)

The widespread protests involved courageous women as well as men, and

the boycotts of British goods encouraged colonial unity as Americans dis-
covered that they had more in common with each other than with London.
The Virginia House of Burgesses struck the first blow against the Stamp Act
with the Virginia Resolves, a series of resolutions inspired by the ardent
young Patrick Henry. Virginians, the burgesses declared, were entitled to all
the rights of Englishmen, and Englishmen could be taxed only by their own
elected representatives. Virginians, moreover, had always been governed by
laws passed with their own consent. Newspapers spread the Virginia
Resolves throughout the colonies, and other assemblies hastened to copy
Virginia’s example.
In 1765 the Massachusetts House of Representatives invited the other
colonial assemblies to send delegates to confer in New York about their
opposition to the Stamp Act. Nine responded, and from October 7 to 25,
1765, the Stamp Act Congress formulated a Declaration of the Rights and
Grievances of the Colonies. The delegates acknowledged that the colonies

The Repeal, or the Funeral Procession of Miss America-Stamp

This 1766 cartoon shows Grenville carrying the dead Stamp Act in its coffin. In the
background, trade with America starts up again.
 Fanning the Flames • 185

owed a “due subordination” to Parliament and recognized its right to regu-

late colonial trade, but they insisted “that no taxes should be imposed on
them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representa-
tives.” Parliament, in other words, had no right to levy taxes on people who
were unrepresented in that body. The bonds connecting colonies and
Mother Country were splaying. “The boldness of the minister [Grenville]
amazes our people,” wrote a New Yorker. “This single stroke has lost Great
Britain the affection of all of her Colonies.” Grenville responded by
denouncing colonial critics as “ungrateful.”

R E P E A L O F T H E S TA M P A C T The storm had scarcely broken before

Grenville’s ministry was out of office and the Stamp Act was repealed. For
reasons unrelated to his colonial policies, Grenville had lost the confidence
of the king, who replaced Grenville with Lord Rockingham, a leader of a
Whig faction critical of Grenville’s colonial policies. Pressure from British
merchants who feared the economic consequences of the colonial non-
importation movement convinced the Rockingham-led government that
the Stamp Act was a mistake. The prime minister asked Parliament to
rescind the Stamp Act. In 1766, Parliament repealed the Stamp Tax but at the
same time passed the Declaratory Act, which asserted the power of Parlia-
ment to make laws binding the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.” It was a
cunning evasion that made no concession with regard to taxes but made no
mention of them either. For the moment, however, the Declaratory Act was a
face-saving gesture. News of the repeal of the Stamp Act set off excited
demonstrations throughout the colonies. Amid the rejoicing and relief on
both sides of the Atlantic, few expected that the quarrel between Britain and
its American colonies would be reopened within a year.

FA N N I N G THE FLAMES

Meanwhile, King George III continued to play musical chairs with his
prime ministers. In July 1766 the king replaced Rockingham with William
Pitt, the former prime minister who had exercised heroic leadership during
the French and Indian War. Alas, by the time he returned as prime minister,
Pitt was so mentally unstable that he deferred policy decisions to the other
cabinet members. For a time in 1767, the guiding force in the ministry was
the witty but reckless Charles Townshend, chancellor of the exchequer (trea-
sury), whose “abilities were superior to those of all men,” said a colleague,
“and his judgment below that of any man.” Like George Grenville before
186 • FROM COLONIES TO STATES (CH. 4)

him, Townshend held the “factious and turbulent” Americans in contempt,

was surprised by their resistance, and resolved to force their obedience. The
erratic Townshend reopened the question of colonial taxation and the more
fundamental issue of Parliament’s absolute sovereignty over the colonies. He
took advantage of Pitt’s debilitating mental confusion to enact a new series
of money-generating policies aimed at the American colonies.

T H E TOW N S H E N D AC T S In 1767, Townshend put his ill-fated rev-

enue plan through the House of Commons, and a few months later he died
at age forty-two, leaving behind a bitter legacy: the Townshend Acts. With
this legislation, Townshend had sought first to bring New York’s colonial
assembly to its senses. That body had defied the Quartering Act and refused
to provide beds or supplies for British troops. Parliament, at Townshend’s
behest, had suspended all acts of New York’s assembly until it would yield.
New Yorkers protested but finally caved in, inadvertently confirming the
British suspicion that too much indulgence had encouraged colonial bad
manners. Townshend had followed up with the Revenue Act of 1767, which
levied duties on colonial imports of glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. The
Townshend duties increased government revenues, but the intangible costs
were greater. The duties taxed goods exported from England, indirectly
hurting British manufacturers, and had to be collected in colonial ports,
increasing collection costs. But the highest cost came in the form of added
conflict with the colonists. The Revenue Act of 1767 posed a more severe
threat to colonial assemblies than Grenville’s taxes had, for Townshend pro-
posed to use these revenues to pay colonial governors and other officers and
thereby release them from financial dependence upon the assemblies.
The Townshend Acts surprised and angered the colonists, but this time
the storm gathered more slowly than it had two years before. Once again,
colonial activists, including a growing number of women calling themselves
Daughters of Liberty, resolved to resist. They boycotted the purchase of
imported British goods, made their own clothes (“homespun”), and devel-
oped their own manufactures. While boycotting direct commerce with Great
Britain, the colonists expanded their trade with the islands in the French
West Indies. The British sought to intercept such trade by increasing their
naval presence off the coast of New England. Their efforts to curtail smug-
gling also included the use of search warrants that allowed British troops to
enter any building during daylight hours.

S A M U E L A DA M S A N D T H E S O N S O F L I B E RT Y As American
anger bubbled over, loyalty to the mother country waned. British officials
 Fanning the Flames • 187

could neither conciliate moderates

like Dickinson nor cope with fire-
brands like Samuel Adams of Boston,
who was emerging as the supreme
genius of revolutionary agitation.
Adams became a tireless agitator, whip-
ping up the Sons of Liberty and orga-
nizing protests at the Boston town
meeting and in the provincial assem-
bly. Early in 1768 he and the Boston
attorney James Otis formulated a let-
ter that the Massachusetts assembly
dispatched to the other colonies. The
letter’s tone was polite and logical: it
restated the illegality of taxation with- Samuel Adams
out colonial representation in Parlia-
Adams was the fiery organizer of the
ment and invited the support of other Sons of Liberty.
colonies. British officials ordered the
Massachusetts assembly to withdraw the Adams-Otis letter. The assembly
refused and was dissolved by royal decree. In response to an appeal by the royal
governor, 4,000 British troops were dispatched to Boston in October 1768 to
maintain order. Loyalists, as the Americans who supported the king and Parlia-
ment were called, welcomed the soldiers; Patriots, those rebelling against
British authority, viewed the troops as an occupation force intended to quash
dissent.
In 1769 the Virginia assembly reasserted its exclusive right to tax Virgini-
ans, rather than Parliament, and called upon the colonies to unite in the
cause. Virginia’s royal governor promptly dissolved the assembly, but the
members met independently and adopted a new set of nonimportation
agreements that sparked a remarkably effective boycott of British goods.
Meanwhile, in London the king’s long effort to reorder British politics to
his liking was coming to fulfillment. In 1769 new elections for Parliament
finally produced a majority of the “king’s friends.” And George III found a
new chief minister to his taste in Frederick, Lord North. In 1770 the king
installed a cabinet of the “king’s friends,” with the stout Lord North as first
minister.

T H E B O S TO N M A S S AC R E By 1770 the American nonimportation

agreements were strangling British trade and causing unemployment in
England. The impact of colonial boycotts had persuaded Lord North to
188 • FROM COLONIES TO STATES (CH. 4)

modify the Townshend Acts—just in time to halt a perilous escalation

of tensions. The presence of 4,000 British soldiers (“lobster backs”) in
Boston had become a constant provocation. Crowds heckled and ridiculed
the red-coated soldiers, many of whom earned the abuse by harassing and
intimidating colonists.
On March 5, 1770, in the square outside the Boston customhouse, a group
of rowdies began taunting and hurling icicles at the British sentry. His call
for help brought reinforcements. Then someone rang the town fire bell,
drawing a larger crowd to the scene. At their head, or so the story goes, was
Crispus Attucks, a runaway Indian–African American slave. Attucks and
others continued to bait the British troops. Finally, a soldier was knocked
down; he rose to his feet and fired into the crowd, as did others. When the
smoke cleared, five people lay dead or dying, and eight more were wounded.
The cause of colonial resistance now had its first martyrs, and the first to die

The Bloody Massacre

Paul Revere’s partisan engraving of the Boston Massacre.
 Fanning the Flames • 189

was Crispus Attucks. The British soldiers were indicted for murder. John
Adams, Sam’s cousin, was one of the defense attorneys. He insisted that the
accused soldiers were the victims of circumstance, provoked, he said, by a
“motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes and mulattoes.” All of the British sol-
diers were acquitted except two, who were convicted of manslaughter and
branded on their thumbs.
The so-called Boston Massacre sent shock waves throughout the
colonies—and to London. Late in April 1770, Parliament repealed all the
Townshend duties except for the tea tax. Angry colonists insisted that pres-
sure be kept on British merchants until Parliament gave in altogether, but
the nonimportation movement soon faded. Parliament, after all, had given
up the substance of the taxes, with one exception, and much of the colonists’
tea was smuggled in from the Netherlands (Holland) anyway.
For two years thereafter, colonial discontent remained at a simmer. The
Stamp Act was gone, as were all the Townshend duties except that on tea. But
most of the Grenville-Townshend innovations remained in effect: the Sugar
Act, the Currency Act, the Quartering Act. The redcoats had left Boston, but
they remained nearby, and the British navy still patrolled the coast. Each
remained a source of irritation and the cause of occasional incidents.
Many colonists showed no interest in the disputes over British regulatory
policies raging along the seaboard. Frontier folks’ complaints centered on
the lack of protection provided by the British. As early as 1763 near Harris-
burg, Pennsylvania, a group of frontier ruffians took the law into their own
hands. Outraged at the unwillingness of Quakers in the Pennsylvania
Assembly to suppress marauding Indians, a group called the Paxton Boys
took revenge by massacring peaceful Susquehannock Indians. Moving east-
ward, the angry Paxton boys chased another group of peaceful Indians from
Bethlehem to Philadelphia. Benjamin Franklin talked the Paxton Boys into
returning home by promising more protection along the frontier. Farther
south, settlers in the South Carolina backcountry complained about the lack
of protection from horse thieves, cattle rustlers, and Indians. They organized
societies called Regulators to administer vigilante justice in the region and
refused to pay taxes until they gained effective government. In 1769 the
assembly finally set up six circuit courts in the region and revised the taxes,
but it still did not respond to the backcountry’s demand for representation
in the colonial legislature.
Whether in the urban commercial centers or along the frontier, there was
still tinder awaiting a spark, and the most incendiary colonists were eager to
provide it. As Sam Adams stressed, “Where there is a spark of patriotick fire,
we will enkindle it.”
190 • FROM COLONIES TO STATES (CH. 4)

A WO R S E N I N G C R I S I S

In 1772 a maritime incident further eroded the colonies’ fragile rela-

tionship with the mother country. Near Providence, Rhode Island, the
Gaspee, a British warship, ran aground while chasing smugglers, and its hun-
gry crew proceeded to commandeer local sheep, hogs, and poultry. An angry
crowd from the town boarded the ship, shot the captain, removed the crew,
and set fire to the vessel. The Gaspee incident reignited tensions between the
colonies and the mother country. Ever the agitator, Sam Adams convinced
the Boston town meeting to form the Committee of Correspondence, which
issued a statement of rights and grievances and invited other towns to do the
same. Similar committees sprang up across Massachusetts and in other
colonies. A Massachusetts Loyalist called the committees “the foulest, sub-
tlest, and most venomous serpent ever issued from the egg of sedition.” The
crisis was escalating. “The flame is kindled and like lightning it catches from
soul to soul,” reported Abigail Adams, the wife of future president John
Adams.

T H E B O S T O N T E A PA R T Y Lord North soon provided the colonists

with the occasion to bring resentment from a simmer to a boil. In 1773, he
tried to help some friends bail out the East India Company, which had in its
British warehouses some 17 million pounds of tea it desperately needed to
sell. Under the Tea Act of 1773, the government would allow the grossly
mismanaged company to send its south Asian tea directly to America with-
out paying any duties. British tea merchants could thereby undercut the
prices charged by their colonial competitors, most of whom were smugglers
who bought tea from the Dutch. At the same time, King George III told
Lord North that his job was to “compel obedience” in the colonies; North
ordered British authorities in New England to clamp down on American
smuggling.
The Committees of Correspondence, backed by colonial merchants,
alerted colonists to the new danger. The British government, they said, was
trying to purchase colonial acquiescence with cheap tea. They saw the reduc-
tion in the price of tea as a clever ruse to make them accept taxation without
consent. Before the end of the year, large shipments of tea left Britain for the
major colonial ports. In Boston irate colonists decided that their passion for
liberty outweighed their love for tea. On December 16, 1773, scores of Patri-
ots disguised as Mohawks boarded three British ships and threw the 342
chests of East India Company tea overboard—cheered on by a crowd along
the shore. John Adams applauded the vigilante action. The destruction of
 A Worsening Crisis • 191

The Able Doctor, or America Swallowing the Bitter Draught

This 1774 engraving shows Lord North, the Boston Port Act in his pocket, pouring
tea down America’s throat and America spitting it back.

the disputed tea, he said, was “so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and
inflexible” that it would have “important consequences.” Indeed it did.
The Boston Tea Party pushed British officials to the breaking point. They
had tolerated abuse, evasion, and occasional violence, but the destruction of
so much valuable tea convinced the furious king and his advisers that a firm
response was required. “The colonists must either submit or triumph,”
George III wrote to Lord North, who decided to make an example of Boston
to the rest of the colonies. In the end, however, he helped make a revolution
that would cost England far more than three shiploads of tea.

T H E C O E R C I V E A C T S In 1774 Parliament enacted a cluster of harsh

measures, called the Coercive Acts, intended to punish rebellious Boston.
The Boston Port Act closed the harbor from June 1, 1774, until the city paid
for the lost tea. A new Quartering Act directed local authorities to provide
lodging in the city for British soldiers. Finally, the Massachusetts Govern-
ment Act made all of the colony’s civic officers appointive rather than elec-
tive, declared that sheriffs would select jurors, and stipulated that no town
meeting could be held without the royal governor’s consent. In May,
Lieutenant-General Thomas Gage, commander in chief of British forces in
North America, became governor of Massachusetts and assumed command
of the 4,000 British soldiers in Boston.
192 • FROM COLONIES TO STATES (CH. 4)

The Coercive Acts were designed to isolate Boston from the other
colonies. Instead, they galvanized resistance across the colonies. If these
“Intolerable Acts,” as the colonists labeled the Coercive Acts, were not
resisted, they would eventually be applied to the other colonies. Further con-
firmation of British “tyranny” came with news of the Quebec Act, also
passed in June of 1774. It established a royal governor in Canada with no
representative assembly and abolished the cherished principle of trial by
jury. The Quebec Act also extended the Canadian boundary southward to
include all lands west of the Ohio River and encouraged the Catholic Church
to expand freely throughout the Canadian colony. The measure seemed
merely another indicator of British authoritarianism.
Indignant colonists rallied to the cause of besieged Boston, raising money,
sending provisions, and boycotting, as well as burning, British tea. In
Williamsburg, when the Virginia assembly met in May, a young member of
the Committee of Correspondence, Thomas Jefferson, proposed to set aside
June 1, the effective date of the Boston Port Act, as a day of fasting and
prayer in Virginia. The royal governor immediately dissolved the assembly,
whose members then retired to the Raleigh Tavern and resolved to form a
Continental Congress to represent all the colonies. As George Washington
prepared to leave Virginia to attend the gathering of the First Continental
Congress in Philadelphia, he declared that Boston’s fight against British
tyranny “now is and ever will be considered as the cause of America (not that
we approve their conduct in destroying the Tea).” The alternative, Washing-
ton added in a comment that betrayed his moral blind spot, was to become
“tame and abject slaves, as the blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway.”
Washington’s reference to slavery revealed the ugly contradiction in the
inflamed rhetoric about American liberties. The colonial leaders who
demanded their freedom from British tyranny were unwilling to give free-
dom to enslaved blacks. Amid the heightened resistance to British tyranny
and the fevered rhetoric about cherished liberties, African Americans in
Boston submitted petitions to the legislature and governor, reminding offi-
cials that they were being “held in slavery in the bowels of a free and Christian
Country.” When the legislature endorsed their cry for freedom, Thomas
Hutchinson, the royal governor, vetoed it. Not to be deterred, slaves in Boston
in September 1774 approached Hutchinson’s successor, General Thomas
Gage, and offered to serve the British army if they would be armed and there-
after awarded their freedom. They stressed that they had “in common with all
other men a natural right to our freedoms.” Gage showed no interest, but the
efforts of slaves to convert American revolutionary ardor into an appeal for
their own freedom struck Abigail Adams as a legitimate cause. She confessed
to her husband John, then serving in Philadelphia with the Continental Con-
 A Worsening Crisis • 193

gress, that she found it hypocritical of Revolutionaries to be “daily robbing

and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have.”

T H E C O N T I N E N TA L C O N G R E S S On September 5, 1774, the fifty-

five delegates making up the First Continental Congress assembled in
Philadelphia. Their mission was to assert the rights of the colonies and cre-
ate collective measures to defend them. During seven weeks of meetings, the
Congress endorsed the Suffolk Resolves, which declared the Coercive
(“Intolerable”) Acts null and void and urged Massachusetts to resist British
tyranny with force. The Congress then adopted a Declaration of American
Rights, which proclaimed once again the rights of Americans as English citi-
zens, denied Parliament’s authority to regulate internal colonial affairs, and
proclaimed the right of each colonial assembly to determine the need for
British troops within its own province.
Finally, the Continental Congress adopted the Continental Association of
1774, which recommended that every community form committees to enforce
an absolute boycott of all imported British goods. These elected committees
became the organizational and communications network for the Revolution-
ary movement, connecting every locality to the leadership and enforcing
public behavior. Seven thousand men across the colonies served on the com-
mittees of the Continental Association. The committees often required
colonists to sign an oath to join the boycotts against British goods. Those who
refused to sign were ostracized and intimidated; some were tarred and feath-
ered. The nonimportation movement of the 1760s and 1770s provided
women with a significant public role. The Daughters of Liberty again resolved
to quit buying imported British apparel and to make their own clothing.
Such efforts to gain economic self-sufficiency helped bind the diverse
colonies by ropes of shared resistance. Thousands of ordinary men and
women participated in the boycott of British goods, and their sacrifices on
behalf of colonial liberties provided the momentum leading to revolution.
For all of the attention given to colonial leaders such as Sam Adams and
Thomas Jefferson, it was common people who enforced the boycott, volun-
teered in “Rebel” militia units, attended town meetings, and increasingly
exerted pressure on royal officials in the colonies. The “Founding Fathers” (a
phrase coined in 1916) could not have led the Revolutionary movement
without such widespread popular support. As the people of Pittsfield, Mass-
achusetts, declared in a petition, “We have always believed that the people
are the fountain of power.”
In London the king fumed. He wrote Lord North that “blows must decide”
whether the Americans “are to be subject to this country or independent.” In
early 1775, Parliament declared that Massachusetts was “in rebellion” and
194 • FROM COLONIES TO STATES (CH. 4)

prohibited the New England

colonies from trading with any
nation outside the empire. There
would be no negotiation with the
rebellious Continental Congress;
force was the only option. British
military leaders assured the king
that the colonies could not mount
a significant armed resistance. On
February 27, 1775, Lord North
issued a Conciliatory Proposition,
sent to the individual colonies
rather than the unrecognized
Continental Congress. It offered
to resolve the festering dispute by
eliminating all revenue-generating
Patrick Henry of Virginia taxes on any colony that voluntar-
Henry famously declared “Give me Liberty, ily paid both its share for military
or give me Death!” defense and the salaries of the
royal governors.
But the colonial militants were in no mood for reconciliation. In March
1775, Virginia’s leading rebels met to discuss their options. While most of
the Patriots believed that Britain would relent in the face of united colonial
resistance, the theatrical Patrick Henry decided that war was imminent. He
urged Patriots to prepare for combat. The twenty-nine-year-old Henry, a
former farmer and storekeeper turned lawyer who fathered eighteen chil-
dren, claimed that the colonies “have done everything that could be done to
avert the storm which is now coming on,” but their efforts had been met only
by “violence and insult.” Freedom, the defiant Henry shouted, could be
bought only with blood. While staring at his reluctant comrades, he refused
to predict what they might do for the cause of liberty. If forced to choose, he
shouted, “give me liberty”—he paused dramatically, clenched his fist as if it
held a dagger, then plunged it into his chest—“or give me death.”

S H I F T I N G AU T H O R I T Y

As Patrick Henry had predicted, events during 1775 quickly moved

beyond conciliation toward conflict. The king and Parliament had lost con-
trol of their colonies; they could neither persuade nor coerce them to accept
 Shifting Authority • 195

new regulations and revenue measures. In Boston, General Gage warned his
British superiors that armed conflict with the Americans would unleash the
“horrors of civil war.” But British politicians scoffed at the idea of any seri-
ous armed resistance. Lord Sandwich, the head of the navy, dismissed the
colonists as “raw, undisciplined, cowardly men.” Major John Pitcairn agreed,
writing home from Boston in 1775, “that one active campaign, a smart
action, and burning two or three of their towns, will set everything to
rights.”

LEXINGTON AND CONCORD Major Pitcairn soon had his chance to

suppress the resistance. On April 14, 1775, the British army in Boston
received secret orders to stop the “open rebellion” in Massachusetts. General
Gage decided to arrest rebel leaders and seize the militia’s gunpowder stored
at Concord, about twenty miles northwest of Boston. After dark on April 18,
some seven hundred redcoats gathered on Boston Common, marched on
cobbled streets to the Long Wharf, boarded thirteen barges, crossed the
Charles River after midnight, and set out west to Lexington, accompanied by
American Loyalists who volunteered to guide the troops and “spy” for them.
When Patriots got wind of the plan, Boston’s Committee of Safety sent Paul
Revere and William Dawes by separate routes on their famous ride to warn
the rebels. Revere reached Lexington about midnight and alerted rebel
er

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APRIL 19, 1775 Boston
Brookline Harbor
Battle site Roxbury

Describe the Battle of Lexington. Why did the Americans’

tactics along the road between Concord and Lexington suc-
ceed? Why did the British march on Concord in the first
place?
196 • FROM COLONIES TO STATES (CH. 4)

The Battle of Lexington

Amos Doolittle’s impression of the Battle of Lexington as combat begins.

leaders John Hancock and Sam Adams, who were hiding there. Joined by
Dawes and Samuel Prescott, Revere rode on toward Concord. A British
patrol intercepted the trio, but Prescott slipped through and delivered the
warning.
At dawn on April 19, the British advance guard of 238 redcoats found
Captain John Parker, a veteran of the French and Indian War, and about
seventy “Minutemen” lined up on the Lexington town square. Parker
apparently intended only a silent protest, but Major Pitcairn rode onto the
green, swung his sword, and yelled, “Disperse, you damned rebels! You dogs,
run!” The greatly outnumbered militiamen had already begun backing away
when someone, perhaps an onlooker, fired a shot, whereupon the British
soldiers, without orders, loosed a volley into the Minutemen, then charged
them with bayonets, leaving eight dead and ten wounded.
The British officers hastily brought their men under control and led them
along the road to Concord. There the Americans resolved to stop the British
advance. The militant Reverend William Emerson expressed the fiery deter-
mination of the Patriots when he told his townsmen: “Let us stand our
ground. If we die, let us die here.” The Americans inflicted fourteen casual-
ties, and by noon the British had begun a ragged retreat back to Lexington,
where they were joined by reinforcements. By then, however, the narrow
road back to Boston had turned into a gauntlet of death as hundreds of
rebels fired from behind stone walls, trees, barns, and houses. Among the
 Shifting Authority • 197

Americans were Captain Parker and the reassembled Lexington militia,

some of them with bandaged wounds from their morning skirmish. By
nightfall the redcoat survivors were safely back in Boston, having suffered
three times as many casualties as the Americans. A British general reported
to London that the Americans had earned his respect: “Whoever looks upon
them as an irregular mob will find himself much mistaken.”
During the fighting along the road leading to Lexington from Concord, a
British soldier was searching a house for rebel snipers when he ran into
twenty-five-year-old Patriot James Hayward, a school teacher. The redcoat
pointed his musket at the American and said, “Stop, you’re a dead man.”
Hayward raised his weapon and answered, “So are you.” They fired simulta-
neously. The British soldier died instantly, and Hayward succumbed to a
head wound eight hours later.

THE SPREADING CONFLICT The Revolutionary War had begun.

When the Second Continental Congress convened at Philadelphia on May
10, 1775, the British army in Boston was under siege by Massachusetts mili-
tia units. On the very day that Congress met, Britain’s Fort Ticonderoga, on
Lake Champlain near the Canadian border, fell to a Patriot force of “Green
Mountain Boys” led by Ethan Allen of Vermont and Massachusetts volun-
teers under Benedict Arnold. Two days later the Patriots captured a smaller
British fort at Crown Point, north of Ticonderoga.
The Continental Congress, with no legal authority and no resources, met
amid reports of spreading warfare. On June 15, it unanimously named forty-
three-year-old George Washington commander in chief of a Continental
army. Washington accepted but refused to be paid. The Congress selected
Washington because his service in the French and Indian War had made him
one of the most experienced officers in America. That he was from influen-
tial Virginia, the wealthiest and most populous province, added to his attrac-
tiveness. And, as many people commented then and later, Washington
looked like a leader. He was tall and strong, a superb horseman, and a fear-
less fighter.
On June 17, the very day that Washington was commissioned, Patriots
engaged British forces in their first major clash, the inaccurately named Bat-
tle of Bunker Hill. On the day before the battle, colonial forces fortified the
high ground overlooking Boston. Breed’s Hill was the battle location, nearer
to Boston than Bunker Hill, the site first chosen (and the source of the bat-
tle’s erroneous name). The British reinforced their army with troops com-
manded by three senior generals: William Howe, Sir Henry Clinton, and
John Burgoyne.
198 • FROM COLONIES TO STATES (CH. 4)

View of the Attack on Bunker Hill

The Battle of Bunker Hill and the burning of Charlestown Peninsula.

The Patriots were spoiling for a fight. As Joseph Warren, a dapper Boston
physician, put it, “The British say we won’t fight; by heavens, I hope I shall
die up to my knees in blood!” He soon got his wish. With civilians looking
on from rooftops and church steeples, the British attacked in the blistering
heat, with 2,400 troops moving in tight formation through tall grass. The
Americans watched from behind their earthworks as the waves of British
troops in their beautiful but impractical uniforms, including bearskin hats,
advanced up the hill. The militiamen, mostly farmers, waited until the
attackers had come within fifteen to twenty paces, then loosed a shattering
volley that devastated the British ranks.
The British re-formed their lines and attacked again. Another sheet of
flames and lead greeted them, and the redcoats retreated a second time. Still,
despite the appalling slaughter, the proud British generals were determined
not to let the ragtag rustics humiliate them. On the third attempt, when the
colonials began to run out of gunpowder and were forced to throw stones, a
bayonet charge ousted them. The British took the high ground, but at the
cost of 1,054 casualties. American losses were about 450 killed or wounded
out of a total of 1,500 defenders. “A dear bought victory,” recorded a British
general; “another such would have ruined us.”
 Shifting Authority • 199

The Battle of Bunker Hill had two profound effects. First, the high num-
ber of British casualties made the English generals more cautious in subse-
quent encounters with the Continental army. Second, the Continental
Congress recommended that all able-bodied men enlist in a militia. After the
Battle of Bunker Hill, the two armies, American and British, settled in for a
nine-month stalemate as the two opposing forces waited on diplomatic
efforts.
On July 6 and 8, 1775, the Continental Congress, still eager for a resolu-
tion of the conflict with the mother country, issued an appeal to the king
known as the Olive Branch Petition, written by Pennsylvanian John Dickin-
son. It professed continued loyalty to George III and urged the king to seek
reconciliation with his aggrieved colonies. When the Olive Branch Petition
reached London, George III refused even to look at it. On August 22, he
declared the American rebels “open and avowed enemies.”
In July 1775, while the Continental Congress waited for a response to its
Olive Branch Petition, authorized an ill-fated offensive against Quebec, in
the vain hope of rallying support among the French inhabitants in Canada,
Britain’s fourteenth American colony, and also winning the allegiance of the
Indian tribes in the region. One Patriot force, under General Richard Mont-
gomery, headed toward Quebec by way of Lake Champlain along the New
York–Canadian border; another, under General Benedict Arnold, struggled
west through the dense Maine woods. The American units arrived outside
Quebec in September, tired, exhausted, and hungry. A silent killer then
ambushed them: smallpox. As the deadly virus raced through the American
camp, General Montgomery faced a brutal dilemma. Most of his soldiers
had signed up for short tours of duty, many of which were scheduled to
expire at the end of the year. He could not afford to wait until spring for the
smallpox to subside. Seeing little choice but to fight, Montgomery ordered a
desperate attack on the British forces at Quebec during a blizzard, on
December 31, 1775. The assault was a disaster. Montgomery was killed early
in the battle and Benedict Arnold wounded. Over 400 Americans were taken
prisoner. The rest of the Patriot force retreated to its camp outside the walled
city and appealed to the Continental Congress for reinforcements.
The smallpox virus continued attacking both the Americans in the camp
and their comrades taken captive by the British. As fresh troops arrived, they,
too, fell victim to the deadly virus. Benedict Arnold warned George Wash-
ington in February 1776 that the runaway disease would soon lead to “the
entire ruin of the Army.” By May there were only 1,900 American soldiers left
outside Quebec, and 900 of them were infected with smallpox. The British,
sensing the weakness of the American force, attacked and sent the ragtag
200 • FROM COLONIES TO STATES (CH. 4)

Patriots on a frantic retreat up the St. Lawrence River to the American-held

city of Montreal and eventually back to New York and New England. The
sick and wounded soldiers were left behind, but the smallpox virus travelled
with the fleeing Americans. Major General Horatio Gates later remarked
that “every thing about this Army is infected with the Pestilence; The
Clothes, The Blankets, the Air & the Ground they Walk on.”
Quebec was the first military setback for the Revolutionaries. It would not
be the last. In the South, British forces armed Cherokees and Shawnees and
encouraged their raids on white frontier settlements from Virginia to Geor-
gia. As the fighting spread north into Canada and south into Virginia and
the Carolinas, the Continental Congress negotiated treaties of peace with
Indian tribes, organized a network of post offices headed by Benjamin
Franklin, and authorized the formation of a navy and Marine Corps. But the
delegates continued to hold back from declaring independence.

COMMON SENSE The Revolutionary War was well underway in Janu-

ary 1776 when Thomas Paine, a recent English emigrant to America, pro-
vided the Patriot cause with a stirring pamphlet titled Common Sense. Until
his fifty-page pamphlet appeared, colonial grievances had been mainly
directed at the British Parliament; few colonists considered independence an
option. Paine, however, directly attacked allegiance to the monarchy, which
had remained the last frayed connection to Britain. The “common sense” of
the matter, he stressed, was that King George III bore the responsibility for
the rebellion. Americans, Paine urged, should consult their own interests,
abandon George III, and assert their independence: “The blood of the slain,
the weeping voice of nature cries, ’TIS TIME TO PART.” Only by declaring inde-
pendence, Paine predicted, could the colonists enlist the support of France
and Spain and thereby engender a holy war of monarchy against monarchy.

INDEPENDENCE

Within three months more than 150,000 copies of Paine’s pamphlet

were circulating throughout the provinces, an enormous number for the
time. “Common Sense is working a powerful change in the minds of men,”
George Washington reported. Meanwhile, in Boston, the prolonged standoff
between Patriot and British forces ended in dramatic fashion when a hardy
group of American troops led by Colonel Henry Knox captured the strategic
British Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York. Then, through a herculean
effort across hundreds of miles of snow-covered, mountainous terrain, they
 Independence • 201

brought back with them to Boston sleds loaded with captured British can-
nons and ammunition. The added artillery finally gave General Washington
the firepower needed to make an audacious move. In early March 1776,
Patriot forces, including Native American allies, occupied Dorchester
Heights, to the south of the Boston peninsula, and aimed their newly
acquired cannons at the besieged British troops and their “Tory” supporters
in the city.
In March 1776 the British army in Boston decided to abandon the city.
The last British forces, along with 2,000 panicked Loyalists (“Tories”),
boarded a fleet of 120 ships and sailed for Canada on March 17, 1776. By the
time the British forces fled Boston, they were facing not the suppression of a
rebellion but the reconquest of a continent. In May 1776 the Second Conti-
nental Congress authorized all thirteen colonies to form themselves into
new state governments. Thereafter, one by one, the colonies authorized their
delegates in the Continental Congress to take the final step. On June 7,
Richard Henry Lee of Virginia moved “that these United Colonies are, and of
right ought to be, free and independent states.” Two weeks later, in South
Carolina, a British naval force attacked Charleston. The Patriot militia there
had partially finished a fort made of palmetto trees on Sullivan’s Island,
at the entrance to Charleston harbor. When the British fleet attacked, on
June 28, 1776, the spongy palmetto logs absorbed the naval fire, and the
American cannons forced the British fleet to retreat. South Carolina would
later honor the resilient palmetto tree by putting it on its state flag.
The naval warfare in Charleston gave added momentum to Richard
Henry Lee’s resolution for independence. The Continental Congress finally

The coming revolution

The Continental Congress votes for independence, July 2, 1776.
202 • FROM COLONIES TO STATES (CH. 4)

took the audacious step on July 2, a date that “will be the most memorable
epoch in the history of America,” John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail.
Upon hearing the dramatic news, George Washington declared that the “fate
of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and con-
duct of this army.” The more memorable date, however, became July 4, 1776,
when the Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence as the
official statement of the American position.

J E F F E R S O N ’ S D E C L A R AT I O N In June 1776 the Continental Con-

gress appointed a committee of five men—Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John
Adams, Robert Livingston of New York, and Roger Sherman of Connecticut—
to write a public rationale for independence. The group asked Adams and
Jefferson to produce a first draft, whereupon Adams deferred to Jefferson

The Declaration of Independence

The Declaration in its most frequently reproduced form,
an 1823 engraving by William J. Stone.
 Independence • 203

because of the thirty-three-year-old Virginian’s reputation as an eloquent

writer.
Jefferson shared his draft with the committee members, and they made
several minor revisions before submitting the document to the Congress.
The legislators made eighty-six changes in Jefferson’s declaration, including
the insertion of two references to God and the deletion of a section
blaming the English monarch for imposing African slavery on the colonies
(delegates from Georgia and South Carolina had protested that the language
smacked of abolitionism).
The resulting Declaration of Independence introduced the radical con-
cept that “all men are created equal” in terms of their God-given right to
maintain governments of their own choosing. This represented a compelling
restatement of John Locke’s contract theory of government—the theory, in
Jefferson’s words, that governments derive “their just Powers from the con-
sent of the people,” who are entitled to “alter or abolish” those governments
that deny people (white people, in Jefferson’s eyes) their “unalienable rights”
to “life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Parliament, which had no
proper authority over the colonies, was never mentioned by name. The
stated enemy was a king trying to impose “an absolute Tyranny over these
States.” The “Representatives of the United States of America,” therefore,
declared the thirteen “United Colonies” to be “Free and Independent States.”
General George Washington ordered the Declaration read to every unit in
the Continental army. Benjamin Franklin acknowledged how high the stakes
were: “Well, Gentlemen,” he told the Congress, “we must now hang together,
or we shall most assuredly hang separately.” The Declaration of Indepen-
dence converted what had been an armed rebellion—a civil war between
British subjects—into a war between Britain and a new nation.

“WE A LWAY S H A D G O V E R N E D O U R S E LV E S ” So it had come to

this, thirteen years after Britain had defeated France and gained control of
North America with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The Patriots were willing to
fight for their freedom against the most formidable military power in the
modern world. Joseph Martin, an enthusiastic young Connecticut farmer
who joined George Washington’s army in 1776, expressed the naïve confi-
dence of many Patriots when he said that “I never spent a thought about [the
greater] numbers [of British military resources]. The Americans were invin-
cible in my opinion.”
In explaining the causes of the Revolution, historians have highlighted
many factors: the excessive British regulation of colonial trade, the restric-
tions on settling western lands, the growing tax burden, the mounting debts
204 • FROM COLONIES TO STATES (CH. 4)

to British merchants, the lack of American representation in Parliament, the

abrupt shift from a mercantile to an “imperial” policy after 1763, class con-
flict, and revolutionary agitators.
Each of those factors (and others) contributed to the collective grievances
that rose to a climax in a gigantic failure of British statesmanship. A conflict
between British sovereignty and American rights had come to a point of
confrontation that adroit diplomacy might have avoided, sidestepped, or
outflanked. The rebellious colonists saw the tightening of British regulations
as the conspiracy of a despotic king—to impose an “absolute Tyranny.”
Yet colonists sought liberty from British tyranny for many reasons, not all
of which were selfless or noble. The Boston merchant John Hancock
embraced the Patriot cause in part because he was the region’s foremost
smuggler. Paying British taxes would have cost him a fortune. Likewise,
South Carolina’s Henry Laurens and Virginia’s Landon Carter, wealthy
planters, were concerned about the future of slavery under British control.
The seeming contradiction between American slaveholders demanding
liberty from British oppression was not lost on observers at the time. The
talented writer Phillis Wheatley, the first African American to see her poetry
published in America, highlighted the hypocritical “absurdity” of white
colonists’ demanding their freedom from British tyranny while continuing
to exercise “oppressive power” over
enslaved Africans. Wealthy slave owner
George Washington was not devoid
of self-interest in his opposition to
British policies. An active land specu-
lator, he owned 60,000 acres in the
Ohio Country west of the Appalachi-
ans and very much resented British
efforts to restrict white settlement on
the frontier.
Perhaps the last word on the com-
plex causes of the Revolution should
belong to an obscure participant, Levi
Preston, a Minuteman from Dan-
vers, Massachusetts. Asked sixty-seven
years after Lexington and Concord
Phillis Wheatley about British oppressions, the ninety-
An autographed portrait of Phillis
one-year-old veteran responded by
Wheatley, America’s first African asking his young interviewer, “What
American poet. were they? Oppressions? I didn’t feel
 Independence • 205

them.” He was then asked, “What, were you not oppressed by the Stamp
Act?” Preston replied that he “never saw one of those stamps . . . I am certain
I never paid a penny for one of them.” What about the tax on tea? “Tea-tax! I
never drank a drop of the stuff; the boys threw it all overboard.” His
interviewer finally asked why he decided to fight for independence. “Young
man,” Preston explained, “what we meant in going for those redcoats was
this: we always had governed ourselves, and we always meant to. They didn’t
mean we should.”
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Mercantilism The Navigation Acts decreed that enumerated goods had to go

directly to England and discouraged manufacturing in the colonies. Raw materials
were shipped to the mother country to be processed into manufactured goods.
These mercantilist laws were designed to curb direct trade with other countries,
such as the Netherlands, and keep the wealth of the empire in British hands.
• “Salutary Neglect” Lax administration by the mother country allowed the
colonies a measure of self-government. The dynastic problems of the Stuart kings
aided the New England colonists in their efforts to undermine the Dominion of
New England. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 resulted in a period of “salutary
neglect.” The American colonies pursued their interests with minimal interven-
tion from the British government, which was preoccupied with European wars.
• The French and Indian War Four European wars affected America between 1689
and 1763 as the British and French confronted each other throughout the world. The
Seven Years’ War (1754–1763), known as the French and Indian War in the American
colonies, was the first world war and was eventually won by the British. A plan to
unify all of Britain’s American colonies, including those in Canada, proposed by Ben-
jamin Franklin at the Albany Congress, failed to gain colonial support.
• The Effects of the Seven Years’ War At the Peace of Paris in 1763, France lost all
its North American possessions. Britain gained Canada and Florida, while Spain
acquired Louisiana. With the war’s end, Indians were no longer regarded as
essential allies and so had no recourse when settlers squatted on their lands. The
Treaty of Paris set the stage for conflict between the mother country and the
American colonies as Britain tightened control to pay for the colonies’ defense.
• British Colonial Policy After the French and Indian War, the British govern-
ment was saddled with an enormous national debt. To reduce that imperial bur-
den, the British government concluded that the colonies ought to help pay for
their own defense. Thus, the ministers of King George III began to implement
various acts and impose new taxes.
• Road to the American Revolution Colonists based their resistance to the
Crown on the idea that taxation without direct colonial representation in Parlia-
ment violated their rights. Colonial reaction to the Stamp Act of 1765 was the
first intimation of real trouble for imperial authorities. Conflict intensified
when the British government imposed additional taxes. Spontaneous resistance
led to the Boston Massacre; organized protesters staged the Boston Tea Party.
The British response, called the Coercive Acts, sparked further violence. Com-
promise became less likely, if not impossible.
 CHRONOLOGY

1608
1660
1673
Samuel de Champlain founds Quebec
Restoration of the Stuart monarchy—King Charles II
The French explore the Mississippi River valley from Canada to
the Gulf of Mexico
1684 Dominion of New England is established
1688 Glorious Revolution
1754 Albany Congress adopts Plan of Union
1754–1763 French and Indian War
1763 Pontiac’s Rebellion
1764 Parliament passes the Revenue (Sugar) Act
1766 Parliament repeals the Stamp Act and passes the Declaratory Act
1767 Parliament levies the Townshend duties
1770 Boston Massacre
1773 Colonists stage the Boston Tea Party
1774 Parliament passes the Coercive Acts; colonists hold First
Continental Congress
1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord
1775 Colonists hold Second Continental Congress
1776 Thomas Paine’s Common Sense is published; Declaration of
Independence is signed

KEY TERMS & NAMES

mercantile system p. 159 Whigs p. 182 Patrick Henry p. 194

Navigation Acts p. 160 Sons of Liberty p. 183 Paul Revere p. 195

Glorious Revolution p. 162 Stamp Act Congress p. 184 Minutemen p. 196

“salutary neglect” p. 163 Samuel Adams p. 187 Thomas Paine’s Common

Sense p. 200
Jesuits p. 167 Lord North p. 187

Pontiac’s Rebellion p. 179 Thomas Jefferson p. 192

Part Two


BUILDING

NATION
T he signing of the Declaration of Independence in early July
1776 exhilarated the rebellious colonists and ended the ambivalence
about the purpose of the revolt. Americans now had a sober choice: to
remain subjects of King George III and thus traitors to the new United
States of America, or to embrace the rebellion and become a traitor to
Great Britain. Yet it was one thing for Patriot leaders to declare Ameri-
can independence from British authority and quite another to win it
on the battlefield. The odds greatly favored the British: barely a third of
the colonists actively supported the Revolution, and almost as many
(“Loyalists”) fought tenaciously against it. The political stability of the
fledgling nation was uncertain, and George Washington found himself
in command of a poorly supplied, inexperienced army facing the world’s
greatest military power.
Yet the Revolutionary movement would persevere and prevail. The
skill and fortitude of General Washington and his lieutenants enabled
the American forces to exploit their geographic advantages. Even more
important was the intervention of the French on behalf of the Revolu-
tionary cause. The Franco-American military alliance, negotiated in
1778, proved to be the decisive event in the war. In 1783, after eight years
of sporadic fighting
and heavy human and
financial losses, the
British gave up the fight
and their American colonies.
Amid the Revolutionary
turmoil the Patriots faced the
daunting task of forming new
governments for themselves.
Their deeply ingrained
resentment of British
imperial rule led them to
decentralize political power
and grant substantial sover-
eignty to the individual states.
As Thomas Jefferson declared,
“Virginia, Sir, is my country.”
Such powerful local ties help explain why the colonists focused their
attention on creating new state constitutions rather than a powerful
national government. The Articles of Confederation, ratified in 1781,
provided only the semblance of national authority. Final power to make
and execute laws remained with the states.
After the Revolutionary War, the flimsy political bonds authorized by
the Articles of Confederation could not meet the needs of the new—
and rapidly expanding—nation. This realization led to the calling of
the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The process of drafting and
ratifying the new constitution prompted a heated debate on the relative
significance of national power, local control, and individual freedom
that has provided the central theme of American political thought ever
since.
The Revolution involved much more than the apportionment of
political power, however. It also unleashed social forces that would help
reshape the very fabric of American culture. What would be the role of
women, African Americans, and Native Americans in the new republic?
How would the quite different economies of the various regions of the
new United States be developed? Who would control access to the vast
territories to the west of the original thirteen states? How would the new
republic relate to the other nations of the world?
These controversial questions helped spawn the first national political
parties in the United States. During the 1790s, Federalists, led by
Alexander Hamilton, and Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson and
James Madison, furiously debated the political and economic future
of the new nation. With Jefferson’s election as president in 1800, the
Republicans gained the upper hand in national politics for the next
quarter century. In the process they presided over a maturing republic
that aggressively expanded westward at the expense of the Native Ameri-
cans, ambivalently embraced industrial development, fitfully engaged in
a second war with Great Britain, and ominously witnessed a growing
sectional controversy over slavery.

5
THE AMERICAN
REVOLUTION

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• What were the military strategies and challenges for both the
American and the British forces?
• What were the war’s major turning points?
• Who were the Loyalists and what became of them?
• Why was it possible for the new United States to gain European
allies in its war for independence?
• To what extent was the American Revolution a social revolution in
matters of gender equality, race relations, and religious freedom?

F ew foreign observers thought that the upstart American

revolutionaries could win a war against the world’s greatest
empire—and the Americans ended up losing most of the
battles in the Revolutionary War. But they eventually forced the British to
sue for peace and grant their independence, a stunning result reflecting the
tenacity of the Patriots as well as the peculiar difficulties facing the British as
they tried to conduct a far-flung campaign thousands of miles from home.
The British Empire dispatched two thirds of its entire army and one half of
its formidable navy to suppress the American rebellion. The costly military
commitments that the British maintained elsewhere around the globe fur-
ther complicated their war effort, and the intervention of the French on
behalf of the struggling Americans in 1778 proved to be the war’s key turn-
ing point. The Patriots also had the advantage of fighting on their home
ground; the American commanders knew the terrain and the people. Per-
haps most important of all, the Patriot forces led by George Washington did
214 • THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (CH. 5)

not have to win the war; they simply had to avoid losing the war. Over time,
as they discovered, the British government and the British people would tire
of the human and financial expense of a prolonged war.
Fighting in the New World was not an easy task for either side, however.
The Americans had to create and sustain an army and a navy. Recruiting,
supplying, equipping, training, and paying soldiers and sailors were monu-
mental challenges, especially for a new nation in the midst of forming its
first governments. The Patriot army encircling British-controlled Boston in
1775 was little more than a rustic militia made up of volunteers who had
enlisted for six months. The citizen-soldiers lacked training and discipline.
They came and went as they pleased, gambled frequently, and drank liquor
freely. General George Washington recognized immediately that the fore-
most needs of the new army were capable officers, intensive training, strict
discipline, and longer enlistment contracts. Washington was pleased to see
that the soldiers from the different colonies were as one in their “continen-
tal” viewpoint; hence, he called it the Continental army. He soon began
whipping his army into shape. Recruits who violated army rules were placed
in the stockade, flogged, or sent packing. Some deserters were hanged. The
tenacity of Washington and the Revolutionaries bore fruit as war-weariness
and political dissension in London hampered British efforts to suppress the
rebel forces.
Like all major wars, the Revolution had unexpected consequences affect-
ing political, economic, and social life. It not only secured American inde-
pendence, generated a sense of nationalism, and created a unique system of
self-governance, but it also began a process of societal change that has yet to
run its course. The turmoil of revolution upset traditional social relation-
ships and helped transform the lives of people who had long been relegated
to the periphery of social status—African Americans, women, and Indians.
In important ways, then, the Revolution was much more than simply a war
for independence. It was an engine for political experimentation and social
change.

1 7 7 6 : WA S H I N G T O N ’ S N A R R O W E S C A P E

On July 2, 1776, the day that Congress voted for independence, British
redcoats landed on undefended Staten Island, across New York Harbor from
Manhattan. They were the vanguard of a gigantic effort to reconquer Amer-
ica and the first elements of an enormous force that gathered around the
harbor over the next month. By mid-August, British general William Howe
 1776: Washington’s Narrow Escape • 215

had some thirty-two thousand men at his disposal, the largest single force
mustered by the British in the eighteenth century. The British recruited
mercenaries (hired foreign soldiers) in Europe to assist them in putting
down the American revolt. Eventually almost thirty thousand Germans
served in America, about seventeen thousand of them from the principal-
ity of Hesse-Cassel—thus Hessian became the name applied to all of
them.
After the British withdrew their forces from Boston, George Washington
transferred most of his troops to New York, but he could gather only about
nineteen thousand poorly trained local militiamen and members of the new
Continental army. It was much too small a force to defend New York, but
Congress wanted it held. This meant that Washington had to expose his out-
numbered men to entrapments from which they escaped more by luck and
General Howe’s excessive caution than by any strategic genius on the part of
the American commander. Although a veteran of frontier fighting, Washing-
ton had never commanded a large unit or supervised artillery. As he con-
fessed to the Continental Congress, he had no “experience to move [armies]
on a large scale” and had only “limited . . . knowledge . . . in Military Mat-
ters.” In 1776 he was still learning the art of generalship, and the British inva-
sion of New York taught him some costly lessons.

F I G H T I N G I N N E W YO R K A N D N E W J E R S E Y In late August
1776 the massive British armada began landing troops on Long Island. It was
the largest seaborne military expedition in world history. Short of munitions
and greatly outnumbered, the new American army suffered a humiliating
defeat at the Battle of Long Island. Only a timely rainstorm enabled the
retreating Americans to cross the harbor from Brooklyn to Manhattan
under cover of darkness. Had General Howe moved more quickly, he could
have trapped Washington’s army in lower Manhattan. The main American
force, however, withdrew northward, crossed the Hudson River, and
retreated across New Jersey and over the Delaware River into Pennsylvania.
As Washington’s army fled New York City, so, too did Patriot civilians. Local
Loyalists (Tories) welcomed the British occupation of New York City, which
came to be called Torytown.
By December 1776, General Washington had only three thousand men
left under his command. Thousands of militiamen had simply gone home.
Prolonged warfare quickly lost its appeal for untrained volunteers. As Wash-
ington acknowledged, “after the first emotions are over,” those who
remained willing to serve out of dedication to the “goodness of the cause”
would be few. The supreme commander saw that his shrunken army was
216 • THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (CH. 5)

populated by “much broken and dispirited men.” Unless a new army could
be raised quickly, Washington warned, “I think the game is pretty near up.”
But it wasn’t. In the retreating American army marched a volunteer, English-
man Thomas Paine. Having opened the eventful year of 1776 with his
inspiring pamphlet Common Sense, which in plain terms encouraged Ameri-
can independence, Paine now composed The American Crisis, in which he
penned these uplifting lines:

These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the
sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country;
but he that stands it NOW deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered. Yet we have this consolation with
us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

Paine’s stirring pamphlet bolstered the shaken morale of the Patriots—as

events would soon do more decisively. Congress’s decision to offer recruits
cash, land, clothing, and blankets pro-
ved more important than Thomas
Paine’s inspiring words in lifting the
spirits of the Revolutionaries.
General Howe, firmly—and luxuri-
ously—based in New York City (which
the British held throughout the war),
settled down with his Loyalist mis-
tress to wait out the winter. George
Washington, however, was not ready
to hibernate. He knew that the morale
of his men and the hopes of a new
nation required “some stroke” of good
news in the face of their devastating
losses in New York. So he seized the
initiative with a desperate gamble to
achieve a much-needed first victory
before more of his soldiers returned
home once their initial enlistment con-
tracts expired. On Christmas night
Common Sense 1776, he led some 2,400 men across
Thomas Paine’s inspiring pamphlet the icy Delaware River. Near dawn at
was originally published anonymously Trenton, New Jersey, the Americans
because of its treasonous content. surprised a garrison of 1,500 sleeping
 1776: Washington’s Narrow Escape • 217

MAJOR CAMPAIGNS IN NEW YORK

AND NEW JERSEY, 1776–1777 Peekskill

American forces
NEW YORK
British forces
Battle site

Hu
dson
River
0 5 10 Miles

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NEW JERSEY Hackensack

Fort Lee Fort Washington

East River
Morristown Harlem Heights

New York
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Why did Washington lead his army from Brooklyn to Manhattan and from there to
New Jersey? How could General Howe have ended the rebellion in New York? What
is the significance of the Battle of Trenton?
218 • THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (CH. 5)

Hessians. It was a total rout, from which

only 500 Hessians escaped death or cap-
ture. Just two of Washington’s men were
killed and four wounded, one of whom
was Lieutenant James Monroe, the future
president. A week later, at nearby Prince-
ton, the Americans improbably won
another battle, outmaneuvering the
British before taking refuge in winter
quarters at Morristown, in the hills of
northern New Jersey about thirty-five
miles west of New York City (eighteenth-
century armies rarely fought during the
winter months).
The unexpected victories at Princeton
and Trenton saved the cause of indepen-
George Washington at Princeton
dence. Having learned of the American
By Charles Willson Peale.
triumphs in New Jersey, a Virginian loyal
to Britain glumly reported that a few days
before, the Revolutionaries “had given up the cause for lost. Their late successes
have turned the scale and now they are all liberty mad again.” By not aggres-
sively pursuing the Americans as they retreated from Long Island and later
Manhattan, General Howe and the British had missed their great chance—
indeed, several chances—to bring the Revolution to a speedy end. A British
officer grumbled that the Americans had “become a formidable enemy.”
George Washington had painfully realized that the only way to defeat the
British was to wear them down in a long war. As the combat in New York had
shown, the Americans could rarely beat the British army in a large conven-
tional battle. The only hope of winning the war was to wear down the
patience of the British. Over the next eight years, General Washington and his
troops would outlast the invaders through a strategy of evasion punctuated
by selective confrontations.

AMERICAN SOCIETY AT WA R

CHOOSING SIDES The Revolution was as much a brutal civil war

among Americans (and their Native American allies) as it was a prolonged
struggle against Great Britain. The act of choosing sides in the colonies
divided families and friends, towns and cities. Benjamin Franklin’s illegiti-
 American Society at War • 219

mate son, William, for example, was the royal governor of New Jersey. An
ardent Loyalist, he sided with Great Britain during the Revolution, and his
Patriot father later removed him from his will. The fratricidal passions
unleashed by the Revolution erupted in brutalities on both sides. One Loyal-
ist, John Stevens, testified that he “was dragged by a rope fixed about his
neck” across the Susquehanna River because he refused to sign an oath sup-
porting the Revolution. In Virginia, the planter Charles Lynch set up vigi-
lante courts to punish Loyalists by “lynching” them—which in this case
meant whipping them.
Opinion among the colonists concerning the war divided in three ways:
Patriots, or Whigs (as the Revolutionaries called themselves), who formed the
Continental army and fought in state militias; Loyalists, or Tories, as the Patri-
ots derisively called them; and a less committed middle group swayed mostly
by the better organized and more energetic radicals. Loyalists may have repre-
sented 20 percent of the American population, but the Patriots were probably
the largest of the three groups. Some Americans switched sides during the war;
there were also numerous deserters, spies, and traitors—on both sides.
The Loyalists did not want to “dissolve the political bands” with Britain, as
the Declaration of Independence demanded. Instead, as some seven hun-
dred of them in New York City said in a petition to British officials, they
“steadily and uniformly opposed” this “most unnatural, unprovoked Rebel-
lion.” Where the Patriots rejected the monarchy, the Loyalists staunchly
upheld royal authority. They viewed the Revolution as an act of treason.
Loyalists were concentrated in the seaport cities, especially New York City
and Philadelphia, but they came from all walks of life. Governors, judges,
and other royal officials were almost all Loyalists; most Anglican ministers
also preferred the mother country, as did many Anglican parishioners. In the
backcountry of New York and the Carolinas, many farmers rallied to the
Crown. More New York men during the Revolution joined Loyalist regi-
ments than opted for the Continental army. In few places, however, were
there enough Loyalists to assume control without the presence of British
troops, and nowhere for very long. The British were repeatedly frustrated by
both the failure of Loyalists to materialize in strength and the collapse of
Loyalist militia units once British troops departed. Because Patriot militias
quickly returned whenever the British left an area, any Loyalists in the region
faced a difficult choice: either accompany the British and leave behind their
property or stay and face the wrath of the Patriots. Even more disheartening
was what one British officer called “the licentiousness of the [Loyalist]
troops, who committed every species of rapine and plunder” and thereby
converted potential friends to enemies.
220 • THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (CH. 5)

MILITIA AND ARMY American militiamen served two purposes: they

constituted a home guard, defending their communities, and they helped
augment the Continental army. Often dressed in hunting shirts and armed
with their own muskets, they preferred to ambush their opponents or
engage them in hand-to-hand combat rather than fight in traditional Euro-
pean formations. To repel an attack, the militia somehow materialized; the
danger past, it evaporated, for there were chores to do at home. They “come
in, you cannot tell how,” Washington said in exasperation, “go, you cannot
tell when, and act you cannot tell where, consume your provisions, exhaust
your stores [supplies], and leave you at last at a critical moment.”
The national Continental army, by contrast, was on the whole better
trained and more reliable. Unlike the professional soldiers in the British
army, Washington’s troops were citizen soldiers, mostly poor native-born
Americans or immigrants who had been indentured servants or convicts.
Many of the Patriots found camp life debilitating and combat horrifying. As
burly General Nathanael Greene—Washington’s ablest commander and a
Rhode Island Quaker ironmaker who had never set foot on a battlefield until
1775—pointed out, few of the Patriots had ever engaged in mortal combat,
and they were hard-pressed to “stand the shocking scenes of war, to march
over dead men, to hear without concern the groans of the wounded.” Deser-
tions grew as the war dragged on. At times, General Washington could put
only two to three thousand men in the field.

American militia
This sketch of militiamen by a French soldier at Yorktown, Virginia, shows an
American frontiersman turned soldier (second from right), and it is also one of the
earliest depictions of an African American soldier.
 1777: Setbacks for the British • 221

P R O B L E M S O F F I N A N C E A N D S U P P LY Congress found it difficult

to finance the war and supply the army. The states rarely provided their des-
ignated share of the war’s expenses, and Congress reluctantly let army agents
take supplies directly from farmers in return for promises of future pay-
ment. Many of the states found a ready source of revenue in the sale of aban-
doned Loyalist estates. Nevertheless, Congress and the states fell short of
funding the war’s cost and resorted to printing paper money. At the start of
the fighting there were no uniforms, and the weapons they carried were “as
various as their costumes.” Most munitions were supplied either by captur-
ing British weapons or by importation from France, whose government was
all too glad to help the Patriots fight its archenemy.
During the harsh New Jersey winter at Morristown (1776–1777), George
Washington’s army nearly disintegrated as enlistments expired and deserters
fled the hardships of brutally cold weather, inadequate food, and widespread
disease. One soldier recalled that “we were absolutely, literally starved. . . .
I saw several of the men roast their old shoes and eat them.” Smallpox con-
tinued to wreak havoc among the American armies. By 1777, Washington
had come to view the virus with greater dread than “the Sword of the
Enemy.” On any given day, a fourth of the American troops were deemed
unfit for duty, usually because of smallpox. The threat of smallpox to the war
effort was so great that in early 1777 Washington ordered a mass inocula-
tion, which he managed to keep secret from the British. Inoculating an
entire army was an enormous, risky undertaking. Washington’s daring gam-
ble paid off. The successful inoculation of the American army marks one of
his greatest strategic accomplishments of the war.
Only about a thousand Patriots stuck out the Morristown winter. With
the spring thaw, however, recruits began arriving to claim the bounty of
$20 and 100 acres of land offered by Congress to those who would enlist for
three years or for the duration of the conflict, if less. Having cobbled
together some nine thousand regular troops, Washington began sparring
and feinting with Howe’s British forces in northern New Jersey. Howe had
been making his own plans, however, and so had other British officers.

1 7 7 7 : S E T BAC K S FOR THE BRITISH

The British plan to defeat the “American rebellion” involved a three-

pronged assault on New York. By gaining control of that important state,
they would cut off New England from the rest of the colonies. The plan
called for a northern British army based in Canada and led by General John
“Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne to advance southward from Quebec via Lake
222 • THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (CH. 5)

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What were the consequences of Burgoyne’s strategy of dividing

the colonies with two British forces? How did life in Washington’s
camp at Valley Forge transform the American army? Why was
Saratoga a turning point in the American Revolution?
 1777: Setbacks for the British • 223

Champlain to the Hudson River, while another British force moved eastward
from Oswego, in western New York. General Howe, meanwhile, would lead a
third British army up the Hudson from New York City. As often happens
with ambitious war plans, however, the British failed in their execution—
and in their communications with one another. At the last minute, General
Howe changed his mind and decided to move against the Patriot capital,
Philadelphia, expecting that the Pennsylvania Loyalists would rally to the
Crown and secure the rebellious colony.
General Washington withdrew most of his men from New Jersey to meet
the new British threat in Pennsylvania. At Brandywine Creek, southwest
of Philadelphia, the British routed the Americans on September 11, then occu-
pied Philadelphia, the largest and wealthiest American city. Washington retired
with his army to winter quarters twenty miles away at Valley Forge, while Howe
and his men remained for the winter in the relative comfort of Philadelphia.
The displaced Continental Congress relocated to York, Pennsylvania.
Howe’s plan had succeeded, up to a point. Loyalist Philadelphians hailed
the arrival of British troops. But the Tories there proved fewer than Howe
had expected, and the timid British general lost another chance to deal
Washington’s army a knockout blow. In addition, his decision to move on
Philadelphia from the south, by way of Chesapeake Bay, put his forces even
farther from General Burgoyne’s northern army, which was stumbling into
disaster in upper New York.

T H E C A M PA I G N O F 1 7 7 7 The British plan to defeat the Americans

in their war for independence centered on the northern theater. In an attempt
to cut off New York from the rest of the colonies, an overconfident General
Burgoyne moved south from Canada toward Lake Champlain in June 1777.
His cumbersome invasion force moved slowly, for it comprised about seven
thousand soldiers, his mistress, a thousand or so “camp followers” (cooks,
laundresses, entertainers, and prostitutes), four hundred horses, fifty cannons,
and supplies, including some thirty carts carrying, among other things, Bur-
goyne’s tailored uniforms and his large stock of wine and champagne. The
heavily laden army struggled to cross the wooded, marshy terrain in upstate
New York. Burgoyne sent a smaller army led by Barrimore “Barry” St. Leger
southward on Lake Ontario to Oswego, where a force of Iroquois allies
joined them. The combined force then headed east along the fertile Mohawk
River valley toward Albany, a trading town some one hundred fifty miles north
of New York City near the confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson rivers.
The American army commander in New York facing Burgoyne’s redcoats
was General Horatio Gates. In 1745 Gates and Burgoyne had joined the same
224 • THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (CH. 5)

British regiment. Now they were com-

manding opposing armies. The out-
numbered but more mobile Patriots
inflicted two serious “defeats” on the
British forces. At Oriskany, New York,
on August 6, 1777, a band of militia-
men, mostly local German farmers and
their Indian allies, withstood an ambush
by Loyalists and Indians and gained
time for Patriot reinforcements to arrive
at nearby Fort Stanwix, which had been
besieged by British soldiers. When the
British demanded that the fort’s com-
mander surrender, Gates rejected the
General John Burgoyne offer “with disdain,” saying that the
Commander of Britain’s northern fort would be defended to the “last
forces. Burgoyne and most of his extremity.” As the days passed, the Iro-
troops surrendered to the Americans
quois deserted the British army, lead-
at Saratoga on October 17, 1777.
ing the British commander to order a
withdrawal, after which the strategic Mohawk River valley was secured for
the Patriot forces.
To the east, at Bennington, Vermont, on August 16, New England militia-
men, led by grizzled veteran Colonel John Stark, decimated a detachment of
Hessians and Loyalists foraging for supplies. Stark had pledged that morn-
ing, “We’ll beat them before night, or Molly Stark will be a widow.” As Patriot
militiamen converged from across central New York, Burgoyne pulled his
dispirited forces back to the village of Saratoga, where the reinforced Amer-
ican army surrounded the outnumbered and stranded British army, which
was desperate for food.
Attempting to retreat to Canada, the British twice tried to break through
the encircling Americans, but to no avail. On October 17, 1777, Burgoyne,
resplendent in his gorgeous scarlet dress uniform with gleaming gold braid,
signed an agreement with the American general Horatio Gates, himself
dressed in a simple blue coat, to surrender his 5,895 British and German
troops and leave North America. Many of his British and German soldiers,
however, were imprisoned in several American states. The shocking British
defeat at Saratoga prompted the British political leader William Pitt, the Earl
of Chatham, who as prime minister had engineered the British triumph over
France in 1763, to tell Parliament upon hearing the news about Burgoyne’s
surrender: “You CANNOT conquer America.”
 1778: Both Sides Regroup • 225

ALLIANCE WITH FRANCE The surprising American victory at

Saratoga was strategically important because it convinced the French to sign
two crucial treaties in early 1778. Under the Treaty of Amity and Commerce,
France recognized the new United States and offered trade concessions,
including important privileges to American shipping. Under the Treaty of
Alliance, both parties agreed, first, that if France entered the war, both coun-
tries would fight until American independence was won; second, that nei-
ther would conclude a “truce or peace” without “the formal consent of the
other first obtained”; and third, that each guaranteed the other’s possessions
in America “from the present time and forever against all other powers.”
France further bound itself to seek neither Canada nor other British posses-
sions on the mainland of North America.
By June 1778, British vessels had fired on French ships, and the two
nations were at war. The French decision to join the infant United States in
its fight for independence was by far the most important factor in America’s
winning the Revolutionary War. Even more important than French supplies
and financial assistance was the role of the French navy in allowing the
Americans to hold out against the British. In 1779, Spain entered the war as
an ally of France but not of the United States. In 1780, Britain declared war
on the Dutch, who persisted in a profitable trade with the French and the
Americans. The rebellious farmers at Lexington and Concord had indeed
fired a shot “heard round the world.” A civil war between Britain’s colonies
and the mother country had mushroomed into another world war, as the
fighting now spread to the Mediterranean, Africa, India, the West Indies, and
the high seas.

1778: BOTH SIDES REGROUP

After the British defeat at Saratoga and the news of the French alliance
with the United States, Lord North decided that the war was unwinnable,
but the king refused to let him either resign or make peace. On March 16,
1778, the House of Commons in effect granted all the demands that the
American rebels had made prior to independence. Parliament repealed the
Townshend tea duty, the Massachusetts Government Act, and the Pro-
hibitory Act, which had closed the colonies to commerce, and sent peace
commissioners to Philadelphia to negotiate an end to hostilities. But Con-
gress refused to begin any negotiations until Britain recognized American
independence or withdrew its forces.
226 • THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (CH. 5)

VA L L E Y F O R G E For Washington’s army at Valley Forge, the winter of

1777–1778 was a season of intense suffering. The American force, encamped
near Philadelphia, endured unrelenting cold, hunger, and disease. Some
troops lacked shoes and blankets. Their makeshift log-and-mud huts offered
little protection from the howling winds and bitter cold. Most of the army’s
horses died of exposure or starvation. By February, seven thousand troops
were too ill for duty. More than two thousand five hundred soldiers died at
Valley Forge; another thousand deserted. Fifty officers resigned on one
December day. Several hundred more left before winter’s end.
Desperate for relief, Washington sent troops on foraging expeditions
into New Jersey, Delaware, and the Eastern Shore of Maryland, confiscating
horses, cattle, and hogs in exchange for “receipts” to be honored by the Con-
tinental Congress. By March 1778 the once-gaunt troops at Valley Forge saw
their strength restored. Their improved health enabled Washington to begin
a rigorous training program, designed to bring unity to his motley array
of forces. Because few of the regimental commanders had any formal mili-
tary training, their troops lacked leadership, discipline, and skill. To remedy
this defect, Washington turned to an energetic Prussian soldier of fortune,
Friedrich Wilhelm, baron von Steuben. Steuben used an interpreter and fre-

Valley Forge
During the winter of 1777–1778, Washington’s army battled starvation, disease, and
freezing temperatures.
 1778: Both Sides Regroup • 227

quent profanity to instruct the troops, teaching them the fundamentals of

close-order drill: how to march in formation and how to handle their weapons.
Steuben was one of several foreign volunteers who joined the American
army at Valley Forge. Among the Europeans was also a twenty-year-old red-
haired Frenchman named, in short, Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de
Lafayette. A wealthy idealist excited by the American cause, Lafayette offered
to serve for no pay in exchange for being named a general. General Washing-
ton was initially skeptical of the young French patriot, but Lafayette soon
became the commander in chief ’s most trusted aide. The French general
proved to be a courageous soldier and able diplomat.
By the end of the winter, the ragtag soldiers at Valley Forge were beginning
to resemble a professional army. The army’s morale rose when Congress
promised extra pay and bonuses after the war. The good news from France
about the formal military alliance also helped raise their spirits. In the spring
of 1778, British forces withdrew from Pennsylvania to New York City, with
the American army in hot pursuit. Once the British were back in Manhattan,
Washington’s men encamped at White Plains, north of the city. From that
time on, the northern theater, scene of the major campaigns and battles early
in the war, settled into a long stalemate, interrupted by minor engagements.

AC T I O N S O N T H E F RO N T I E R The one major American success of

1778 occurred far from the New Jersey battlefields. The Revolution had
spawned two wars. In addition to the main conflict between British and
American armies, a frontier guerrilla war of terror and vengeance pitted Indi-
ans and Loyalists against isolated Patriot settlers along the northern and
western frontiers. The British incited frontier Loyalists and Indians to raid
farm settlements and offered to pay bounties for American scalps. To end the
English-led attacks, young George Rogers Clark took 175 Patriot frontiers-
men on flatboats down the Ohio River early in 1778, marched through the
woods, and on the evening of July 4 captured English-controlled Kaskaskia
(in present-day Illinois). The French inhabitants, terrified at first, “fell into
transports of joy” at news of the French alliance with the Americans. Then,
without bloodshed, Clark took Cahokia (in present-day Illinois across the
Mississippi River from St. Louis) and Vincennes (in present-day Indiana).
After the British retook Vincennes, Clark marched his men (almost half of
them French volunteers) through icy rivers and flooded prairies, sometimes
in water neck deep, and laid siege to the astonished British garrison. Clark’s
men, all hardened woodsmen, captured five Indians carrying American
scalps. Clark ordered his men to tomahawk the Indians in sight of the fort.
The British thereupon surrendered the fort.
 228 • THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (CH. 5)

WESTERN CAMPAIGNS,
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How did George Rogers Clark secure Cahokia and Vincennes? Why did the American
army destroy Iroquois villages in 1779? Why were the skirmishes between settlers
and Indian tribes significant for the future of the trans-Appalachian frontier?

While Clark’s Rangers were in Indiana, a much larger American expedi-

tion moved through western Pennsylvania to attack Iroquois strongholds in
western New York. There the Loyalists and Indians had terrorized frontier
settlements throughout the summer of 1778. Led by the charismatic Mohawk
Joseph Brant, the Iroquois had killed hundreds of militiamen along the Penn-
sylvania frontier. In response, Washington dispatched an expedition of four
thousand men under General John Sullivan to suppress “the hostile tribes”
 The War in the South • 229

and “the most mischievous of the

Tories.” At Newton, New York, on
August 29, 1779, Sullivan carried out
Washington’s instruction that the Iro-
quois country be not “merely overrun
but destroyed.” The American force
burned about forty Seneca and Cayuga
villages, together with their orchards
and food supplies, leaving many of the
Indians homeless and without enough
provisions to survive. The campaign
against the Loyalists and Indians broke
the power of the Iroquois Confederacy
for all time, but it did not completely
pacify the frontier. Sporadic encounters
Joseph Brant
with various tribes continued to the
end of the war. This 1786 portrait of Thayendanegea
(Joseph Brant) by Gilbert Stuart
In the Kentucky territory, Daniel features the Mohawk leader who
Boone and his small band of settlers fought against the Americans in the
repeatedly clashed with the Shawnees Revolution.
and their British and Loyalist allies. In
1778, Boone and some thirty men, aided by their wives and children, held off
an assault by more than four hundred Indians at Boonesborough. Thereafter,
Boone himself was twice shot and twice captured. Indians killed two of his
sons, a brother, and two brothers-in-law. His daughter was captured, and
another brother was wounded four times.
In early 1776 a delegation of northern Indians—Shawnees, Delawares, and
Mohawks—had talked the Cherokees into striking at frontier settlements in
Virginia and the Carolinas. Swift retaliation had followed as Carolina militia-
men led by Andrew Pickens burned dozens of Cherokee villages just east of
the Blue Ridge mountains, destroying their corn, orchards, and livestock. By
weakening the major Indian tribes along the frontier, the American Revolu-
tion cleared the way for white settlers to seize Indian lands after the war.

T H E WA R IN THE SOUTH

At the end of 1778, the focus of the British military efforts shifted to
the southern theater. The whole region from Virginia southward had been
free of major military action since 1776. Now the British would test King
George’s belief that a dormant Loyalist sentiment in the South needed only
230 • THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (CH. 5)

the presence of redcoats to be awakened. The new commander of British

forces in America, General Sir Henry Clinton, dispatched three thousand
redcoats, Hessians, and Loyalists to take Savannah, on the southeast Georgia
coast, and roll northeast, gathering momentum by enlisting support from
local Loyalists and the Cherokee Indians. Initially, Clinton’s southern strat-
egy worked. Within twenty months, the British and their allies had defeated
three American armies, retaken the strategic port cities of Savannah and
Charleston, occupied Georgia and much of South Carolina, and killed,
wounded, or captured some seven thousand American soldiers, nearly equal-
ing the British losses at Saratoga. The success of the “southern campaign” led
one British official to declare that there soon would be a “speedy and happy
termination of the American war.” But his optimistic prediction ran afoul of
three developments: first, the Loyalist strength in the South was—again—
less than estimated; second, the British effort to unleash Indian attacks con-
vinced many undecided backcountry settlers to join the Patriot side; and,
third, some of the British and Loyalist soldiers behaved so harshly that they
drove even some Loyalists to switch to the rebel side.

S AVA N N A H A N D C H A R L E S T O N In November 1778 a British force

attacked Savannah, the capital and largest city of Georgia, the least populous
American colony. The invaders quickly overwhelmed the Patriots, took the
town, and hurried northeast toward Charleston, the capital of South Car-
olina, plundering plantation houses along the way. The Carolina campaign
took a major turn when British forces, led brilliantly by generals Clinton and
Charles Cornwallis, bottled up an American force on the Charleston Penin-
sula. On May 12, 1780, the American general surrendered Charleston and its
5,500 defenders, the greatest single Patriot loss of the war. American resis-
tance to the British onslaught in the South seemed to have been crushed. At
that point, Congress, against George Washington’s advice, turned to the vic-
tor at Saratoga, Horatio Gates, to take command and sent him south to form
a new army. General Cornwallis, now in charge of the British troops in the
South, engaged Gates’s much larger force at Camden, South Carolina, rout-
ing his new army, which retreated all the way to Hillsborough, North Car-
olina, 160 miles away. General Gates, the hero of Saratoga, fled to safety on a
fast horse.

THE CAROLINAS From the point of view of British imperial goals, the
southern colonies were ultimately more important than the northern ones
because they produced valuable staple crops such as tobacco, rice, and indigo.
Eventually the war in the Carolinas aroused the ruthless passions and vio-
 The War in the South • 231

lence of a frontier civil war among neighbors that degenerated into savage
guerrilla-style raids and reprisals between “partisan” Patriots and local Loy-
alists along with Cherokees allied with the British. Each side at times tor-
tured, scalped, and executed prisoners.
General Cornwallis had Georgia and most of South Carolina under British
control by 1780, but his two most ruthless cavalry officers, Sir Banastre Tar-
leton and Patrick Ferguson, who were in charge of mobilizing, training, and
leading Loyalist militiamen, overreached themselves. The British officers
often let their men burn Patriot farms, liberate slaves, and destroy livestock.
As one of the British officers explained, “We have got a method that will put
an end to the rebellion in a short time . . . by hanging every man that . . . is
found acting against us.” Ferguson sealed his doom when he threatened to
march over the Blue Ridge Mountains, hang the mostly Scots-Irish back-
country Patriot leaders (“barbarians”), and destroy their farms. Instead, the
feisty “overmountain men” from southwestern Virginia and western North
and South Carolina (including “Tennesseans”), mostly hunters rather than
soldiers, went after Ferguson and his army of Loyalists. They clashed on par-
tially wooded ground near King’s Mountain, just across the North Carolina
border, about fifty miles west of Charlotte. There, on October 7, 1780, in a
ferocious hour-long battle, the frontier sharpshooters decimated the Loyal-
ists and Major Ferguson, their British commander, whose dead body was
found riddled with seven bullet holes. Almost seven hundred Loyalists were
captured, a dozen of whom were tried and hanged.
The Battle of King’s Mountain was the turning point of the war in the
South. The British forces under General Cornwallis retreated into South Car-
olina and found it virtually impossible to recruit more Loyalists. By proving
that the British were not invincible, the Battle of King’s Mountain embold-
ened farmers to join guerrilla bands under such colorful leaders as Francis
Marion, “the Swamp Fox,” and Thomas Sumter, “the Carolina Gamecock.”
In late 1780 Congress chose a new commander for the southern theater,
General Nathanael Greene, “the fighting Quaker” of Rhode Island. A for-
mer blacksmith blessed with infinite patience, skilled at managing men and
saving supplies, careful to avoid needless risks, he was Washington’s ablest
general—and well suited to a prolonged war against the British forces.
From Charlotte, North Carolina, where Greene arrived in December 1780,
he moved his army eastward and sent General Daniel Morgan with about
seven hundred men on a sweep to the west of Cornwallis’s headquarters at
Winnsboro, South Carolina. Taking a position near Cowpens, a cow-grazing
area in northern South Carolina, Morgan’s force engaged Tarleton’s British
army on January 17, 1781. Once the battle was joined, Tarleton rushed his
232 • THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (CH. 5)

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Why did the British suddenly shift their campaign to the South? Why
were the battles at Savannah and Charleston major victories for the
British? How did Nathanael Greene undermine British control of the
Deep South? Why did Cornwallis march to Virginia and camp at
Yorktown? How was the French navy crucial to the American victory?
Why was Cornwallis forced to surrender?
 The War in the South • 233

men forward, only to be ambushed by Morgan’s cavalry. Tarleton escaped,

but over a hundred British were killed, and more than seven hundred were
taken prisoner. Cowpens was the most complete tactical victory for the Amer-
ican side in the Revolution. It was one of the few times that Americans won a
battle in which the two sides were evenly matched. When General Cornwallis
learned of the American victory, he said the news “broke my heart.”
After the victory at Cowpens, Morgan’s army moved into North Carolina
and linked up with General Greene’s main force at Guilford Courthouse
(near what became Greensboro). Greene lured Cornwallis’s army north, and
then attacked the redcoats at Guilford Courthouse on March 15, 1781. The
Americans inflicted such heavy losses that Cornwallis marched his men off
toward Wilmington, on the North Carolina coast, to lick their wounds and
take on supplies from British ships. Greene then resolved to go back into
South Carolina in the hope of drawing Cornwallis after him or forcing the
British to give up the state. There he joined forces with local guerrilla bands.
In a series of brilliant actions, the Americans kept narrowly losing battles
while winning the war by prolonging it. It was a contest of endurance, and
the Americans held the advantage in time, men, and supplies; they could
outlast the British as long as they avoided a catastrophic defeat. “We fight,
get beat, rise, and fight again,” Greene said. By September 1781, the Ameri-
cans had narrowed British control in the South to Charleston and Savannah,
although for more than a year longer local Patriots and Loyalists slashed at
each other in the backcountry, where there was “nothing but murder and
devastation in every quarter,” Greene said.
Meanwhile, Cornwallis had pushed his British army north, away from
Greene, reasoning that Virginia must be eliminated as a source of reinforce-
ment and supplies before the Carolinas could be subdued. In May 1781 the
British force marched into Virginia. There, since December 1780, the traitor-
ous Benedict Arnold, now a British general, had been engaged in a war of
maneuver against the American forces. Arnold, until September 1780, had
been the American commander at West Point, New York. But like many sol-
diers during the Revolution, Arnold had switched sides. Overweening in
ambition, lacking in moral scruples, and a reckless spender on his fashion-
able wife, Arnold had nursed a grudge against George Washington over an
official reprimand for his extravagances as commander of reoccupied
Philadelphia. Traitors have a price, and Arnold had found his: he had crassly
plotted to sell out the American garrison at West Point to the British, and he
even suggested how they might seize George Washington himself. Only the
fortuitous capture of the British go-between, Major John André, had ended
Arnold’s plot. Warned that his plan had been discovered, Arnold had joined
the British in New York City, while the Americans hanged André as a spy.
234 • THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (CH. 5)

YO R K T O W N When Cornwallis linked up his army with Arnold’s at

Petersburg, Virginia, their combined forces totaled 7,200 men. As the Amer-
icans approached, Cornwallis picked Yorktown, Virginia, on Chesapeake
Bay, as a defensible site on which to establish a base of operations. There
appeared to be little reason to worry about a siege, since General Washing-
ton’s main land force seemed preoccupied with attacking New York, and the
British navy controlled American waters.
To be sure, there was a small American navy, but it was no match for the
British fleet. Yet American privateers distracted and wounded the massive
British ships. Most celebrated were the exploits of Captain John Paul Jones.
Off the English coast on September 23, 1779, Jones and his crew won a des-
perate battle with a British frigate, which the Americans captured and occu-
pied before their own ship sank. This was the occasion for Jones’s stirring
and oft-repeated response to a British demand for surrender: “I have not yet
begun to fight.”
Still, such heroics were little more than nuisances to the British. But at a
critical point, thanks to the French navy, the British navy lost control of
Chesapeake Bay. Indeed, it is impossible to imagine an American victory in
the Revolution without the assistance of the French. As long as the British
navy maintained supremacy at sea, the Americans could not hope to win the
war. For three years, George Washington had waited to get some strategic
military benefit from the French alliance. In July 1780 the French had finally
landed six thousand soldiers at Newport, Rhode Island, which the British
had given up to concentrate on the South, but the French army had sat there
for a year, blockaded by the British fleet.
Then, in 1781, the elements for a combined Franco-American action sud-
denly fell into place. In May, as Cornwallis’s army moved into Virginia,
George Washington persuaded the commander of the French army in Rhode
Island to join forces for an attack on the British army in New York. The two
armies linked up in July, but before they could strike at New York, word
came from the West Indies that Admiral François-Joseph-Paul de Grasse was
bound for the Chesapeake Bay with his large French fleet and some three
thousand soldiers. The news led Washington to change his strategy. He
immediately began moving his army south toward Yorktown. Meanwhile,
French ships slipped out of the British blockade at Newport, Rhode Island
and also headed south toward Chesapeake Bay.
On August 30, Admiral de Grasse’s fleet reached Yorktown, and French
troops landed to join the Americans confronting Cornwallis’s army. On Sep-
tember 6, the day after a British fleet appeared, de Grasse attacked and forced
the British navy to give up the effort to relieve Cornwallis, whose fate was
 The Treaty of Paris • 235

Surrender of Lord Cornwallis

By John Trumbull. The artist completed his painting of the pivotal British surrender
at Yorktown in 1781.

quickly sealed. De Grasse then sent ships up the Chesapeake to ferry down
the allied armies that were marching south, bringing the total American and
French armies to more than sixteen thousand men, better than double the
size of Cornwallis’s besieged British army.
The siege of Yorktown began on September 28. On October 14 two major
British outposts fell to French and American attackers, the latter led by Wash-
ington’s aide, Alexander Hamilton. A British counterattack failed to retake
them. On October 17, 1781, an abject Cornwallis sued for peace, and on Octo-
ber 19, the surrendering British force of more than seven thousand marched
out as its band played a somber tune titled “The World Turned Upside Down.”
Cornwallis himself claimed to be too ill to participate. His dispatch to London
was telling: “I have the mortification to inform your Excellency that I have
been forced to . . . surrender the troops under my command.”

T H E T R E AT Y OF PA R I S

Any lingering hopes of victory the British may have had vanished at
Yorktown. In London, Lord North reacted to the news of the surrender as if
he had “taken a ball in the breast,” said the messenger who delivered the
report. “O God,” the prime minister exclaimed, “it is all over.” In December
 236 • THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (CH. 5)

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How did France’s treaties with Spain complicate the peace-treaty negotiations with
the British? What were the terms of the Treaty of Paris? Why might the ambiguities
in the treaty have led to conflicts among the Americans, the Spanish, and the
British?

King George III and his ministers decided to send no more troops to Amer-
ica. Although British forces still controlled New York City, Wilmington,
North Carolina, Charleston, and Savannah, the House of Commons voted
against continuing the war on February 27, 1782, and on March 20 Lord
North resigned. The British leaders decided to end the war in America so
that they could concentrate their efforts on the conflict with France and
 The Treaty of Paris • 237

Spain. The Continental Congress named commissioners to negotiate a peace

treaty in Paris; these commissioners included John Adams, who was repre-
senting the United States in the Netherlands; John Jay, minister (ambas-
sador) to Spain; and Benjamin Franklin, already in France. The cranky John
Adams was an odd choice since, as Thomas Jefferson said, he seemed to hate
everyone: “He hates [Benjamin] Franklin, he hates John Jay, he hates the
French, he hates the English.” In the end, Franklin and Jay did most of
the work leading to a peace treaty, and they did it very well.
The negotiations dragged on for months until finally, on September 3,
1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed. Its provisions were surprisingly favorable
to the United States. Great Britain recognized the independence of the thir-
teen former colonies making up the United States, but it surprisingly agreed
to view the Mississippi River as America’s western boundary, thereby more
than doubling the territory of the new nation. The boundaries of the United
States created by the treaty encompassed some nine hundred thousand
square miles, nearly 70 percent of which was west of the Proclamation Line of
1763, a vast region long inhabited by Indians and often referred to as
Transappalachia. The Indian tribes were by far the biggest losers as a result of
the treaty negotiations, which they were not allowed to participate in.
The treaty’s ambiguous refer-
ences to America’s northern and
southern borders would be dis-
puted for years. Florida, as it
turned out, passed back to Spain
from Britain. On the matter of
the prewar debts owed by Ameri-
cans to British merchants, the
U.S. negotiators promised that
British merchants should “meet
with no legal impediment” in
seeking to collect money owed
them. And on the tender point of
the thousands of Loyalists whose
homes, lands, and possessions
had been confiscated (and sold) American Commissioners of the Prelimi-
by state governments, the nego- nary Peace Negotiations with Great Britain
tiators agreed that Congress An unfinished painting from 1782 by
Benjamin West. From left, John Jay, John
would “earnestly recommend” to Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Laurens,
the states that the confiscated and Franklin’s grandson William Temple
property be restored. Franklin.
238 • THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (CH. 5)

T H E P O L I T I C A L R E VO L U T I O N

The Americans had won their War of Independence. Had they under-
gone a political revolution as well? Years later, John Adams insisted that the
Revolution began before the shooting started: “The Revolution was in the
minds and hearts of the people. . . . This radical change in the principles,
opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American
Revolution.” Yet Adams’s observation ignores the fact that the Revolutionary
War itself ignited a prolonged debate about what new forms of government
would best serve the new American republic.

REPUBLICAN IDEOLO GY Americans promoted a “republican” ideol-

ogy instead of the aristocratic or monarchical governments that had long
dominated Europe. In its simplest sense, the new republic was a nation
whose citizens (property-holding white men) were deemed equal before the
law and governed themselves through elected and appointed representatives.
To preserve the delicate balance between liberty and power, the revolution-
ary leaders believed that their new governments must be designed to protect
individual and states’ rights from being trammeled by the national govern-
ment. The conventional British model of mixed government sought to bal-
ance monarchy, aristocracy, and the common people and thereby protect
individual liberty. The new United States of America, however, professed
new political assumptions and required new governmental institutions.
America had no monarchy or formal aristocracy. Yet how could sovereignty
reside in the people? How could Americans ensure the survival of their new
republic, long assumed to be the most fragile form of government? The war
for independence thus sparked a spate of state constitution-making that
remains unique in history.

S TAT E C O N S T I T U T I O N S Most of the political experimentation be-

tween 1776 and 1787 occurred at the state level in the form of written con-
stitutions in which the people delegated limited authority to the government.
These state-level political innovations created a reservoir of ideas and expe-
rience that formed the basis for the creation of the federal constitution in
1787.
The first state constitutions varied mainly in detail. They formed govern-
ments much like the colonial governments, but with elected governors and
senates instead of appointed governors and councils. Generally they embod-
ied a separation of powers (legislative, executive, and judicial) as a safeguard
against abuses. Most also included a bill of rights that protected the time-
 The Political Revolution • 239

honored rights of petition, freedom of speech, trial by jury, freedom from

self-incrimination, and the like. They tended to limit the powers of gover-
nors and increase the powers of the legislatures, which had led the people in
their quarrels with the colonial governors.

T H E A R T I C L E S O F C O N F E D E R AT I O N No sooner had the Ameri-

can colonies declared their independence in 1776 than the rebels faced the
challenge of forming a national government as well as state governments.
Before March 1781, the Continental Congress had exercised emergency
powers without any constitutional authority. Plans for a permanent frame
of government emerged very quickly, however. As early as July 1776, a
committee appointed by the Continental Congress had produced a draft
constitution called the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union.
When the Articles of Confederation became effective during the war, in
March 1781, they essentially legalized what had become the prevailing
practice. What came to be called the Confederation Congress had a multi-
tude of responsibilities but little authority to carry them out. Congress was
intended not as a legislature, nor as a sovereign entity unto itself, but as a
collective substitute for the monarch. In essence it was to be a legislative
body serving as the nation’s executive rather than a parliament. It had full
power over foreign affairs and questions of war and peace; it could decide
disputes between the states; it had authority over coinage, the postal ser-
vice, and Indian affairs as well as the western territories. But it had no
courts and no power to enforce its resolutions and ordinances. It also had
no power to levy taxes and had to rely on requisitions from the states,
which state legislatures could ignore.
The states, after their colonial battles with Parliament, were in no mood
for a strong central government. Congress in fact had less power than the
colonists had once accepted in Parliament, since it could not regulate inter-
state and foreign commerce. For certain important acts, moreover, a “special
majority” was required. Nine states had to approve measures dealing with
war, treaties, coinage, finances, and the army and navy. Unanimous approval
of the states was needed to levy tariffs (often called “duties” or taxes) on
imports. Amendments to the Articles also required unanimous ratification
by all the states. The Confederation had neither an executive nor a judicial
branch; there was no administrative head of government (only the president
of Congress, chosen annually), and there were no federal courts.
For all its weaknesses, however, the Confederation government repre-
sented the most practical structure for the new nation fighting for its very
survival. After all, the Revolution on the battlefields had yet to be won, and
240 • THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (CH. 5)

America’s statesmen could not risk the prolonged, divisive debates over the
distribution of power that other forms of government would have entailed.

T H E S O C I A L R E VO L U T I O N

Political revolutions and the chaos of war often spawn social revolu-
tions. What did the Revolution mean to those workers, servants, farmers,
and freed slaves who participated in the Stamp Act demonstrations, sup-
ported the boycotts, and fought in the army, navy, and militias? Many partic-
ipants hoped that the Revolution would remove, not reinforce, the elite’s tra-
ditional political and social advantages. Many wealthy Patriots, on the other
hand, would have been content to replace royal officials with the rich, the
wellborn, and the able and let it go at that. But other revolutionaries raised
the question not only of gaining independence but also of who should rule
at home. The energy embedded in the concepts of liberty, equality, and
democracy changed the dynamics of American social and political life in
ways that people did not imagine in 1776.

T H E E XO D U S O F L O YA L I S T S The Loyalists were the biggest losers in

the brutal civil war that was embedded within the Revolutionary war. They
suffered greatly for their stubborn loyalty to King George III and for their
refusal to pledge allegiance to the new United States. During and after the
Revolution, their property was confiscated, and many Loyalists were assaulted,
brutalized, and executed by Patriots (and vice versa). After the American vic-
tory at Yorktown, tens of thousands of panicked Loyalists made their way to
coastal seaports to board British ships to flee the new United States. Thou-
sands of African Americans, mostly runaway slaves, also flocked to New York
City, Charleston, and Savannah, with many of their angry owners in hot pur-
suit. Boston King, a runaway, said he saw white slave owners seizing upon
“their slaves in the streets of New York, or even dragging them out of their
beds.” General Guy Carleton, the commander of British forces in North
America, organized the mass evacuation of Loyalists and runaway slaves. He
intentionally violated the provisions of the Treaty of Paris by refusing to
return slaves to their owners, defiantly telling a furious George Washington
that his runaway slaves had already been embarked on British ships bound
for Canada.
Some eighty thousand desperate refugees—white Loyalists, free blacks,
freed slaves, and Indians who had allied with the British—dispersed through-
out the British Empire, changing it in the process. Some twelve thousand
 The Social Revolution • 241

Retribution against Loyalists

In the aftermath of the Revolution, Loyalists, or “Tories,” sought refuge from
Patriot reprisals in the Caribbean and Canada. Here, Patriots are depicted as
brutal “savages,” hanging and scalping Tories with abandon.

Georgia and South Carolina Loyalists, including thousands of their slaves

(the British granted freedom only to the slaves of Patriots), went to British-
controlled East Florida, only to see their new home handed over to Spain in
1783. Spanish authorities gave them a hard choice: swear allegiance to the
Spanish king and convert to Catholicism or leave. Most of them left. Some of
the doubly displaced Loyalists sneaked back into the United States while
most of them went to British islands in the Caribbean. “We are all cast off,”
lamented one embittered Loyalist. “I shall ever tho’ remember with satisfac-
tion that it was not I deserted my King [George III], but my King that
deserted me.” The largest number of Loyalist exiles landed in Canada, where
royal officials wanted them to displace the earlier French presence. Among
the emigrants landing in Canada were three thousand five hundred former
slaves who had been given their freedom in exchange for their joining the
British cause.
The departure of so many Loyalists from America was one of the most
important social consequences of the Revolution. Their confiscated homes,
vast tracts of land, and vacated jobs created new social, economic, and polit-
ical opportunities for Patriots. Ironically, some of the Loyalist refugees took
242 • THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (CH. 5)

with them an American desire for greater political participation as they cre-
ated new lives within the British Empire. It was no coincidence that Canada
achieved self-governing powers earlier than any other territory within the
Empire—thanks in part to the ideals professed by transplanted American
Loyalists.

E Q UA L I T Y A N D I T S L I M I T S This spirit of social equality spawned

by the Revolution weakened old habits of social deference. A Virginian
remembered being in a tavern at the end of the Revolutionary war when a
group of farmers came in, spitting and pulling off their muddy boots with-
out regard for the sensibilities of the gentlemen present: “The spirit of inde-
pendence was converted into equality,” he wrote, “and every one who bore
arms, esteems himself upon a footing with his neighbors. . . . No doubt each
of these men considers himself, in every respect, my equal.” Thomas Jeffer-
son welcomed the democratizing effects of the Revolutionary War, for he
believed that the “middling” people who made their livings with their hands
were the truest republicans.
The new political opportunities afforded by the creation of state govern-
ments led more ordinary citizens to participate than ever before. The social
base of the new legislatures was thus much broader than that of the old
assemblies. The property qualifications for voting, which already admitted
an overwhelming majority of white men, were lowered after 1776. In Penn-
sylvania, Delaware, North Carolina, and Georgia, any male taxpayer could
vote, although candidates for elected offices usually had to meet more strin-
gent property requirements. Americans who had argued against taxation
without representation now questioned the denial of proportional represen-
tation for the backcountry, which generally enlarged its presence in the legis-
latures. In New Hampshire, for example, the colonial assembly in 1765 had
contained only thirty-four “gentlemen” members; by 1786 the state’s house
of representatives had eighty-eight members, most of whom were common
folk—farmers, tradesmen, and shopkeepers. More often than not, the politi-
cal newcomers were men with less property and little formal education.
New developments in land tenure that grew out of the Revolution extended
the democratic trends of suffrage requirements. All state legislatures seized
Tory estates. These properties were of small consequence, however, in con-
trast to the unsettled areas formerly at the disposal of the Crown and propri-
etors but now in the hands of popular assemblies. Much of that land was
now used for bonuses to reward veterans of the war. Moreover, western lands
across the Appalachian Mountains, formerly closed by the Royal Proclama-
tion of 1763 and the Quebec Act of 1774, were soon thrown open to settlers.
 The Social Revolution • 243

T H E PA R A D OX O F S L AV E R Y Ironies abounded amid a revolutionary

war fought in the name of liberty. Freedom, for example, was intended for
whites only in most of the newly created states. African Americans made up
20 percent of the population in the American colonies at the time of the Rev-
olution, but their role in the conflict was long ignored until recent years. Dur-
ing 1773 and 1774, as white colonists increasingly protested the curtailment
of their “freedoms” by the British government, few of them acknowledged the
hypocrisy of Patriots maintaining the widespread practice of race-based slav-
ery in the colonies. The rhetoric of liberty circulated widely in slave commu-
nities. In 1773 slaves in Boston pleaded with the British governor to address
their “intolerable condition.” They complained of having “no Property! We
have no Wives! No Children! We have no City! No Country!” Such pleas
were largely ignored, however. In 1775 the prominent South Carolinian
William Henry Drayton expressed his horror that “impertinent” slaves were
claiming “that the present contest [with Great Britain] was for obliging us to
give them liberty.”
The sharpest irony of the Revolution is that the British offered more
enticing opportunities for freedom to enslaved blacks than did the new
United States. When the war began, the British promised freedom to slaves,
as well as indentured servants, who would bear arms for the Loyalist cause.
In December 1775, John Murray, Lord Dunmore, the last royal governor of
Virginia, issued such an offer; within a month the British had attracted three
hundred former servants and slaves to what came to be called the “Ethiopian
Regiment.” Within a year the number had grown to almost a thousand males
and twice as many women and children.
Dunmore’s proclamation promising freedom for slaves who fought on the
British side had profound effects. The British recruitment of slaves stunned
whites in Virginia, where forty percent of the population was black. People
in the South had long been terrified at the prospect of armed slave insurrec-
tions; now the threat was real. Members of the all-black British regiment
wore uniforms embroidered with the motto “Liberty to Slaves.” The overseer
of Mount Vernon, George Washington’s Virginia plantation, reported that
the general’s slaves and servants would leave if they got the chance. “Liberty
is sweet,” he bitterly added. Dunmore’s effort to recruit the slaves owned by
Patriots into the “Ethiopian Regiment” infuriated Washington and other
Virginia planters. Washington predicted that if Dunmore’s efforts were “not
crushed” soon, the number of slaves joining him would “increase as a Snow
ball by Rolling.” For all of the revolutionary rhetoric about liberty as an
“inalienable right,” the American war for independence was intended to lib-
erate whites only. As a New England soldier named Josiah Atkins noticed
244 • THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (CH. 5)

when he was sent to fight British forces in the South, the Revolution’s ideals
were “strikingly inconsistent” with the widespread practice of slavery in Vir-
ginia and the Carolinas.
In the end, the British strategy of encouraging a great black exodus from
slavery backfired to the extent that it outraged southern slaveholders, many
of whom were neutral before learning of Dunmore’s policy. The “terrifying”
news that British troops would liberate and arm their enslaved African
Americans persuaded many southerners to join the Patriot cause. For many
whites, especially in Virginia, the Revolution became primarily a war to defend
slavery. Edward Rutledge of South Carolina said that the British decision to
arm and liberate slaves did more to create “an eternal separation between
Great Britain and the colonies than any other expedient.”
In December 1775 a Patriot militia defeated Lord Dunmore and his
African American regiment and forced the British and their black recruits to
flee Norfolk, Virginia, and board scores of overcrowded ships in the Chesa-
peake Bay. No sooner had the former slaves boarded the British ships than a
smallpox epidemic raced through the fleet, eventually forcing the Loyalist
forces to disembark on an offshore island. During the winter and spring of
1776, disease and hunger devastated the primitive camp. “Dozens died daily
from Small Pox and rotten Fevers by which diseases they are infected,” wrote
a visitor. Before the Loyalists fled the island in the summer of 1776, over half
of the troops, most of them former slaves, had died.
In response to the British recruitment of enslaved African Americans,
General Washington at the end of 1775 authorized the enlistment of free
blacks into the army but not slaves. Southerners, however, convinced the
Continental Congress to instruct General Washington in February 1776 to
enlist no more African Americans, free or enslaved. But as the American war
effort struggled, the exclusionary policy was at times ignored in order to put
men in uniform. Massachusetts organized two all-black companies, and Rhode
Island organized one, which also included Indians. However, two states, South
Carolina and Georgia, refused to allow any blacks to serve in the Patriot forces.
No more than about five thousand African Americans fought on the Patriot
side, and most of them were free blacks from northern states.
Slaves who supported the cause of independence won their freedom
and, in some cases, received parcels of land as well. But the British army,
which liberated twenty thousand enslaved blacks during the war, including
many of those owned by Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and George
Washington, was a far greater instrument of emancipation than the Amer-
ican forces. Most of the newly freed blacks found their way to Canada or to
British colonies on Caribbean islands. American Patriots had shown no
 The Social Revolution • 245

mercy to blacks caught aiding or abetting the British cause. In Virginia a

captured fifteen-year-old runaway was greeted by her owner with a whip-
ping of eighty lashes, after which he rubbed burning coals into her
wounds. A Charleston mob hanged and then burned Thomas Jeremiah, a
free African American who was convicted of telling slaves that the British
“were come to help the poor Negroes.” White Loyalists who were caught
encouraging slaves to join the British cause were tarred and feathered.
While thousands of free blacks and runaway slaves fought in the war, the
vast majority of African Americans did not choose sides so much as they
chose freedom. Several hundred thousand enslaved blacks, mostly in the
southern states, took advantage of the chaos of war to seize their freedom.
In the northern states, which had far fewer slaves than the southern states,
the doctrines of liberty undergirding the dispute with Great Britain led
swiftly to emancipation for all, either during the fighting or shortly after-
ward. The Vermont Constitution of 1777, for example, specifically forbade
slavery. The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 proclaimed the “inherent
liberty” of all. In 1780, Pennsylvania declared that all children born there-
after to slave mothers would become free at age twenty-eight, after
enabling their owners to recover their initial cost. In 1784, Rhode Island
provided freedom to all children of slaves born thereafter, at age twenty-
one for males, eighteen for females. New York lagged until 1799 in grant-
ing freedom to mature slaves born after enactment of its constitution, but
an act of 1817 set July 4, 1827, as the date for emancipation of all remain-
ing “people in slavery.” In the states south of Pennsylvania, formal emanci-
pation was far less popular. Yet even there, slaveholders expressed moral
qualms. Thomas Jefferson confessed in 1785 that he trembled “for my
country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep for-
ever.” But he, like most other white southerners, could not bring himself to
free his enslaved African Americans.

T H E S TAT U S O F WO M E N The logic of liberty spawned by the Revo-

lution applied to the status of women as much as to that of African Ameri-
cans. The legal status of women in the colonies was governed by British
common law, which essentially treated them like children, limiting their
roles to the domestic sphere. They could not vote or hold office. However
pious they might be, they could not preach. Few had access to formal educa-
tion. A married woman had no right to buy, sell, or manage property. Tech-
nically, any wages earned belonged to the husband. Women could not sign
contracts or sue others or testify in court. Divorces were extremely difficult
to obtain. A wife was obliged to obey her husband.
246 • THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (CH. 5)

Molly Pitcher
At Fort Washington, Molly Pitcher took her husband’s place at the cannon during
the American Revolution.

Yet the Revolution offered women new opportunities outside the domes-
tic sphere. Women supported the armies in various roles: by handling sup-
plies, serving as couriers or spies, and working as camp followers—cooking,
cleaning, and nursing the soldiers. Wives often followed their husbands to
camp and on occasion took their place in the line, as Margaret Corbin did
when her husband fell at his artillery post and as Mary Ludwig Hays (better
known as Molly Pitcher) did when her husband collapsed of heat exhaus-
tion. An exceptional case was Deborah Sampson, who joined a Massachu-
setts regiment as “Robert Shurtleff ” and served from 1781 to 1783 by the
“artful concealment” of her gender.
To be sure, most women retained the constricted domestic outlook that
had long been imposed upon them by society. But a few free-spirited reform-
ers demanded equal treatment. In an essay titled “On the Equality of the
Sexes,” written in 1779 and published in 1790, Judith Sargent Murray of
Gloucester, Massachusetts, stressed that women were perfectly capable of
excelling in roles outside the home.
Early in the Revolutionary struggle, Abigail Adams, one of the most learned,
spirited, and independent women of the time, wrote to her husband, John: “In
 The Social Revolution • 247

the new Code of Laws which I sup-

pose it will be necessary for you to
make I desire you would remember
the Ladies. . . . Do not put such
unlimited power into the hands of
the Husbands.” Since men were
“Naturally Tyrannical,” she wrote,
“why then, not put it out of the
power of the vicious and the Lawless
to use us with cruelty and indignity
with impunity.” Otherwise, “if par-
ticular care and attention is not paid
to the Ladies we are determined to
foment a Rebellion, and will not
hold ourselves bound by any Laws in
which we have no voice, or Repre-
sentation.” Husband John expressed
surprise that women might be
Abigail Adams
discontented, but he clearly knew
the privileges enjoyed by males Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams, in a
1766 pastel. Though an ardent patriot,
and was determined to retain Adams and other women like her saw few
them: “Depend upon it, we know benefits from the new United States.
better than to repeal our Masculine
systems.” Thomas Jefferson was of one mind with Adams on the matter.
When asked about women’s voting rights, he replied that “the tender breasts
of ladies were not formed for political convulsion.”
The legal status of women did not improve dramatically as a result of the
Revolutionary ferment. Married women in most states still forfeited control
of their own property to their husbands, and women gained no permanent
political rights. Under the 1776 New Jersey Constitution, which neglected to
specify an exclusively male franchise because the delegates apparently took
the distinction for granted, women who met the property qualifications for
voting exercised the right until they were denied access early in the nine-
teenth century.

I N D I A N S A N D T H E R E VO L U T I O N The war for American indepen-

dence had profound effects on the Indians in the southern backcountry and
in the Old Northwest region west of New York and Pennsylvania. Most tribes
sought to remain neutral in the conflict, but both British and American agents
lobbied the chiefs to fight on their side. The result was the disintegration of
248 • THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (CH. 5)

the alliance among the six tribes making up the Iroquois League. The
Mohawks, for example, succumbed to British promises to protect them from
encroachments by American settlers on their lands. The Oneidas, on the
other hand, fought on the side of the American Patriots. The result of such
alliances was chaos on the frontier. Indians on both sides attacked villages,
burned crops, and killed civilians. The new American government assured
its Indian allies that it would respect their lands and their rights. In Decem-
ber 1777 the Continental Congress promised Oneida leaders that “we shall
[always] love and respect you. As our trusty friends, we shall protect you;
and shall at all times consider your welfare as our own.” But in various places
local Revolutionaries adopted a very different goal: they sought to use the
turmoil of war to displace and destroy all Native Americans. In 1777 South
Carolina militiamen were ordered to “cut up every Indian cornfield, and
burn every Indian town and every Indian taken shall be slave and property
of the taker and . . . the [Indian] nation be extirpated and the lands become the
property of the public.” Once the war ended and independence was secured,
the U.S. government turned its back on most of the pledges made to Native
Americans. By the end of the eighteenth century, land-hungry American
whites were again pushing into Indian territories on the western frontier.

F R E E D O M O F R E L I G I O N The Revolution also tested traditional reli-

gious loyalties and set in motion a transition from the toleration of religious
dissent to a complete freedom of religion as embodied in the principle of
separation of church and state. The Anglican Church, established as the offi-
cial religion in five colonies and parts of two others, was especially vulnera-
ble. Anglicans tended to be pro-British. And non-Anglican dissenters, most
notably Baptists and Methodists, outnumbered Anglicans in all states except
Virginia. All but Virginia eliminated tax support for the church before the
fighting was over, and Virginia did so soon afterward. Although Anglicanism
survived in the form of the new Episcopal Church, it never regained its pre-
Revolutionary size or stature. Newer denominations, such as Methodists and
Baptists, as well as Presbyterians, filled the vacuum created by the shrinking
Anglican Church.
In 1776 the Virginia Declaration of Rights guaranteed the free exercise
of religion, and in 1786 the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom (written by
Thomas Jefferson) declared that “no man shall be compelled to frequent or
support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever” and “that
all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions
in matters of religion.” These statutes and the Revolutionary ideology that
justified them helped shape the course that religion would take in the new
 The Emergence of an American Culture • 249

Religious development
The Congregational Church developed a national presence in the early nineteenth
century, and Lemuel Haynes, depicted here, was its first African American preacher.

United States: pluralistic and voluntary rather than state supported and
monolithic.
In churches as in government, the Revolution set off a period of constitu-
tion making as some of the first national church bodies emerged. In 1784 the
Methodists, who at first were an offshoot of the Anglicans, gathered for a
general conference at Baltimore under Bishop Francis Asbury. The Anglican
Church, rechristened the Episcopal Church, gathered in a series of meetings
that by 1789 had united the various dioceses in a federal union; in 1789 the
Presbyterians also held their first general assembly in Philadelphia. That
same year the Catholic Church got its first higher official in the United States
when John Carroll was named bishop of Baltimore.

THE EMERGENCE OF AN A M E R I C A N C U LT U R E

The Revolution helped excite a sense of common nationality. One of

the first ways in which a national consciousness was forged was through the
annual celebration of the new nation’s independence from Great Britain. On
250 • THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (CH. 5)

July 2, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress had resolved “that these
United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states,”
John Adams had written Abigail that future generations would remember
that date as their “day of deliverance.” People, he predicted, would celebrate
the occasion with “solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty” and with
“pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illu-
minations [fireworks] from one end of this continent to the other, from this
time forward, forever more.”
Adams got everything right but the date. As luck would have it, July 4
became Independence Day by accident. In 1777, Congress forgot to make
any acknowledgment of the first anniversary of independence until July 3,
when it was too late to honor July 2. As a consequence, the Fourth won by
default.
The celebration of Independence Day quickly became the most important
public ritual in the United States. Huge numbers of people from all walks of
life suspended their normal routine in order to devote a day to parades, for-
mal orations, and fireworks displays. In the process the infant republic
began to create its own myth of national identity that transcended local or
regional concerns. “What a day!” exclaimed the editor of the Southern Patriot
in 1815. “What happiness, what emotion, what virtuous triumph must fill
the bosoms of Americans!”

A M E R I C A’ S “ D E S T I N Y ” American nationalism embodied a stirring

idea. This new nation, unlike the Old World nations of Europe, was not
rooted in antiquity. Its people, except for the Native Americans, had not
inhabited it over many centuries, nor was there any notion of a common
ethnic descent. “The American national consciousness,” one observer wrote,
“is not a voice crying out of the depth of the dark past, but is proudly a prod-
uct of the enlightened present, setting its face resolutely toward the future.”
Many people, at least since the time of the Pilgrims, had thought of the
“New World” as singled out for a special identity, a special mission assigned
by God. John Adams proclaimed the opening of America “a grand scheme
and design in Providence for the illumination and the emancipation of the
slavish part of mankind all over the earth.” This sense of providential mis-
sion was neither limited to New England nor rooted solely in Calvinism.
From the democratic rhetoric of Thomas Jefferson to the pragmatism of
George Washington to heady toasts bellowed in South Carolina taverns,
patriots everywhere articulated a special role for American leadership in his-
tory. The mission was now a call to lead the world toward greater liberty and
 The Emergence of an American Culture • 251

equality. Meanwhile, however, Americans had to address more immediate

problems created by their new nationhood. The Philadelphia doctor and sci-
entist Benjamin Rush issued a prophetic statement in 1787: “The American
war is over: but this is far from being the case with the American Revolution.
On the contrary, but the first act of the great drama is closed.”
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Military Strategies The Americans had to create an army—the Continental

army—from scratch and sustain it. To defeat the British, Washington realized
that the Americans had to wage a war of attrition, given that the British army
was fighting a war thousands of miles from its home base. To defeat the Ameri-
cans, Britain’s initial strategy was to take New York and sever the troublesome
New England colonies from the rest.
• Turning Points The American victory at Saratoga in 1777 was the first major
turning point of the war. George Washington’s ability to hold his forces together
despite daily desertions and two especially difficult winters was a second major
turning point. The British lost support from the southern colonies when they
executed the rebels they captured in backcountry skirmishing.
• Loyalists, “Tories” The American Revolution was a civil war, dividing families
and communities. There were at least one hundred thousand Tories, or Loyalists,
in the colonies. They included royal officials, Anglican ministers, wealthy
southern planters, and the elite in large seaport cities; they also included many
humble people, especially recent immigrants. After the hostilities ended, most
Loyalists, including slaves who had fled their plantations to support the British
cause, left for Canada, the West Indies, or England.
• Worldwide Conflict The French were prospective allies from the beginning
of the conflict, because they resented their losses to Britain in the Seven Years’
War. After the British defeat at Saratoga, France and the colonies agreed to fight
together until independence was won. Further agreements with Spain and the
Netherlands helped to make the Revolution a worldwide conflict. French
supplies and the presence of the French fleet ensured the Americans’ victory
at Yorktown.
• A Social Revolution The American Revolution disrupted and transformed
traditional class and social relationships. More white men gained the vote as
property requirements were removed. Northern states began to free slaves, but
southerner states were reluctant. Although many women had undertaken non-
traditional roles during the war, they remained largely confined to the domestic
sphere afterward, with no changes to their legal or political status. The Revolu-
tion had catastrophic effects on the Native Americans, regardless of which side
they had embraced. American settlers seized Native American land, often in
violation of existing treaties.
 CHRONOLOGY

1776

1776–1777
1777
General Washington’s troops cross the Delaware River; Battle of
Trenton
Washington’s troops winter at Morristown, New Jersey
Battle of Saratoga; General Burgoyne surrenders
1777–1778 Washington’s troops winter at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania
1778 Americans and French form an alliance
1781 Battles of Cowpens and Guilford Courthouse
1781 General Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown, Virginia
1781 Articles of Confederation are ratified
1783 Treaty of Paris is signed
1786 Virginia adopts the Statute of Religious Freedom

KEY TERMS & NAMES

General George Washington Battle of Saratoga p. 224 Benedict Arnold p. 233
p. 214
Marquis de Lafayette p. 227 surrender at Yorktown
Continental army p. 214 p. 234
Joseph Brant p. 228
General William Howe p. 214 John Adams p. 237
General Charles Cornwallis
Tories p. 215 p. 230 Abigail Adams p. 246

General John Burgoyne General Nathanael Greene

p. 221 p. 231

6
SHAPING
A FEDERAL UNION

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• What were the achievements of the Confederation government?

• What were the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation?
• Why did the delegates to the Constitutional Convention draft a
completely new constitution?
• How important was the issue of slavery in the Constitution?
• What were the main issues in the debate over ratification of the
Constitution?

T he new United States of America was distinctive among the

nations of the world in that it was born out of ideas and
ideals rather than from centuries-old shared racial or ances-
tral bonds. Those ideals were captured in phrases that still resonate in Amer-
ican culture: All men are created equal. Liberty and justice for all. E pluribus
unum (“Out of many, one”—the phrase on the official seal of the United
States). The development of the new nation after 1783 reflected the varied
and at times conflicting ways that Americans understood, applied, and vio-
lated these ideals over time. The ideals that led Revolutionaries to declare
their independence from Great Britain and then win an unlikely victory on
the battlefields shaped an upstart nation that had neither the luxury of time
nor the adequacy of resources to guarantee its survival.
The American Revolution created not only an independent new republic
but also a different conception of politics than prevailed in Europe. Ameri-
cans rejected the notion that nations should necessarily be divided into a
hierarchy of classes—monarchs, nobles or aristocrats, and commoners.
Instead, the United States was created to protect individual interests (“life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”) and to defend individual rights against
 The Confederation Government • 255

arbitrary government power. To do so, the Revolutionaries developed radi-

cally new forms of representative government and new models for dividing
power among the various branches of government—and the people.

T H E C O N F E D E R AT I O N G O V E R N M E N T

THE CRITICAL PERIOD In an address to his fellow graduates at the

Harvard commencement ceremony in 1787, young John Quincy Adams, a
future American president, bemoaned “this critical period” when the coun-
try was “groaning under the intolerable burden of . . . accumulated evils.”
The same phrase, “critical period,” has often been used to label the period
during which the United States was governed under the Articles of Confed-
eration, between 1781 and 1787. Fear of a powerful national government
dominated the period, and the result was fragmentation and stagnation. Yet
while the Confederation government had its weaknesses, it also generated
major achievements. Moreover, lessons learned during the “critical period”
would prompt the formulation of a new national constitution that better
balanced federal and state authority.
The Articles of Confederation established a unicameral Congress dominated
by the state legislatures that appointed its members (there was no national
executive or judiciary). The Confederation Congress had little authority. It
could ask the states for money, but could not levy taxes; it could neither regulate
national commerce nor pay off the nation’s debts; it could approve treaties with
other nations but had no power to enforce their provisions; it could call for the
raising of an army but could not fill the ranks.
After the war ended, the Confederation Congress was virtually helpless to
cope with foreign relations and a postwar economic depression that would
have challenged the resources of a much stronger government. It was not
easy to find men of stature to serve in such a weak congress, and it was often
hard to gather a quorum of those who did. Yet in spite of its handicaps, the
Confederation Congress somehow managed to survive the war years and to
lay important foundations for the new national government. It concluded
the Treaty of Paris in 1783, ending the Revolutionary War. It created the first
executive departments. And it formulated principles of land distribution
and territorial government that would guide westward expansion all the way
to the Pacific coast.
Throughout most of the War of Independence, the members of Congress
distrusted and limited executive power. They assigned administrative duties to
numerous committees and thereby imposed a painful burden on conscientious
256 • SHAPING A FEDERAL UNION (CH. 6)

members. John Adams, for instance, served on some eighty committees at one
time or another. In 1781, however, Congress addressed the problem by estab-
lishing three executive departments: Foreign Affairs, Finance, and War, each
with a single head responsible to Congress.

FINANCE The closest thing to an executive leader of the Confederation

was Robert Morris, who as superintendent of finance in the final years of the
war became the most influential figure in the government. To make both him-
self and the Confederation government more powerful, Morris developed a
program of taxation and debt management to make the national government
financially stable. As he confided to a friend, “a public debt supported by
public revenue will prove the strongest cement to keep our confederacy
together.” The powerful financiers who had lent the new government funds to
buy supplies and pay its bills would, Morris believed, give stronger support to
a government committed to paying its debts. Morris therefore welcomed the
chance to issue new government bonds that would help pay off wartime debts.
With a sounder federal Treasury—certainly one with the power to raise
taxes—the bonds could be expected to rise in value, creating new capital with
which to finance banks and economic development.
To anchor his financial plan in the midst of the ongoing Revolutionary
War, Morris secured a congressional charter in 1781 for the Bank of North
America, which would hold government funds, lend money to the govern-
ment, and issue currency. Though a national bank, it was in part privately
owned and was expected to turn a profit for Morris and other shareholders,
in addition to performing a crucial public service. But Morris’s program
depended ultimately upon the government’s having a secure income, and it
foundered on the requirement of unanimous state approval for amend-
ments to the Articles of Confederation. Local interests and the fear of a cen-
tral authority—a fear strengthened by the recent quarrels with king and
Parliament—hobbled action.

T H E N EW BU RG H C O N S P I R AC Y To carry their point, Morris and

his nationalist friends in 1783 risked a dangerous gamble. After the British
surrendered at Yorktown but before the peace treaty with Great Britain was
completed, George Washington’s army, encamped at Newburgh, New York,
on the Hudson River, had grown restless in the final winter of the war. The
soldiers’ pay was late as usual, and the officers feared that the land grants
promised them by the government as a reward for their service might never
be honored once the war officially ended. A delegation of concerned army
officers traveled to Philadelphia, where they soon found themselves drawn
 The Confederation Government • 257

into a scheme to line up army officers and public creditors with nationalists
in Congress and confront the states with the threat of a coup d’état unless
they yielded more power to Congress. Alexander Hamilton, congressman
from New York and former aide to General Washington, sought to bring his
beloved commander into the plan.
General Washington sympathized with the basic purpose of Hamilton’s
scheme. If congressional powers were not enlarged, he had told a friend,
“anarchy and confusion must ensue.” But Washington was just as deeply
convinced that a military coup would be both dishonorable and dangerous.
In March 1783, when he learned that some of the plotting officers had
planned an unauthorized meeting, he confronted the conspirators. He told
them that any effort to intimidate the government by threatening a muti-
nous coup violated the very purposes for which the war was being fought
and directly challenged his own integrity. While agreeing that the officers
had been poorly treated by the government and deserved their long-overdue
back pay and future pensions, Washington expressed his “horror and detes-
tation” of any effort by the officers to assume dictatorial powers. A military
revolt would open “the flood-gates of civil discord” and “deluge our rising
empire in blood.” It was a virtuoso performance. When Washington fin-
ished, his officers, many of them fighting back tears, unanimously adopted
resolutions denouncing the recent “infamous propositions,” and the so-
called Newburgh Conspiracy came to a sudden end.
In the end the Confederation government never did put its finances in
order. The currency issued by the Continental Congress had become worth-
less. It was never redeemed. The national debt, domestic and foreign, grew
from $11 million to $28 million as Congress paid off citizens’ and soldiers’
claims. Each year, Congress ran a deficit in its operating expenses.

LAND P O L I C Y The Confederation Congress might ultimately have

drawn a rich source of income from the sale of western lands. Thinly populated
by Indians, French settlers, and a growing number of American squatters, the
region north of the Ohio River and west of the Appalachian Mountains had
long been the site of overlapping claims by Indians, colonies, and speculators.
Under the Articles of Confederation, land not included within the boundaries
of the thirteen original states became public domain, owned and administered
by the national government.
As early as 1779, Congress had declared that it would not treat the western
lands as dependent colonies. The delegates resolved instead that western
lands “shall be . . . formed into distinct Republican states,” equal in all respects
to other states. Between 1784 and 1787 the Confederation Congress set forth
 258 • SHAPING A FEDERAL UNION (CH. 6)

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Ceded by Virginia, 1784 and 1792
Ceded by South Carolina to Georgia, 1787
Ceded by Georgia, 1802
States with no western claims

Why were there so many overlapping claims to the western lands? What were the
terms of the Land Ordinance of 1785? How did it arrange for future states to enter
the Union?
 The Confederation Government • 259

three major ordinances for the orderly development of the West. These docu-
ments, which rank among the Confederation’s greatest achievements—and
among the most important in American history—set precedents that the
United States would follow in its expansion all the way to the Pacific. Thomas
Jefferson in fact was prepared to grant self-government to western states at an
early stage, allowing settlers to meet and choose their own officials. Under the
land ordinance that Jefferson wrote in 1784, when a territory’s population
equaled that of the smallest existing state, the territory would be eligible for
full statehood.
A year later, in the Land Ordinance of 1785, the delegates outlined a plan
of land surveys and sales that would eventually stamp a rectangular pattern
on much of the nation’s surface. Wherever Indian titles had been extin-
guished, the Northwest was to be surveyed and six-square-mile townships
established along east-west and north-south lines. Each township was in
turn divided into thirty-six lots (or sections) one square mile (or 640 acres).
The 640-acre sections were to be sold at auction for no less than $1 per acre,
or $640 total. Such terms favored land speculators, of course, since few com-
mon folk had that much money or were able to work that much land. In later
years new land laws would make smaller plots available at lower prices; but
in 1785, Congress was faced with an empty Treasury, and delegates believed
that this system would raise the needed funds most effectively. In each town-
ship, however, Congress did reserve the income from the sale of the sixteenth
section of land for the support of schools—a significant departure at a time
when public schools were rare.

T H E N O RT H W E S T O R D I NA N C E Spurred by the plans for land sales

and settlement, Congress drafted a more specific frame of territorial govern-
ment to replace Jefferson’s ordinance of 1784. The new plan backed off from
Jefferson’s recommendation of early self-government. Because of the trouble
that might be expected from squatters who were clamoring for free land, the
Northwest Ordinance of 1787 required a period of preparation for state-
hood. At first the territory fell subject to a governor, a secretary, and three
judges, all chosen by Congress. Eventually there would be three to five terri-
tories in the region, and when any one of them had a population of five
thousand free male adults, it could choose an assembly. Congress then
would name a council of five from ten names proposed by the assembly. The
governor would have a veto over actions by the territorial assembly, and so
would Congress.
The resemblance of these territorial governments to the old royal colonies
is clear, but there were three significant differences. First, the ordinance
 260 • SHAPING A FEDERAL UNION (CH. 6)

THE OLD NORTHWEST, 1785

British posts after 1783

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How did the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 revise Jefferson’s plan for territorial gov-
ernment? How were settlement patterns in the Northwest territories different from
those on the frontier in the South? How did the United States treat Indian claims to
territory in the West?

anticipated statehood when any territory’s population reached a population

of sixty thousand “free inhabitants.” At that point a convention could be
called to draft a state constitution and apply to Congress for statehood. Ohio
was the first territory to receive statehood in this way. Second, the ordinance
included a bill of rights that guaranteed religious freedom, legislative repre-
sentation in proportion to the population, trial by jury, and the application
of common law. Finally, the ordinance excluded slavery permanently from
the Northwest—a proviso that Thomas Jefferson had failed to get accepted
in his ordinance of 1784. This proved a fateful decision. As the progress of
emancipation in the existing states gradually freed all slaves above the
Mason-Dixon line, the Ohio River boundary of the Old Northwest extended
 The Confederation Government • 261

the line between freedom and slavery all the way to the Mississippi River,
encompassing what would become the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Michigan, and Wisconsin.
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 had a larger importance, beyond estab-
lishing a formal procedure for transforming territories into states. It repre-
sented a sharp break with the imperialistic assumption behind European
expansion into the Western Hemisphere: the new states were to be admitted to
the American republic as equals rather than treated as subordinate colonies.
In seven mountain ranges to the west of the Ohio River, an area in which
recent treaties had voided Indian titles, surveying began in the mid-1780s.
But before any land sales occurred, a group of speculators from New England
presented cash-poor Congress with a seductive offer. Organized in Boston,
the group of former army officers took as its name the Ohio Company of
Associates and sent the Reverend Manasseh Cutler to present its plan. Cutler,
a former chaplain in the Continental army and a co-author of the Northwest
Ordinance, proved a persuasive lobbyist, and in 1787 Congress voted a grant
of 1.5 million acres for about $1 million in certificates of indebtedness to
Revolutionary War veterans. The arrangement had the dual merit, Cutler
argued, of reducing the national
debt and encouraging new settle-
ment and sales of federal land.
The lands south of the Ohio
River followed a different line of
development. Title to the west-
ern lands remained with Georgia,
North Carolina, and Virginia for
the time being, but settlement pro-
ceeded at a far more rapid pace
during and after the Revolution,
despite the Indians’ fierce resent-
ment of encroachments upon
their hunting grounds. The Iro-
quois and Cherokees, badly bat-
tered during the Revolution, were
in no position to resist encroach-
ments by American settlers. By
the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1784), Land Ordinance, 1785
the Iroquois were forced to cede Congress set out rules for settling the
land in western New York and Northwest territories in a series of ordi-
Pennsylvania. With the Treaty of nances following the Revolution.
262 • SHAPING A FEDERAL UNION (CH. 6)

Hopewell (1785), the Cherokees gave up all claims in South Carolina, much
of western North Carolina, and large portions of present-day Kentucky and
Tennessee. Also in 1785 the major Ohio tribes dropped their claim to most
of Ohio, except for a chunk bordering the western part of Lake Erie. The
Creeks, pressed by the state of Georgia to cede portions of their lands
in 1784–1785, went to war in the summer of 1786 with covert aid from
Spanish-controlled Florida. When Spanish aid diminished, however, the
Creek chief traveled to New York and in 1791 finally struck a bargain that
gave the Creeks favorable trade arrangements with the United States but did
not restore the lost land.

TRADE AND THE ECONOMY The American economy after the Rev-
olution went through a devastating contraction. The ravages of war and the
British army’s occupation of key American cities such as New York destroyed
key industries as well as elements of the economic infrastructure. At the
same time, the new nation’s economy experienced runaway inflation of
prices. Overseas trade was disrupted by the war as the British closed lucrative
markets in the Caribbean to American commerce. The South was especially
hard hit, as its exports of tobacco, rice, and other commodities plummeted
during and after the war.
British trade with America resumed after 1783. American ships were
allowed to deliver American products to Britain and return to the United
States with British goods. American ships could not carry British goods any-
where else, however. The pent-up demand for goods imported from London
created a vigorous market in exports to America. The result was a quick cycle
of postwar boom and bust, a buying spree followed by a money shortage and
economic troubles that lasted several years. The North’s economy recovered
much more quickly than that of the South, largely because of its strength in
shipping and commerce rather than in agriculture.
In the colonial period the chronic trade deficit with Britain had been off-
set by the influx of coins from the lucrative trade with the West Indies. After
the Revolution, the British exacted their frustration at losing the colonies by
prohibiting American ships from visiting the British West Indies. The
islands, however, still needed wheat, fish, and lumber, and American ship-
pers had not lost their talent for smuggling.
By 1787 American seaports were flourishing as never before. Trade
treaties opened new markets with the Dutch (1782), the Swedes (1783), the
Prussians (1785), and the Moroccans (1787), and American shippers found
new outlets on their own in Europe, Africa, and Asia. The most spectacular
 The Confederation Government • 263

new development, if not the largest, was trade with China. It began in
1784–1785, when the Empress of China sailed from New York to Canton
(Kuang-Chou)* and back, around the tip of South America. Profits from its
cargo of silks and tea encouraged the outfitting of other ships, which carried
American goods to exchange for the luxury goods of east Asia.
By 1790 the dollar value of American commerce and exports had far
exceeded the amount of trade generated by the colonies before the Revolu-
tion. Merchants owned more ships than they had had before the war. Farm
exports were twice what they had been. Although most of the exports were
the products of forests, fields, and fisheries, during and after the war more
Americans had turned to small-scale manufacturing, mainly for domestic
markets.

D I P LO M AC Y Yet while postwar trade flourished, the shortcomings of

the Articles of Confederation prompted a growing chorus of complaints. In
the diplomatic arena, there remained the nagging problems of relations with
Great Britain and Spain, both of which still kept military posts on American
soil and conspired with Indians to foment unrest. The British, despite
pledges made in the peace treaty of 1783, held on to a string of forts along
the Canadian border. They argued that their continued occupation was jus-
tified by the failure of Americans to pay their prewar debts to British credi-
tors. According to one Virginian, a common question in his state was, “If we
are now to pay the debts due to British merchants, what have we been fight-
ing for all this while?”
Another major irritant in U.S.-British relations was the American confis-
cation of Loyalist property. The Treaty of Paris had encouraged Congress to
end confiscations of Tory property, to guarantee immunity to Loyalists for
twelve months, during which they could return from Canada or Great
Britain and wind up their affairs, and to recommend that the states give back
confiscated property. Persecutions, even lynchings, of Loyalists occurred
after the end of the war. Some Loyalists who had fled returned unmolested,
however, and resumed their lives in their former homes. By the end of 1787,
moreover, at the request of Congress, all the states had rescinded any laws
that were in conflict with the peace treaty.

*The traditional (Wade-Giles) spelling is used here. Nearly two centuries after these events,
the Chinese government adopted pinyin transliterations, which became more widely used
after 1976, so that, for example, Peking became Beijing and, in this case, Kuang-Chou became
Guanzhou.
264 • SHAPING A FEDERAL UNION (CH. 6)

With Spain the chief issues were the disputed southern boundary of the
United States and the right of Americans to navigate the Mississippi River.
According to the preliminary treaty with Britain, the United States claimed
a southern boundary line as far south as the 31st parallel; Spain held out for
the line running eastward from the mouth of the Yazoo River (at 32°28'N),
which it claimed as the traditional boundary. The Treaty of Paris had also
given the Americans the right to ship goods by barge and boat down the
Mississippi River to its mouth. Still, the international boundary ran down
the middle of the river for most of its length, and the Mississippi was
entirely within Spanish Louisiana in its lower reaches. The right to send
boats or barges down the Mississippi was crucial to the growing American
settlements in Kentucky and Tennessee, but in 1784 Louisiana’s Spanish
governor closed the river to American commerce and began to conspire
with Indians against the American settlers and with settlers against the
United States.

T H E C O N F E D E R AT I O N ’ S P R O B L E M S The tensions between land-

hungry trans-Appalachian settlers and the British and the Spanish seemed
remote from the everyday concerns of most Americans, however. Most people
were more affected by economic troubles and the acute currency shortage
after the war. Merchants who found themselves prevented from reviving old
trade relationships with the island economies in the British West Indies
called for trade reprisals against
the British. State governments, in
response, imposed special taxes
on British vessels and special
tariffs on the goods they brought
to the United States. State action
alone, however, failed to work
because of a lack of uniformity
among the states. British ships
simply diverted their ports of
call to states whose import duties
were less restrictive. The other
states tried to meet this problem
by taxing British goods that
Domestic industry flowed across state lines, creating
the impression that states were
American craftsmen, such as this cabinet-
maker, favored tariffs on foreign goods that involved in commercial war with
competed with their own products. each other. Chaos ensued. By
 The Confederation Government • 265

1787 there was a clear need for the national government to regulate inter-
state trade.
After the Revolution, mechanics (skilled workers who made, used, or repaired
tools and machines) and artisans (skilled workers who made products) devel-
oped an array of new industries. Their products ranged from crude iron
nails to fine silver bowls and flatware. These skilled workers wanted reprisals
against British goods as well as British ships. They sought, and to various
degrees obtained from the states, tariffs (taxes) on imported foreign goods
that competed with theirs. Nearly all the states gave some preference to
American goods, but again the lack of uniformity in their laws put them at
cross-purposes, and so urban artisans along with merchants were drawn
into the movement calling for a stronger central government in the interest
of uniform trade regulations.
The shortage of cash and other postwar economic difficulties gave rise to
more immediate demands for paper currency, for postponement of tax and
debt payments, and for laws to “stay” (delay) the foreclosure of mortgages.
Farmers who had profited during the war found themselves squeezed after-
ward by depressed crop prices and mounting debts. Creditors demanded
that borrowers pay back their loans in gold or silver coins, but such “hard
money” was in short supply—and paper money was almost nonexistent
after the depreciation of the wartime currency. By 1785 the demand for new
paper money became the most divisive issue in state politics. In a drama that
would be replayed many times over the next century, debtors promoted the
use of paper money as a means of easing repayment, and farmers saw paper
money as an inflationary means of raising commodity prices.
In 1785–1786 seven states (Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey,
South Carolina, Rhode Island, Georgia, and North Carolina) began issuing
paper money to help hard-pressed farmers and to pay the bonuses earned by
war veterans. In spite of the cries of calamity at the time, the money never
seriously depreciated in Pennsylvania, New York, and South Carolina. In
Rhode Island, however, the debtor party ran wild. In 1786 the Rhode Island
legislature issued more paper money than any other state in proportion to
its population. Creditors fled the state to avoid being paid in worthless
paper.

S H AY S ’ S R E B E L L I O N
Newspapers throughout the nation followed the
chaotic developments in Rhode Island. The little commonwealth, stub-
bornly independent since its founding, became the prime example of
democracy run riot—until its riotous neighbor, Massachusetts, provided
the final proof (some said) that the new nation was poised on the brink of
266 • SHAPING A FEDERAL UNION (CH. 6)

Shays’s Rebellion
Shays and his followers demanded a more flexible mone-
tary policy and the right to postpone paying taxes until the
postwar agricultural depression lifted.

anarchy: Shays’s Rebellion. There the trouble was not too much paper
money but too little, as well as high taxation.
After 1780, Massachusetts had remained in the grip of a rigidly conserva-
tive state government, which levied ever-higher taxes to pay off a massive
war debt held mainly by wealthy creditors in Boston. The taxes fell most
heavily upon beleaguered farmers and the poor in general. When the Massa-
chusetts legislature adjourned in 1786 without providing paper money or
any other relief from taxes and debts, three western agricultural counties
erupted in revolt.
Armed bands of angry farmers closed the courts and prevented farm fore-
closures. A ragtag “army” of some one thousand two hundred unruly farmers
led by Daniel Shays, a destitute war veteran, advanced upon the federal arsenal
at Springfield in 1787. Shays and his followers sought a more flexible mone-
tary policy, laws allowing them to use corn and wheat as money, and the right
to postpone paying taxes until the postwar agricultural depression lifted.
The state government responded to the uprising by sending 4,400 militia-
men armed with cannons. The soldiers scattered the debtor army with a sin-
gle volley that left four farmers dead. The rebels nevertheless had a victory of
sorts. The new state legislature decided to relieve the agricultural crisis by
eliminating some of the taxes on farmers. But a more important conse-
quence was the impetus that Shays’s Rebellion gave to conservatism and
nationalism across the new United States.
 Creating the Constitution • 267

Rumors greatly exaggerated, at times deliberately, the extent of Shays’s

Rebellion. The Shaysites were rumored to be linked to the conniving British
and were accused of seeking to pillage the wealthy. Panic set in among the
Republic’s elite. “Good God!” George Washington exclaimed when he heard
of the incident. He worried that the rebellion might tempt other disgruntled
groups around the country to violate the law. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson,
Abigail Adams tarred the Shaysites as “ignorant, restless desperadoes, with-
out conscience or principles, . . . mobbish insurgents [who] are for sapping
the foundation” of the struggling young government. Jefferson disagreed. If
Abigail Adams and others were overly critical of Shays’s Rebellion, Jefferson
was, if anything, too complacent. From his post as the American minister in
Paris (the term ambassador was not used until the 1890s), he wrote to a
friend back home, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time
with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Abigail Adams was so infuriated by
Jefferson’s position that she stopped corresponding with him.

C A L L S F O R A S T RO N G E R G OV E R N M E N T Well before the Shaysite

turmoil in New England, concerned Americans had been calling for a special
convention of the states to strengthen the national government by revising
the Articles of Confederation. Many bankers, merchants, and mechanics pro-
moted a stronger central government as the only alternative to anarchy.
Americans were gradually losing the fear of a strong central government as
they saw evidence that tyranny might come from other quarters, including
the common people themselves. During the 1780s the newspapers as well as
public speeches were filled with dire warnings that the fragile new nation’s
situation “is critical and dangerous”; the nation’s “vices” were threatening
“national ruin.”
Such concerns led many of the Founding Fathers to revise their assess-
ment of the American character. “We have, probably,” concluded George
Washington in 1786, “had too good an opinion of human nature in forming
our confederation.” Washington and other so-called Federalists concluded
that the new republic must now depend for its success upon the constant
virtue of the few rather than the public-spiritedness of the many.

C R E AT I N G THE CONSTITUTION

THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION After stalling for several

months, Congress in 1787 called for a special convention of the states in
Philadelphia “for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of
268 • SHAPING A FEDERAL UNION (CH. 6)

Confederation.” By then five states had already named delegates; before the
meeting, called to begin on May 14, 1787, six more states had acted. New
Hampshire delayed until June, its delegates arriving in July. Fearful of con-
solidated power, tiny Rhode Island kept aloof throughout. (Critics labeled
the fractious little state “Rogue Island.”) Virginia’s Patrick Henry, an
implacable foe of centralized government, claimed to “smell a rat” and
refused to represent his state. Twenty-nine delegates from nine states began
work on May 25. Fifty-five men attended at one time or another, and after
four months of deliberations in stifling summer heat, thirty-nine signed the
new federal constitution they had drafted. Only three of the delegates
refused to sign.
The durability and flexibility of that document testify to the remarkable
men who made it. The delegates were surprisingly young: forty-two was the
average age. They were farmers, merchants, lawyers, and bankers, many of
them widely read in history, law, and political philosophy. Yet they were also
practical men of experience, tested in the fires of the Revolution. Twenty-
one had served in the military during the conflict, seven had been state gov-
ernors, most had been members of the Continental Congress, and eight had
signed the Declaration of Independence.
The magisterial George Washington served as presiding officer but par-
ticipated little in the debates. Eighty-one-year-old Benjamin Franklin, the
oldest delegate, also said little from the floor but provided a wealth of expe-

Drafting the Constitution

George Washington presides over a session of the Constitutional Convention in
Philadelphia.
 Creating the Constitution • 269

rience, wit, and common sense behind the scenes. More active in the
debates were James Madison, the ablest political philosopher in the group;
Massachusetts’s dapper Elbridge Gerry, a Harvard graduate who earned the
nickname Old Grumbletonian because, as John Adams once said, he “opposed
everything he did not propose”; George Mason, the author of the Virginia
Declaration of Rights and a slaveholding planter with a deep-rooted
suspicion of all government; the witty, eloquent, arrogant New York aristo-
crat Gouverneur Morris, who harbored a venomous contempt for the com-
mon people; Scottish-born James Wilson of Pennsylvania, one of the ablest
lawyers in the new nation and next in importance at the convention only to
Washington and Madison; and Roger Sherman of Connecticut, a self-
trained lawyer adept at negotiating compromises. John Adams, like Thomas
Jefferson, was serving abroad on a diplomatic mission. Also conspicuously
absent during most of the convention was Alexander Hamilton, the staunch
nationalist who regretfully went home when the other two New York dele-
gates walked out to protest what they saw as the loss of states’ rights.
James Madison emerged as the central figure at the constitutional con-
vention. He was one of only two delegates to attend every session. Small of
stature—barely over five feet tall and weighing only one hundred thirty
pounds—and frail in health, the thirty-six-year-old bookish bachelor was
descended from wealthy slaveholding
Virginia planters. He suffered from
chronic headaches and was painfully
shy. Crowds made him nervous, and
he hated to use his high-pitched voice
in public, much less in open debate.
But the Princeton graduate possessed
an agile mind and had a voracious
appetite for learning. The convincing
eloquence of his arguments—and his
repeated willingness to embrace
compromises—proved decisive. “Every
person seems to acknowledge his
greatness,” wrote one delegate. Madi-
son had arrived in Philadelphia with
trunks full of books and a head full of
James Madison
ideas. He had been preparing for the
Madison was only thirty-six when he
convention for months and probably assumed a major role in the drafting of
knew more about historical forms of the Constitution. This miniature
government than any other delegate. (1783) is by Charles Willson Peale.
270 • SHAPING A FEDERAL UNION (CH. 6)

For the most part the delegates’ differences on political philosophy fell
within a narrow range. On certain fundamentals they generally agreed: that
government derives its just powers from the consent of the people but that
society must be protected from the tyranny of the majority; that the people at
large must have a voice in their government but that any one group must be
kept from abusing power; that a stronger central authority was essential but
that all power is subject to abuse. Most of the delegates assumed, with Madi-
son, that even the best people are naturally selfish. Government, therefore,
could not be founded altogether upon a trust in the citizenry’s goodwill and
virtue. By a careful arrangement of checks and balances within and among
three and only three branches of government—executive, legislative, and
judicial—the Founding Fathers hoped to devise institutions that could con-
strain individual sinfulness and channel self-interest to benefit the public good.

THE VIRGINIA AND NEW JERSEY PLANS At the outset of the

Constitutional Convention, James Madison drafted the framework of the dis-
cussions. His proposals, which came to be called the Virginia Plan, embodied
a revolutionary idea: that the delegates scrap their instructions to revise the
Articles of Confederation and instead submit an entirely new document to the
states. Madison’s plan proposed separate legislative, executive, and judicial
branches and a truly national government to make laws binding upon individ-
ual citizens as well as states. The new Congress would be divided into two
houses: a lower house chosen by the citizenry and an upper house of senators
elected by the state legislatures. Congress could disallow state laws under the
plan and would itself define the extent of its and the states’ authority.
On June 15, delegates critical of some aspects of Madison’s proposals sub-
mitted an alternative: the New Jersey Plan, which sought to keep the existing
structure of equal representation of the states in a unicameral Congress but
give Congress the power to levy taxes and regulate commerce and the
authority to name an executive (with no veto) and a supreme court.
The two competing plans presented the convention with two major
issues: (1) whether simply to amend the Articles of Confederation or to draft
a new document; and, (2) whether to determine congressional representa-
tion by state or by population. On the first point the convention voted to
work toward establishing a new national government as envisioned by
Madison and the other Virginians. Regarding the powers of this govern-
ment, there was little disagreement except in the details. Experience with the
Articles of Confederation had persuaded the delegates that an effective cen-
tral government, as distinguished from a confederation of equal states,
needed the power to levy taxes, regulate commerce, fund an army and navy,
and make laws binding upon individual citizens. The painful lessons of the
 Creating the Constitution • 271

1780s suggested to them, moreover, that in the interest of order and unifor-
mity the states must be denied certain powers: to issue money, make treaties,
wage war, and levy tariffs.
These issues sparked furious disagreements. The first clash in the con-
vention involved congressional representation, and it was resolved by the
Great Compromise (sometimes called the Connecticut Compromise, as it
was proposed by Roger Sherman), which gave both groups their way: the
more populous states won apportionment by population in the proposed
House of Representatives, whereas the states that sought to protect states’
power won equality of representation in the Senate, with the vote by indi-
viduals, not by state legislatures.
An equally contentious struggle ensued between northern and southern
delegates over race-based slavery and the regulation of trade, an omen of
sectional controversies to come. Of all the issues that emerged during the
Constitutional Convention of 1787, none was more volatile than the ques-
tion of slavery and its future. During the eighteenth century the agricultural
economies of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia had become dependent
upon enslaved workers, and delegates from those states were determined to
protect the future of slavery as they drafted the new federal constitution.
A third of the people living in the southern states were enslaved blacks.
A South Carolinian stressed that his delegation and the Georgians would
oppose any new constitution that failed to protect slavery. The threat
worked. James Madison reported that “the real difference of interests” at the
Constitutional Convention “lies not between the large and small [states] but
between the Northern and Southern states. The institution of slavery and its
consequences form the [dividing] line.” The framers of the Constitution did
not even consider the possibility of abolishing slavery, nor did they view the
enslaved peoples as human beings whose rights should be protected by the
constitution. In this they reflected the prevailing attitudes among white
Americans. Most agreed with South Carolina’s John Rutledge when he
asserted, “Religion and humanity [have] nothing to do with this [slavery]
question. Interest alone is the governing principle of nations.”
The “interest” of southern delegates, with enslaved African Americans so
numerous in their states and so crucial to the plantation economy, dictated
that slaves be counted as part of the population in determining the number
of a state’s congressional representatives. Northerners were willing to count
slaves when deciding each state’s share of taxes but not for purposes of rep-
resentation. The delegates finally compromised on this issue by adding the
number of “free persons” to three fifths of “all other persons” [the enslaved]
as a basis for apportioning both representatives and direct taxes to those
states with slaves.
272 • SHAPING A FEDERAL UNION (CH. 6)

A more sensitive issue for the delegates involved an effort to prevent the
federal government from stopping the slave trade with Africa. Virginia’s
George Mason, himself a slaveholder, condemned the “infernal traffic,”
which his state had already outlawed. He argued that the issue concerned
“not the importing states alone but the whole union.” People in the western
territories were “already calling out for slaves for their new lands.” He feared
that they would “fill the country” with enslaved Africans if the transatlantic
traffic in slaves were not prohibited. Such a development would bring forth
“the judgment of Heaven” on the country. Southern delegates rejected
Mason’s reasoning. They argued that the continued importation of African
slaves was vital to their states’ economies.
To resolve the question, the delegates established a time limit: Congress
could not forbid the transatlantic slave trade before 1808, but it could levy
a tax of $10 a head on all imported Africans. In both provisions a sense of
delicacy—and hypocrisy—dictated the use of euphemisms. The Constitution
never explicitly mentions the word slavery. Instead it speaks of “free persons”
and “all other persons,” of “such persons as any of the states now existing shall
think proper to admit,” and of persons “held to service of labor.” The odious
word slavery did not appear in the Constitution until the Thirteenth Amend-
ment (1865) abolished the “peculiar institution.” The success of southern
delegates in getting slaves counted for purposes of calculating a state’s repre-
sentation in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College, coupled
with the decision not to prohibit American involvement with the African
slave trade, would prompt the fiery abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison to
declare in the 1830s that the drafters of the Constitution had forged a
“covenant with death and an agreement with hell.”
If the delegates found the slavery issue fraught with peril, they considered
irrelevant any discussion of the legal or political role of women under the
new constitution. The Revolutionary rhetoric of liberty had excited some
women to demand political equality for themselves. “The men say we have
no business [with politics],” Eliza Wilkinson of South Carolina observed as
the Constitution was being framed, “but I won’t have it thought that because
we are the weaker sex as to bodily strength we are capable of nothing more
than domestic concerns.” Her complaint, however, fell on deaf ears. There
was never any formal discussion of women’s rights at the constitutional con-
vention. The framers of the constitution still defined politics and govern-
ment as realms for men only.
The Constitution also said little about the processes of immigration and
naturalization, and most of what it said was negative. In Article II, Section 1,
the Constitution prohibits any future immigrant from becoming president,
 Creating the Constitution • 273

limiting that office to a “natural born Citizen.” In Article I, Sections 2 and 3,

respectively, it stipulates that no person can serve in the House of Representa-
tives who has not “been seven Years a Citizen of the United States” or in the
Senate who has not “been nine Years a Citizen.” On the matter of defining cit-
izenship, the Constitution gives Congress the authority “to establish a uni-
form Rule of Naturalization” but offers no further guidance on the matter. As
a result, naturalization policy (citizenship for immigrants) has changed sig-
nificantly over the years in response to fluctuating social attitudes and politi-
cal moods. In 1790 the first Congress passed a naturalization law that allowed
“free white persons” who had been in the United States for as few as two years
to be made naturalized citizens in any court. This meant that persons of
African descent were denied citizenship by the federal government; it was left
to individual states to determine whether free blacks were citizens. And
because Indians were not “free white persons,” they were also treated as aliens
rather than citizens. Not until 1924 would Native Americans be granted
citizenship—by an act of Congress rather than a constitutional amendment.

T H E S E PA R AT I O N O F P O W E R S The details of the government

structure embedded in the Constitution aroused less debate than the basic
issues pitting the large states against the small and the northern states
against the southern. Existing state constitutions, several of which already
separated powers among legislative, executive, and judicial branches, set an
example that reinforced the convention’s resolve to counter centralized
power with checks and balances. Although the Founding Fathers hated royal
tyranny, most of them also feared rule by the people and favored various
mechanisms to check the possible tyrannies of majority rule. Most of them
feared what James Madison called the “passions” of the people; they worried
that majorities might tyrannize minorities. Some delegates displayed a
thumping disdain for any democratizing of the political system. Elbridge
Gerry asserted that most of the nation’s problems “flow from an excess of
democracy.” Alexander Hamilton once called the people “a great beast.”
Those elitist views were accommodated by the Constitution’s mixed leg-
islative system. The United States was to be a representative, not a literal,
democracy. “Pure democracies,” Madison explained, “have ever been specta-
cles of turbulence and contention.” He and others designed the lower house
of Congress to be closer to the voters, who elected its delegates every two
years. It would be, according to Virginia’s George Mason, “the grand repository
of the democratic principle of the Government.” The upper house, or Sen-
ate, its members elected by the state legislatures, was intended to be more
detached from the voters. Staggered six-year terms for senators prevent the
274 • SHAPING A FEDERAL UNION (CH. 6)

choice of a majority in any given year and thereby further isolate senators
from acting on the passions of moment.
The delegates to the Constitutional Convention struggled over issues
related to the new executive branch. The decision that a single person be
made the chief executive caused the delegates “considerable pause,” accord-
ing to James Madison. George Mason protested that this would create a
“fetus of monarchy.” Indeed, several of the chief executive’s powers actually
exceeded those of the British monarch. This was the sharpest departure from
the recent experience in state government, where the office of governor had
commonly been diluted because of the recent memory of struggles with
royal governors during the colonial period. The new president would have a
veto over acts of Congress, subject to being overridden by a two-thirds vote
in each house, whereas in England the royal veto had long since fallen into
complete disuse. The president was named commander in chief of the
armed forces and responsible for the execution of the laws. The chief execu-
tive could make treaties with the advice and consent of two thirds of the
Senate and had the power to appoint diplomats, judges, and other officers
with the consent of a majority of the Senate. The president was instructed to
report annually on the state of the nation and was authorized to recommend
legislation, a provision that presidents eventually would take as a mandate to
present extensive legislative programs to the Congress for approval.
But the president’s powers were limited in certain key areas. The chief execu-
tive could neither declare war nor make peace; those powers were reserved for
Congress. Unlike the British monarch, moreover, the president could be
removed from office. The House could impeach (indict) the chief executive—
and other civil officers—on charges of treason, bribery, or “other high crimes
and misdemeanors.” Upon the conviction of an impeached president, the Sen-
ate could remove the president by a two-thirds vote. The presiding officer at the
trial of a president would be the chief justice, since the usual presiding officer of
the Senate (the vice president) would have a personal stake in the outcome.
The leading nationalists at the constitutional convention—men such
as James Madison, James Wilson, and Alexander Hamilton—wanted to
strengthen the independence of the president by entrusting the choice to
popular election. But an elected executive was still too far beyond the Amer-
ican experience. Besides, a national election would have created enormous
problems of organization and voter qualification. Wilson suggested instead
that the people of each state choose presidential electors equal to the
number of their senators and representatives. Others proposed that the
legislators make the choice. Finally, the convention voted to let the legisla-
ture decide the method in each state. Before long nearly all the states were
choosing the presidential electors by popular vote, and the electors were
 Creating the Constitution • 275

Signing the Constitution, September 17, 1787

Thomas Pritchard Rossiter’s painting shows George Washington presiding over
what Thomas Jefferson called “an assembly of demi-gods” in Philadelphia.

casting their votes as they had pledged them before the election. This
method diverged from the original expectation that the electors would
deliberate and make their own choices.
The third branch of government, the judiciary, provoked surprisingly lit-
tle debate. Both the Virginia and the New Jersey Plans had called for a
supreme court, which the Constitution established, providing specifically
for a chief justice of the United States and leaving up to Congress the num-
ber of other justices. Although the Constitution nowhere authorizes the
courts to declare laws void when they conflict with the Constitution, the power
of the Supreme Court to review congressional actions is implied. The new
court soon exercised such “judicial review” in cases involving both state and
federal laws. Article VI declares the federal Constitution, federal laws, and
treaties to be “the supreme Law of the Land,” state laws or constitutions “to
the Contrary notwithstanding.” The advocates of states’ rights thought this a
victory, since it eliminated the proviso in the Virginia Plan for Congress to
settle all conflicts between the federal government and individual states. As
it turned out, however, the clause became the basis for an important expan-
sion of judicial review of legislative actions.
Although the Constitution extended vast new powers to the national gov-
ernment, the delegates’ mistrust of unchecked power is apparent in repeated
examples of countervailing forces: the separation of the three branches of gov-
ernment, the president’s veto, the congressional power of impeachment and
removal, the Senate’s power to approve or reject treaties and appointments,
276 • SHAPING A FEDERAL UNION (CH. 6)

and the courts’ implied right of judicial review. In addition, the new form of
government specifically forbade Congress to pass bills of attainder (criminal
condemnation by a legislative act) or ex post facto laws (laws adopted after an
event to criminalize deeds that have already been committed). It also reserved
to the states large areas of sovereignty—a reservation soon made explicit by
the Tenth Amendment. By dividing sovereignty between the people and the
government, the framers of the Constitution provided a distinctive contribu-
tion to political theory. That is, by vesting ultimate authority in the people,
they divided sovereignty within the government. This constituted a dramatic
break with the colonial tradition. The British had always insisted that the sov-
ereignty of the king in Parliament was indivisible.
The most glaring defect of the Articles of Confederation was the rule
requiring that any amendments must gain the unanimous approval of the
states before being adopted. The delegates in Philadelphia therefore sought
to provide a less forbidding, though still difficult, method of amending the
Constitution. Amendments can be proposed either by a two-thirds vote of
each house in the national Congress or by a convention specially called,
upon application of two thirds of the state legislatures. Amendments can be
ratified by approval of three fourths of the states acting through their legis-
latures or in special conventions. The national convention has never been
used, however, and state conventions have been called only once—in 1933 to
ratify the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, which had prohibited “the
manufacture, sale, or transportation of ” alcoholic beverages.

T H E F I G H T F O R R AT I F I C AT I O N The final article of the Constitu-

tion provided that it would become effective upon ratification not by the
unanimous consent of the thirteen state legislatures but by at least nine state-
ratifying conventions specially elected for that purpose. The Confederation
Congress submitted the draft of the Constitution to the states on
September 28, 1787. For the first time in world history the diverse peoples
making up a large nation were able to discuss, debate, and decide by a peace-
ful vote how they would be governed.
In the fierce political debate that ensued, advocates of the Constitution
assumed the name Federalists. Opponents, who favored a more decentral-
ized federal system, became anti-Federalists. The debate over ratification of
the constitution was heated; at times it boiled over into violence. New Yorker
Gilbert Livingstone spoke for many when he called the debate the “greatest
transaction” of their lives. Newspapers aggressively took sides in the dispute,
and readership soared, leading one New Englander to argue that the newspa-
pers were being “read more than the Bible.” Mobs in Philadelphia, Albany,
 Creating the Constitution • 277

and New York City rioted as a result of disputes over the new constitution. In
the prolonged debate, the Federalists had several advantages. Their leaders
had been members of the constitutional convention and were already famil-
iar with the disputed issues in the document. They were not only better pre-
pared but also better organized and, on the whole, made up of the more able
leaders in the political community.
The anti-Federalist leaders—Patrick Henry, George Mason, Richard
Henry Lee, and future president James Monroe of Virginia, George Clinton
of New York, Samuel Adams and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, Luther
Martin and Samuel Chase of Maryland—were often men whose careers and
reputations had been established well before the Revolution. The Federalist
leaders were more likely to be younger men whose public careers had begun
during the Revolution—men such as Hamilton, Madison, and Jay.
The two groups fiercely disagreed more over means than ends, however.
Both sides, for the most part, acknowledged that a stronger national authority
was needed and that such an authority required an independent source
of revenue to function properly. Both sides were convinced that the people
must erect safeguards against tyranny, even the tyranny of the majority. Few of
the Constitution’s supporters liked it in its entirety, but most believed that it
was the best document obtainable; few of its opponents found it unacceptable
in its entirety. Once the new government had become an accomplished fact,
few wanted to undo the work of the Philadelphia convention. The losers in the
debate—the anti-Federalists—graciously accepted defeat; they did not resort
to violence, and many of them went on to become prominent leaders in the
federal government: James Monroe became the fifth president; George Clin-
ton and Elbridge Gerry became vice presidents; and Samuel Chase served on
the Supreme Court. For their part, the winners in the debate over the new con-
stitution acknowledged that the document could be improved by the addition
of amendments that came to be called the “Bill of Rights.”

THE FEDERALIST Among the supreme legacies of the debate over the
Constitution is The Federalist, a collection of essays originally published in
New York newspapers between 1787 and 1788. Instigated by Alexander
Hamilton, the eighty-five articles published under the name Publius include
about fifty by Hamilton, thirty by James Madison, and five by New Yorker
John Jay. Written in support of ratification, the essays defended the principle
of a supreme national authority while reassuring doubters that the people
and the states had little reason to fear tyranny in the new federal government.
In perhaps the most famous Federalist essay, Number 10, Madison argued
that the very size and diversity of the expanding United States would make it
278 • SHAPING A FEDERAL UNION (CH. 6)

impossible for any single faction to

form a majority that could dominate
the government. This contradicted
the conventional wisdom of the time,
which insisted that republics could
survive only in small, homogeneous
countries like Switzerland and the
Netherlands. Large republics, on the
other hand, would fragment, dissolv-
ing into anarchy and tyranny
through the influence of factions.
Quite the contrary, Madison insisted.
Given a balanced federal govern-
ment, a republic could work in large,
diverse nations probably better than
in smaller nations. “Extend the
The Federalist sphere,” he wrote, “and you take in
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison,
a greater variety of parties and inter-
and John Jay published this series of ests; you make it less probable that a
essays in 1788 defending the concept of majority of the whole will have a
strong central government and urging common motive to invade the rights
ratification of the Constitution.
of other citizens.”
Madison and the other Federalists also insisted that the new constitution
would promote prosperity by reducing taxes, paying off the war bonds, and
expanding the money supply. The anti-Federalists, however, highlighted the
dangers of placing more power in the hands of the central government. Mercy
Otis Warren of Massachusetts, the most prominent woman in the new nation
to write regular political commentary, compared the constitution to “shackles
on our own necks.” She and other anti-Federalists highlighted the absence of a
bill of rights to protect the rights of individuals and states. They also found the
process of ratification highly irregular, as it was—indeed, it was illegal under
the Articles of Confederation.

T H E D E C I S I O N O F T H E S TAT E S Ratification of the new constitu-

tion gained momentum before the end of 1787, and several of the smaller
states were among the first to act, apparently satisfied that they had gained
all the safeguards they could hope for in equality of representation in the
Senate. Delaware, New Jersey, and Georgia voted unanimously in favor.
Massachusetts, still sharply divided in the aftermath of Shays’s Rebellion,
was the first state in which the outcome was close. Massachusetts barely
approved the Constitution by 187 to 168 on February 6, 1788.
 Creating the Constitution • 279

RATIFICATION OF THE CONSTITUTION

Order of Ratification State Date of Ratification
1 Delaware December 7, 1787
2 Pennsylvania December 12, 1787
3 New Jersey December 18, 1787
4 Georgia January 2, 1788
5 Connecticut January 9, 1788
6 Massachusetts February 6, 1788
7 Maryland April 28, 1788
8 South Carolina May 23, 1788
9 New Hampshire June 21, 1788
10 Virginia June 25, 1788
11 New York July 26, 1788
12 North Carolina November 21, 1789
13 Rhode Island May 29, 1790

New Hampshire was the ninth state to ratify the Constitution, allowing
it to be put into effect, but the Union could hardly succeed without the
approval of Virginia, the most populous state, or New York, which had
the third highest population and occupied a key position geographically.
Both states harbored strong opposition groups. In Virginia, Patrick Henry
became the chief spokesman for backcountry farmers who feared the powers
of the new government, but wavering delegates were won over by the same
stratagem as in Massachusetts. When it was proposed that the convention
should recommend a bill of rights, Edmund Randolph, who had refused to
sign the finished document, announced his conversion to the cause.
Upon notification that New Hampshire had become the ninth state to rat-
ify the Constitution, the Confederation Congress began to draft plans for
the transfer of power to the new federal government created by the Consti-
tution. On September 13, 1788, it selected New York City as the initial capital
of the new government and fixed the date for the first elections. On
October 10, 1788, the Confederation Congress transacted its last business
and passed into history. Both sides in the ratification debate could claim vic-
tory. The Constitution was adopted, but the spirited resistance to it con-
vinced the first new Congress under the constitution to propose the first
amendments now known as the Bill of Rights.
“Our constitution is in actual operation,” the elderly Benjamin Franklin
wrote to a friend; “everything appears to promise that it will last; but in this
world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” George Washington was even
more uncertain about the future under the new plan of government. He had
told a fellow delegate as the convention adjourned, “I do not expect the Con-
stitution to last for more than twenty years.”
280 • SHAPING A FEDERAL UNION (CH. 6)

THE VOTE ON THE

CONSTITUTION,
1787–1790
NEW MAINE
Federalist majority HAMPSHIRE (to Mass.)
Anti-Federalist majority
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SOUTH
GEORGIA CAROLINA

0 100 200 Miles

0 100 200 Kilometers

Who were the leading Federalists and anti-Federalists? Why

were the anti-Federalists opposed to the Constitution? How
did the Federalists win the ratification of the Constitution?

The Constitution has lasted much longer, of course, and in the process it
has provided a model of resilient republican government whose features
have been repeatedly borrowed by other nations through the years. Yet what
makes the U.S. Constitution so distinctive is not its specific provisions or
many compromises but its remarkable harmony with the particular “genius
of the people” it governs. The Constitution has provided a flexible system of
government that presidents, legislators, judges, and the people have adjusted
to changing social, economic, and political circumstances.
 Creating the Constitution • 281

Sixth pillar
An engraving published in 1788 in The Massachusetts Centinel after Massachusetts
became the sixth state to ratify the Constitution. By the end of 1788, five more states
would approve and the Constitution would go into effect. The last two states to rat-
ify were North Carolina in 1789 and Rhode Island in 1790.

The tension between preserving states’ rights and expanding federal

authority embedded in the debate over ratification of the Constitution did
not end in 1787; it became the defining drama of American history there-
after. In this sense the Founding Fathers not only created “a more perfect
Union” in 1787; they also engineered a frame of government whose resilience
(and ambiguities) enabled later generations to continue to perfect their
republican experiment. But the framers of the Constitution failed in one sig-
nificant respect: in skirting the issue of slavery so as to cement the Union,
they unknowingly allowed tensions over the “peculiar institution” to reach
the point where there would be no political solution—only civil war.

The Constitution
Many local newspapers published the Constitution in 1787,
allowing Americans across the country to read and discuss it.
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Confederation Government Despite the weak form of government deliberately

crafted under the Articles of Confederation, the Confederation government
managed to construct alliances, wage the Revolutionary War to a successful con-
clusion, and negotiate the Treaty of Paris. It created executive departments and
established the way in which western lands would be organized and govern-
ments would be formed in the territories.
• Articles of Confederation Postwar economic conditions were difficult because
British markets were closed to the new nation and the Articles had not provided
for a means to raise taxes or stimulate economic recovery. Shays’s Rebellion
made many Americans fear that anarchy would destroy the new republic and led
them to clamor for a stronger national government.
• Constitutional Convention Delegates gathered at the convention in Philadel-
phia to revise the existing government, but almost immediately they proposed
scrapping the Articles of Confederation. An entirely new document emerged,
delineating separate executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Argument
about representation was resolved by establishing a two-house Congress, with
equal representation by state in the Senate and by population in the House of
Representatives.
• Slavery and the Constitution Southern delegates would not support a consti-
tution that failed to protect the institution of slavery and provide for the inter-
national slave trade. In determining how enslaved people would be counted for
the sake of apportioning direct taxes and representation in the lower house, the
framers decided that three fifths of the enslaved population would be counted.
It was also agreed that Congress would not forbid participation in the trans-
atlantic slave trade before 1808. Nevertheless, the framers of the Constitution
avoided using the word slavery in the Constitution.
• Ratification of the Constitution Ratification of the Constitution was difficult,
especially in the key states of Virginia and New York. Anti-Federalists such as
Virginia’s Patrick Henry favored a decentralized federal system and feared that
the absence of a bill of rights would lead to a loss of individual and states’ rights.
To sway New York State toward ratification, Alexander Hamilton, James Madi-
son, and John Jay wrote The Federalist, a series of articles defending a strong
national authority. Ratification became possible only with the promise of a bill
of rights.
 CHRONOLOGY

1781
1783
1784
Articles of Confederation take effect
General Washington puts an end to the Newburgh Conspiracy
Treaty of Fort Stanwix forces the Iroquois to give up land in
New York and Pennsylvania
1785 Land Ordinance outlines a plan for surveying and selling
government lands
1786 Delegates decide to call for a constitutional convention
1786–1787 Shays’s Rebellion
1787 Northwest Ordinance outlines a detailed plan for organizing
western territories
1787 The Constitutional Convention is held in Philadelphia
1787–1788 The Federalist Papers are published
1788 Confederation government is phased out
1790 Rhode Island becomes the last state to ratify the Constitution

KEY TERMS & NAMES

Robert Morris p. 256 James Madison p. 269 Federalists p. 276

Alexander Hamilton p. 257 Virginia Plan p. 270 anti-Federalists p. 276

Northwest Ordinance p. 259 New Jersey Plan p. 270 Bill of Rights p. 277

Shays’s Rebellion p. 266 separation of powers p. 273 The Federalist p. 277


7
THE FEDERALIST ERA

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• What were the main challenges facing Washington’s

administration?
• What was Hamilton’s vision of the new republic?
• How did religious freedom become a reality for the new country?
• How did European affairs complicate the internal political and
diplomatic problems of the new country?
• Why did Madison and Jefferson lead the opposition to Hamilton’s
policies?

T he Constitution was ratified in 1788 because it promised to

create a more powerful central government better capable of
managing a sprawling—and rapidly growing—new repub-
lic. Although the U.S. Constitution has become the world’s most enduring
national charter, skeptics in the late eighteenth century doubted that it
would survive more than a few years. A Massachusetts anti-Federalist said
that governing such an “extensive empire . . . upon republican principles”
was impossible. It was one thing to draft a new constitution but quite
another to exercise the expanded powers it allowed. Creating a “more perfect
union” would prove to be a long, complicated, and painful process. With
each passing year the new United States witnessed growing political faction-
alism. During the 1790s, the new federal government would confront civil
rebellions, threats of secession, international intrigues, and foreign wars.
In 1789, Americans wildly celebrated the inauguration of George Washing-
ton as the nation’s first president just as chaos was erupting in France
because of a violent revolution against the monarchy. But amid the excite-
ment was a turbulent undercurrent of uncertainty, suspicion, and anxiety.
 A New Nation • 285

The new Constitution provided a framework for nationhood but not a blue-
print; it left unanswered many questions about the actual structure and con-
duct of the new government. As James Madison had acknowledged, “We are
in a wilderness without a single footstep to guide us.”

A N E W N AT I O N

In 1789 the United States and its western territories reached from the
Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River and hosted almost 4 million people.
The vast new republic, much larger than any in Europe, harbored distinct
regional differences. A southerner stressed that “men who come from New
England are different from us.” Although still characterized by small farms
and bustling seaports, New England was on the verge of developing a manu-
facturing sector. The middle Atlantic states—New York, New Jersey, Delaware,
Pennsylvania, and Maryland—boasted the most well-balanced economy, the
largest cities, and the most diverse collection of ethnic and religious groups.

New beginnings
An engraving from the title page of The Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine
(published in Philadelphia in 1790). America is represented as a woman laying
down her shield to engage in education, art, commerce, and agriculture.
286 • THE FEDERALIST ERA (CH. 7)

The South was an agricultural region increasingly dependent upon enslaved

laborers. By 1790 the southern states were exporting as much tobacco as they
had been before the Revolution. Most important, however, was the surge in
southern cotton enabled by new technology. Between 1790 and 1815 the
annual production of cotton soared from less than 3 million pounds to 93 mil-
lion pounds.
Overall, the United States in 1790 was predominantly a rural society. Eighty
percent of households were involved in agricultural production. Only a few
cities had more than five thousand residents. The first national census, com-
pleted in 1790, counted seven hundred fifty thousand African Americans,
almost a fifth of the population. Most of them lived in the five southernmost
states; less than 10 percent lived outside the South. Most African Americans, of
course, were enslaved, but there were many more free blacks as a result of the
social turmoil during the Revolutionary War. In fact, the proportion of free to
enslaved blacks was never higher before the Civil War than it was in 1790.
The 1790 census did not even count the many Indians still living east of
the Mississippi River. Most Americans viewed the Native Americans as those
people whom the Declaration of Independence had dismissed as “merciless
Indian Savages.” There were over eighty tribes totaling perhaps as many as
one hundred fifty thousand people in 1790. In the Old Northwest along the
Great Lakes, the British continued to arm the Indians and encouraged them
to resist American encroachments. Between 1784 and 1790, Indians killed
or captured some one thousand five hundred settlers in Kentucky alone.
Such bloodshed generated a ferocious reaction. “The people of Kentucky,”
observed an official frustrated by his inability to negotiate a treaty between
whites and Indians, “will carry on private expeditions against the Indians
and kill them whenever they meet them, and I do not believe there is a
jury in all Kentucky that will punish a man for it.” In the South the five
most powerful tribes—the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and
Seminoles—numbered between fifty thousand and one hundred thousand.
They steadfastly refused to recognize U.S. authority and used Spanish-supplied
weapons to thwart white settlement on their lands.
Only about one hundred twenty-five thousand whites and blacks lived
west of the Appalachian Mountains in 1790. But that was soon to change.
The great theme of nineteenth-century American history would be the
ceaseless stream of migrants flowing westward from the Atlantic seaboard.
By foot, horse, boat, and wagon, pioneers and adventurers headed west. Ken-
tucky, still part of Virginia but destined for statehood in 1792, harbored
seventy-five thousand settlers in 1790; in 1776 there had been only one hun-
dred fifty pioneers there. Rapid population growth, cheap land, and new
 A New Nation • 287

economic opportunities fueled the western migration. The average white

woman gave birth to eight children, and the white population doubled
approximately every twenty-two years. This made for a very young popula-
tion on average. In 1790 almost half of all white Americans were under the
age of sixteen.

A N EW G OV E R N M E N T On March 4, 1789, the new Congress of the

United States convened its first meeting in New York City. Only eight sena-
tors and thirteen representatives attended. It would be another month
before both chambers could gather a quorum. Only then could the presiding
officer of the Senate certify the foregone conclusion that George Washing-
ton, with 69 votes, was the unanimous choice of the Electoral College for
president. John Adams, with 34 votes, the second-highest number, became
vice president.
Washington was a reluctant first president. He greeted the news of his
election with “a heart filled with distress” because he imagined “the ten
thousand embarrassments, perplexities and troubles to which I must again
be exposed.” He told a friend as he prepared to assume office in New York
City that he felt like a “culprit who is going to the place of his execution.” Yet
Washington agreed to serve because he had been “summoned by my coun-
try.” A self-made man who lost his father at age eleven and had little formal
education, he had never visited Europe. The acidic John Adams once
declared that Washington was “too illiterate, unlearned, unread for his sta-
tion and reputation.” But Washington had virtues that Adams lacked. He was
a military hero and prosperous planter who brought to his new office a
remarkable capacity for moderation and mediation that helped keep the
infant republic from disintegrating. As a military strategist, statesman, and
inspirational leader, Washington had influenced every phase of the Revolu-
tionary War. While learning how to defeat the British army, he also displayed
great political skills in convincing the Continental Congress (and the states)
to keep his army supplied. Although at times stern and hot tempered, Wash-
ington was remarkably self-disciplined; he possessed extraordinary stamina
and patience, integrity and resolve, courage and resilience. Few doubted that
he was the best person to lead the new nation.
In his inaugural address, Washington appealed for national unity, plead-
ing with the new Congress to abandon “local prejudices” and “party ani-
mosities” in order to create the “national” outlook necessary for the fledgling
republic to thrive. Within a few months the new president would see his
hopes dashed. Personal rivalries, sectional tensions, and partisan conflict
dominated political life in the 1790s.
288 • THE FEDERALIST ERA (CH. 7)

T H E G OV E R N M E N T ’ S S T RU C T U R E President Washington had a

larger staff at his plantation in northern Virginia than he did as the first presi-
dent of the United States. During the summer of 1789, Congress created exec-
utive departments corresponding to those formed under the Confederation.
The only department head held over from the Confederation government was
Secretary of War Henry Knox, a shrewd Bostonian who had commanded the
American artillery during the Revolutionary War before succeeding Washing-
ton as the army’s commander in chief. To head the Department of State,
Washington named Thomas Jefferson, recently back from his diplomatic
duties in France. To head the Department of the Treasury, Washington picked
his brilliant thirty-four-year-old wartime aide, Alexander Hamilton, now a
prominent New York lawyer. Edmund Randolph, former governor of Virginia,
filled the new position of attorney general.
George Washington routinely called his chief staff members together to
discuss matters of policy. This was the origin of the president’s cabinet, an
advisory body for which the Constitution made no formal provision. The
office of vice president also took on what would become its typical character.
“The Vice-Presidency,” John Adams wrote his wife, Abigail, was the most
“insignificant office . . . ever . . . contrived.”
The structure of the federal court system, like that of the executive depart-
ments, was left to Congress, except for a chief justice and the Supreme
Court. Congress set the membership of the highest court at six (now
nine)—the chief justice and five
associates—and created thirteen fed-
eral district courts. From these, appeals
might go to one of three circuit courts,
composed of two Supreme Court jus-
tices and the district judge, who met
twice a year in each district. Members
of the Supreme Court, therefore, were
initially itinerant judges “riding the
circuit” during a good part of the year.
All federal cases originated in a dis-
trict court and, if appealed on issues
of procedure or legal interpretation,
went to the circuit courts and from
John Jay there to the Supreme Court.
Chief justice of the Supreme Court. Jay
Washington named New Yorker
favored a strong union and emphati- John Jay as the first chief justice of the
cally supported the Constitution. Supreme Court, a post Jay held until
 A New Nation • 289

1795. His reputation as the state’s finest lawyer had led New York to send
him as its representative to the First and Second Continental Congresses.
After serving as president of the Continental Congress in 1778–1779, Jay
became the American minister (ambassador) in Spain. While in Europe, he
helped John Adams and Benjamin Franklin negotiate the Treaty of Paris in
1783. After the Revolution, Jay served as secretary of foreign affairs. He
joined James Madison and Alexander Hamilton as co-author of the The Fed-
eralist and became one of the most effective champions of the Constitution.

THE BILL OF RIGHTS The ratification of the Constitution did not end
the debate about the centralization of power in the federal government. Amid
the debates over ratification of the Constitution, four states—Massachusetts,
New York, Virginia, and North Carolina—requested that a “bill of rights” be
added to protect individual freedoms, states’ rights, and civil liberties. To
address such concerns, Congressman James Madison presented to Congress
in May 1789 a cluster of constitutional amendments that have since become
known as the Bill of Rights. After considerable discussion and debate, Con-
gress approved the amendments in September 1789, and a few days later
President George Washington officially transmitted the amendments to the
states for ratification. By the end of 1791, the necessary three fourths of the
states had approved ten of the twelve proposed amendments.
The first eight Amendments to the Constitution were modeled after the
Virginia Declaration of Rights that George Mason had written in 1776. They
provide safeguards for specified rights of individuals: freedom of religion,
press, speech, and assembly; the right to own firearms; the right to refuse to
house soldiers in a private home; protection against unreasonable searches
and seizures; the right to refuse to testify against oneself; the right to a
speedy public trial, with legal counsel present, before an impartial jury; and
protection against “cruel and unusual” punishment.
The Ninth and Tenth Amendments address the demand for specific state-
ments that the enumeration of rights in the Constitution “shall not be con-
strued to deny or disparage others retained by the people” and that “powers
not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it
to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The ten
amendments constituting the Bill of Rights became effective on December 15,
1791. The Bill of Rights, it should be noted, provided no rights or legal
protection to women, African Americans, or Indians.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM The debates over the Constitution and the Bill
of Rights generated a religious revolution as well as a political revolution.
290 • THE FEDERALIST ERA (CH. 7)

Unlike the New England Puritans who sought to ensure that colonial gov-
ernments explicitly supported their particular religious beliefs, the men who
drafted and amended the Constitution made no direct mention of God.
Unlike their counterparts in Europe, they were determined to protect free-
dom of religion from government interference and coercion. The First
Amendment declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting an estab-
lishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This statement
has since become one of the most important—and most disputed—principles
of American government.
In the late eighteenth century, the United States was virtually alone among
nations in refusing to enforce a single government-mandated and tax-
supported religion. In addition, at the time the Bill of Rights was ratified, all
but two states—New York and Virginia—still sponsored some form of official
religion or maintained a religious requirement for holding political office. In
1789 many people feared that the new national government might impose a
particular religious faith on the people. The First Amendment was intended
to create a pluralistic framework within which people of all religious persua-
sions could flourish. It prohibits the federal government from endorsing or
supporting any particular religion or interfering with the religious choices
that people make. As Thomas Jefferson later explained, the First Amend-
ment was intended to erect a “wall of separation between church and State.”

H A M I LT O N ’ S F I N A N C I A L V I S I O N

Raising money to operate its affairs was the new federal government’s
most critical task. Governments have three basic ways to raise money to pay
their bills: they can impose taxes, they can borrow money by selling interest-
paying government bonds, and they can print money. When George Wash-
ington was elected president, the federal treasury was virtually empty. To
raise necessary funds, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton in the sum-
mer of 1789 proposed a modest federal tariff (a tax on imports) to generate
revenue. In passing the Tariff and Tonnage Acts, the Congress created tariffs
on a variety of goods and required American ships to pay a fee of 6¢ a ton
upon entering a port; foreign vessels had to pay 50¢ a ton. Tariffs, then and
since, benefit American industries by making their foreign competitors
charge higher prices. But they thereby penalize consumers by causing higher
prices on imported goods bought by Americans. In essence, tariffs subsidized
the nation’s infant manufacturing sector at the expense of the agricultural
 Hamilton’s Financial Vision • 291

sector. This issue of tariff policy

became a volatile political question
pitting South against North through-
out the nineteenth century.

RAISING REVENUE The levying

of tariffs marked but the beginning of
the effort to get the new country on
sound fiscal footing. In 1789 Alexan-
der Hamilton seized the initiative.
The first secretary of the Treasury was
an unlikely protégé of the childless
President Washington. Born out of
wedlock on Nevis, a Caribbean island,
and deserted by his ne’er-do-well
Scottish father, he was left an orphan
at thirteen by the death of his mother.
With the help of friends and relatives, Alexander Hamilton
he found his way, at seventeen, to New Secretary of the treasury from 1789 to
York City, attended King’s College, 1795.
and entered the Continental army,
where he became Washington’s favorite aide. After the war he established a
thriving legal practice in New York City, and he became a self-made aristo-
crat, serving as a collector of revenues and as a member of the Confedera-
tion Congress. An early convert to nationalism, Hamilton played a major
role in promoting the new federal constitution. Shrewd, energetic, deter-
mined, charismatic, and combative, the red-haired, blue-eyed attorney was
consumed with social and political ambition and blessed with powerful
analytical skills.
During the Revolutionary War, Hamilton had witnessed the near-fatal
weaknesses of the Confederation Congress. Its lack of authority and money
almost lost the war. Now, as the nation’s first secretary of the Treasury, he
was determined to transform an economically weak cluster of states into a
powerful nation and global power comparable to Great Britain. To do so,
Hamilton believed, the United States needed to unleash the energy and
ambition of its citizens so as to create a vibrant economy driven by the
engines of capitalism. He wanted to nurture the hustling, bustling, aspiring
spirit that he believed distinguished Americans from other peoples. Just as
he himself had risen from poverty to success, he wanted to ensure that
292 • THE FEDERALIST ERA (CH. 7)

Americans would always have such opportunities. To that end he envisioned

an active federal government that encouraged new fields of enterprise and
fostered investment and entrepreneurship. Thriving markets and new
industries would best ensure the fate of the Republic.

E S TA B L I S H I N G T H E P U B L I C C R E D I TIn a series of brilliant reports

submitted to Congress between January 1790 and December 1791, Hamil-
ton outlined his visionary program for government finances and the eco-
nomic development of the United States. His success in creating a budget, a
funded government debt, a federal tax system, a national bank, a customs
service, and a coast guard provided the foundations for American commer-
cial capitalism.
The first of two “Reports on Public Credit” dealt with the $79 million debt
that state and federal governments had incurred during the War for Inde-
pendence. France, Spain, and Holland had loaned the United States money
and supplies to fight the war, and Congress had incurred more debt by
printing paper money and selling government bonds to investors. State gov-
ernments had also accumulated huge debts. The Constitution required the
new federal government to assume the debts of the Confederation govern-
ment. How that should be done was a source of heated debate.
Some argued that many of the debts should not be repaid. Hamilton dis-
agreed, insisting that not paying war debts was unjust and dishonorable.
Only by paying its debts in full could the new nation gain credibility in the
world of finance. He also explained that the state debts from the Revolution
were a national responsibility because all Americans had benefited from the
war for independence. He claimed that the federal government’s willingness
to pay off the state debts would help the people see the benefits of a strong
central government. Hamilton also believed that a government commitment
to repay its debts would give investors a direct stake in the success of the new
national government, as had been the case in Great Britain. A federal debt,
he claimed, would serve as a “mechanism for national unity” and prosperity.
Hamilton’s controversial first report on public credit made two key
recommendations: first, it called for funding the federal debt at face value,
which meant that citizens holding deflated war bonds could exchange them
for new interest-bearing bonds; and, second, it declared that the federal gov-
ernment should assume state debts from the Revolution. Holders of state
bonds would exchange them for new national bonds. Hamilton wanted
investors to be focused on the prosperity of the national government rather
than that of the states.
 Hamilton’s Financial Vision • 293

The debt-funding scheme was controversial because many farmers and

former soldiers in immediate need of money had recently sold their govern-
ment bonds for a fraction of their value to speculators. The original bond-
holders argued that they should be reimbursed for their losses; otherwise,
the speculators would gain a windfall from the new government’s decision to
fund bonds at face value. Hamilton sternly resisted their pleas. The specula-
tors, he argued, had “paid what the commodity was worth in the market, and
took the risks.” Therefore, they should reap the profits. In fact, Hamilton
insisted, the government should favor the speculative investors because they
represented the bedrock of a successful capitalist economy.

THE EMERGENCE OF SECTIONAL DIFFERENCES Hamilton’s

sophisticated financial proposals created a political firestorm. The Virginian
James Madison, who had been Hamilton’s close ally in promoting ratifica-
tion of the Constitution, broke with him over the merits of a national debt.
Madison did not question whether the war-related debt should be paid; he
was troubled, however, that speculative investors would become the chief
beneficiaries. That far more debt was owed to northerners than to southern-
ers further troubled him. Madison’s opposition to Hamilton’s plan ignited a
vigorous debate, but Hamilton carried his point by a margin of 3 to 1 when
the House brought it to a vote.
Madison’s opposition to Hamilton’s plan to have the federal government
assume responsibility for state debts got more support, however, and clearly
signaled a growing political division along geographic lines. The southern
states, with the exception of South Carolina, had whittled down their war
debts. New England, with the largest unpaid debts, stood to be the greatest
beneficiary of Hamilton’s plan for the federal government to pay off the state
debts. Rather than see Virginia victimized, Madison held out yet another
alternative. Why not, he suggested, have the government assume state debts
as they stood in 1783, at the conclusion of the peace treaty? Debates on this
point deadlocked the whole question of debt funding, and Hamilton grew so
frustrated with the legislative stalemate that he considered resigning.
The gridlock ended in the summer of 1790, when Jefferson, Hamilton,
and Madison agreed to a famous compromise. In return for northern votes
in favor of locating the permanent national capital on the Potomac River,
Madison pledged to seek enough southern votes to pass the debt assumption
plan. This Compromise of 1790 secured enough votes to carry Hamilton’s
funding and assumption proposals. The national capital would be moved
from New York City to Philadelphia for ten years, after which it would be
settled at a new federal city (called Washington) on the Potomac River.
294 • THE FEDERALIST ERA (CH. 7)

Hamilton’s debt-financing scheme was an immediate success. The new

bonds issued by the federal government were snatched up by eager investors
within a few weeks. By 1794 the young United States had the highest finan-
cial credit rating among all the nations of Europe. A leading French official
explained why: the American government bonds were “safe and free from
reverses. They have been funded in such a sound manner and the prosperity
of this country is growing so rapidly that there can be no doubt of their sol-
vency.” Of course, the fact that war had erupted in Europe as a result of the
French Revolution also played a role in the success of Hamilton’s plans,
because American exports to the warring nations soared.

A N AT I O N A L BANKPart of the opposition to Hamilton’s debt-

financing scheme grew out of opposition to Hamilton himself. The young
but confident Hamilton viewed himself as President Washington’s prime
minister. As a Congressman admitted in 1791, Hamilton “is all powerful and
fails in nothing which he attempts.” That the new Department of Treasury
had forty staff members at the same time that Thomas Jefferson’s State

The Bank of the United States

Proposed by Alexander Hamilton, the bank opened in Philadelphia in 1791.
 Hamilton’s Financial Vision • 295

Department had five demonstrated the priority that President Washington

gave to the new nation’s financial situation.
After securing Congressional approval of his debt funding scheme,
Hamilton authored three more crucial economic reports: the second of the
“Reports on Public Credit,” which included a proposal for a liquor tax to
raise revenue to help repay the nation’s debts; a report recommending the
establishment of a national bank and a national mint (to provide coins and
currency), which were set up in 1791–1792; and the “Report on Manufac-
tures,” which proposed an extensive program of government aid and other
encouragement to stimulate the development of manufacturing enterprises
so as to reduce America’s dependence on imported goods.
Hamilton’s proposed Bank of the United States would have three pri-
mary responsibilities: (1) to serve as a secure repository for government
funds and facilitate the transfer of monies to other nations; (2) to provide
loans to the federal government and to other banks to facilitate economic
development; and (3) to manage the nation’s money supply by regulating
the money-issuing activities of state-chartered banks. By holding govern-
ment bonds and using them for collateral, the national bank could issue
banknotes (paper money), thereby providing a national currency that would
address the chronic shortage of gold and silver coins. Government bonds
held by the national bank would back up the value of its new banknotes. The
national bank, chartered by Congress, would remain under government
control, but private investors would supply four fifths of the $10 million
capital and name twenty of the twenty-five directors; the government would
provide the other fifth of the capital and name five directors.
Once again, Congressman James Madison rose to lead the opposition to
Hamilton, arguing that he could find no basis in the Constitution for a national
bank. Nevertheless, Congress approved the bank bill. The vote revealed the
growing sectional division in the young United States. Representatives from the
northern states voted 33 to 1 in favor of the national bank; southern congress-
men opposed the bank 19 to 6.
Before signing the controversial bill, President Washington sought the
advice of his cabinet, where he found an equal division of opinion. The
result was the first great debate on constitutional interpretation. Should
there be a strict or a broad construction of the Constitution? Were the pow-
ers of Congress only those explicitly stated, or were others implied? The
argument turned chiefly on Article I, Section 8, which authorizes Congress
to “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Exe-
cution the foregoing Powers.”
296 • THE FEDERALIST ERA (CH. 7)

Such language left room for disagreement and led to a confrontation

between Jefferson and Hamilton. Secretary of State Jefferson, who despised
banks, pointed to the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution, which reserves
to the states and the people powers not delegated to Congress. “To take a sin-
gle step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of
Congress,” he wrote, “is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no
longer susceptible of any definition.” A bank might be a convenient aid to
Congress in collecting taxes and regulating the currency, but it was not, as
Article I, Section 8, specified, necessary.
In a lengthy report to the president, Hamilton countered that the power
to charter corporations was included (“implied”) in the sovereignty of any
government, whether or not explicitly stated. He then expressed his opinion
on the proposed bank’s constitutionality:

This criterion is the end, to which the measure relates as a mean. If the end
be clearly comprehended within any of the specified powers, collecting
taxes and regulating the currency, and if the measure have an obvious
relation to that end, and is not forbidden by any particular provision of
the Constitution, it may safely be deemed to come within the compass of
the national authority.

Hamilton’s sharp analysis convinced Washington to sign the bank bill. In

doing so, the president had, in Jefferson’s words, opened up “a boundless field
of power,” which in the coming years would lead to a further broadening of
the president’s implied powers with the approval of the Supreme Court.
Under the leadership of Chief Justice John Marshall, the Court would eventu-
ally adopt Hamilton’s words almost verbatim. On July 4, 1791, stock in the
new Bank of the United States was put up for sale, and it sold out within
an hour.

Hamilton’s audacious economic

E N C O U R A G I N G M A N U FA C T U R E S
vision for the new republic was not yet complete. In the last of his celebrated
reports, the “Report on Manufactures,” he set in place the capstone of his
design for a modern national economy: the active governmental encourage-
ment of manufacturing enterprises. Hamilton believed that several advan-
tages would flow from the aggressive development of an industrial sector. It
would bring diversification to an economy dominated by agriculture;
improve productivity through greater use of machinery; provide paid work
for those not ordinarily employed outside the home, such as women and
children; encourage immigration to provide industrial workers; create more
 Hamilton’s Financial Vision • 297

Certificate of the New York Mechanick Society

An illustration of the growing diversification of labor, by Abraham Godwin
(ca. 1785).

opportunities for entrepreneurial activity; and expand the domestic market

for agricultural products.
To nurture industrial development, Hamilton endorsed the imposition
of federal tariffs (taxes) on foreign imports to make American products
more competitive with European manufactures. He also recommended that
the federal government provide financial incentives to encourage capitalists
to launch new industries and to encourage inventions and new technolo-
gies. Finally, Hamilton urged the federal government to fund improve-
ments in transportation, including the development of roads, canals, and
rivers for commercial traffic. Some of Hamilton’s tariff proposals were
enacted in 1792. Otherwise the program was filed away—but not forgotten.
It provided an arsenal of arguments for the advocates of manufactures in
years to come.

H A M I LT O N ’ S A C H I E V E M E N T
Largely owing to the skillful Hamil-
ton, the Treasury Department during the early 1790s began to retire the
298 • THE FEDERALIST ERA (CH. 7)

Revolutionary War debt, and foreign capital began to flow in once again.
Economic growth, so elusive in the 1780s, flourished by the end of the cen-
tury. A Bostonian reported in late 1790 that the United States had never “had
a brighter sunshine of prosperity. . . . Our agricultural interest smiles, our
commerce is blessed, our manufactures flourish.” But Hamilton’s policies
had done much more than revive the economy. Against fierce opposition,
Hamilton had established the foundations for what would become the
world’s most powerful capitalist republic. In the process, he helped Ameri-
cans see beyond their local interests. Hamilton was a consummate national-
ist. He was determined to make the United States a commercial and
industrial giant remarkable for its ability to balance individual freedom with
government power. As he recognized, “Liberty may be endangered by the
abuses of liberty as well as by the abuses of power.”
Yet however beneficial Hamilton’s policies were to the nation’s long-term
economic development, they provoked fierce opposition. By championing
industry and commerce as well as the expansion of federal authority at the
expense of the states, Hamilton infuriated a growing number of people,
especially in the agricultural South. Competition between the agrarian Jef-
ferson and the urban-industrial Hamilton boiled over into a nasty feud
between the government’s two most talented men. The concerted opposition
to Hamilton’s politics and policies soon fractured Washington’s cabinet and
spawned the nation’s first political parties.

T H E R E P U B L I C A N A LT E R N AT I V E

Hamilton’s controversial financial ideas provided the economic foun-

dation of the political party known as the Federalists; in opposition, Madi-
son and Jefferson led those who took the name Republicans (also called the
Democratic Republicans or Jeffersonian Republicans), thereby implying
that the Federalists aimed at a monarchy. The Federalists agreed with Hamil-
ton about the need for a stronger national government with sound credit
and currency managed by a national bank in order to ensure prosperity and
security. Republicans worried about the threats to individual freedoms and
states’ rights posed by a strong central government. Republicans also ques-
tioned the legitimacy of a national bank, arguing that the Constitution did
not empower the government to create such a bank. On the whole, Jefferson-
ian Republicans promoted a strict interpretation of the Constitution while
the Federalists believed that the Constitution should be interpreted broadly
whenever the national interest dictated such flexibility.
 The Republican Alternative • 299

Neither side in the disagreement

over national policy deliberately set
out to create organized political par-
ties. But there were growing differences
of both philosophy and self-interest
that would not subside. At the outset,
James Madison assumed leadership
of Hamilton’s opponents in Congress.
Madison, like Thomas Jefferson, was
rooted in Virginia, where opposition
to Hamilton’s economic policies pre-
dominated. Patrick Henry, for exam-
ple, proclaimed that Hamilton’s poli-
cies were “dangerous to the rights
and subversive of the interests of the Thomas Jefferson
people.”
A portrait by Charles Willson Peale
After the Compromise of 1790, (1791).
which enabled the nationalizing of
state debts, Madison and Jefferson ever more resolutely opposed Hamilton’s
policies: his effort to place a tax on whiskey, which laid a burden especially
on the trans-Appalachian farmers, whose livelihood depended upon the
production and sale of the beverage; his proposal for the national bank; and
his “Report on Manufactures.” Hostility between Jefferson and Hamilton
festered within the cabinet, much to the distress of President Washington.
Like Hamilton, Jefferson was brilliant. He developed a breadth of culti-
vated interests that ranged widely in science, the arts, and the humanities.
He read or spoke seven languages. He was an architect of distinction (his
home at Monticello, the Virginia state capitol, and the University of Virginia
are monuments to his talent), an intellectually curious gentleman who
understood mathematics and engineering, an inventor, and an agronomist.
He knew music and practiced the violin, although one wit remarked that
only Patrick Henry played it worse.
Hamilton and Jefferson represented contrasting visions of the character
of the Union. Their differing philosophical and political issues still echo
more than two centuries later. Thomas Jefferson, twelve years Hamilton’s
senior, was in most respects his opposite. Jefferson was an aristocrat and at
times a radical utopian. He was by nature an optimist and a visionary.
Hamilton was a hardheaded urban realist who foresaw a diversified capitalist
economy, with agriculture balanced by commerce and industry, and was thus
the better prophet. Jefferson was an agrarian idealist who feared that the
300 • THE FEDERALIST ERA (CH. 7)

growth of crowded cities would divide society into a capitalist aristocracy on

the one hand and a deprived proletariat on the other. Hamilton feared anar-
chy and loved stability; Jefferson feared tyranny and loved liberty.
Hamilton was a pro-British champion of a strong central government that
would encourage urban-industrial growth. Jefferson was a devout admirer of
French culture who wanted to preserve a decentralized agrarian republic made
up primarily of small farmers. “Those who labor in the earth,” he wrote, “are
the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts He has
made His peculiar deposit for genuine and substantial virtue.” Jefferson did
not oppose all forms of manufacturing; he simply feared that the unlimited
expansion of commerce and industry would produce a growing class of wage
laborers who were dependent upon others for their livelihood and therefore
subject to political manipulation and economic exploitation.
By mid-1792, Hamilton and Jefferson could no longer disguise their dis-
dain for each other. Hamilton was convinced that Jefferson was “bent upon
my subversion.” And he was. Jefferson told a friend that the two rivals “daily
pitted in the cabinet like two cocks.” The Virginian believed that Hamilton’s
British-inspired policies would “undermine and abolish the republic.” Presi-
dent Washington grew so frustrated by the political infighting within his
cabinet that he begged his chief officers to put an end to the “wounding sus-
picions and irritating charges.”
Still, amid the rising political tensions, there was little opposition in either
party to George Washington, who longed to retire from politics to his
beloved plantation at Mount Vernon and had even begun drafting a farewell
address but was urged by both Hamilton and Jefferson to continue in public
life. Secretary of State Jefferson told Washington that the unstable new
nation needed him: “North and South will hang together if they have you to
hang on.” In the fragile infancy of the new nation, Washington was the only
man able to transcend party differences and hold things together with his
unmatched prestige. In 1792, Washington was unanimously reelected to
serve a second term.

CRISES FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC

During George Washington’s second term, the problems of foreign

relations surged to center stage as the result of the cascading consequences
of the French Revolution, which had begun in 1789, during the first months
of his first presidential term. Americans followed the tumultuous events in
 Crises Foreign and Domestic • 301

France with almost universal sympathy, for in the early months the French
idealists seemed to be emulating the American Revolution. In July 1789
French rebels stormed the Bastille, the Parisian prison that had long been a
symbol of monarchical tyranny; in August revolutionary leaders penned the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen; and, the following year the
French republicans drafted their own constitution. Even Federalists such as
John Marshall, the future chief justice of the Supreme Court, were excited by
the first phase of the French revolution against the king. “We were all
strongly attached to France. . . . I sincerely believed human liberty to depend
in a great measure on the success of the French Revolution.”
By early 1793, however, the most radical of the French revolutionaries, hav-
ing abolished the monarchy and declared a republic, executed the king and
queen as well as hundreds of aristocrats and priests. Then the revolutionary
government declared war on Great Britain on February 1, 1793. The much-
celebrated French experiment in liberty, equality, and fraternity began to
transform itself into a monster. As the new French government plunged into
war with Austria and Prussia, the Revolution began devouring its own chil-
dren, along with its enemies, during the Terror of 1793–1794. The revolution-
ary rulers used guillotines to execute thousands of political prisoners, and
barbarism ruled the streets of Paris and other major cities. Secretary of State
Thomas Jefferson, who had served as U.S. minister to France during the
1780s and was an ardent Francophile (he had sought to recreate his Parisian
lifestyle in Philadelphia, hiring French staff, serving only French wine, and
collecting French paintings and furniture), wholeheartedly endorsed the
efforts of French Revolutionaries to replace the monarchy with a republican
form of government. By contrast, Vice President John Adams decided that the
French Revolution had run amok; it had become barbarous and godless. Such
conflicting attitudes toward the French Revolution transformed the first
decade of American politics into one of the most fractious periods in the
nation’s history.
The French Revolution also transformed international relations and set in
motion a series of complex European alliances and prolonged wars that
would frustrate the desire of the young United States to remain neutral in
world affairs. After the execution of King Louis XVI, early in 1793, Great
Britain and Spain entered into the coalition of European monarchies at war
with the chaotic French republic. For the next twenty-two years, Britain and
France were at war, with only a brief respite, until the final defeat of the
French forces under Napoléon Bonaparte in 1815. The European war pre-
sented George Washington, just beginning his second term in 1793, with an
302 • THE FEDERALIST ERA (CH. 7)

awkward decision. By the 1778 Treaty of Alliance, the United States was a
perpetual ally of France, obligated to defend the European nation’s posses-
sions in the West Indies.
But Americans wanted no part of the European war. They were deter-
mined to maintain their lucrative trade with both sides. And besides, the
Americans had no navy with which to wage a war. Neutrality was the only
sensible policy. For their part, Hamilton and Jefferson found in the neutral-
ity policy one issue on which they could agree. Where they differed was in
how best to implement it. Hamilton had a simple answer: declare the French
alliance formed during the American Revolution invalid because it had been
made with a French government that no longer existed. Jefferson preferred
to delay and use the alliance as a bargaining point with the British. In the
end, however, Washington followed the advice of neither. Taking a middle
course, the president issued a neutrality proclamation on April 22, 1793, that
declared the United States “friendly and impartial toward the belligerent
powers” and warned U.S. citizens that they might be prosecuted for “aiding
or abetting hostilities” or taking part in other un-neutral acts. Instead of set-
tling matters in his cabinet, however, Washington’s proclamation brought to
a boil the feud between Hamilton and Jefferson. Jefferson dashed off an
angry letter to James Madison, urging his ally to “take up your pen” and cut
Hamilton “to pieces” in the newspapers.

CITIZEN GENET At the same time, President Washington accepted Jef-

ferson’s argument that the United States should recognize the new French
revolutionary government (becoming the first nation to do so) and welcome
its new ambassador to the United States, the headstrong, indiscreet twenty-
nine-year-old Edmond-Charles-Édouard Genet. Early in 1793, Citizen
Genet landed at Charleston, South Carolina to a hero’s welcome. Along the
route to Philadelphia, the enthusiasm of his American sympathizers gave the
swaggering Genet an inflated notion of his influence. In Charleston he had
recruited privateers to capture British ships. He also conspired with fron-
tiersmen and land speculators to organize an attack on Spanish Florida and
Louisiana.
Genet quickly became an embarrassment even to his Republican friends.
The cabinet unanimously agreed that the French troublemaker had to go; in
August 1793, President Washington demanded his recall. Meanwhile, a new
party of radicals had gained power in France and sent agents to America to
arrest Genet. Instead of returning to Paris and risk the guillotine, Genet
sought asylum in the United States.
 Crises Foreign and Domestic • 303

Genet’s foolishness and the growing excesses of the radicals in France

were fast cooling U.S. support for France’s wayward revolution. The war
between France and Great Britain deeply divided public opinion in the
United States. The division gave rise to curious loyalties: slaveholding
planters like Thomas Jefferson joined the cheers for radical Revolutionaries
who confiscated the lands of aristocrats in France, and they supported the
protest against British seizures of New England ships; Massachusetts ship-
pers still profited from the British trade and kept quiet. Boston, once a
hotbed of revolution itself, became a bastion of Federalism. Jefferson was so
disgusted by President Washington’s refusal to support the French Revolu-
tion and by his own ideological warfare with Hamilton that he resigned as
secretary of state at the end of 1793. Vice President Adams greeted the news
by saying “good riddance.”

J AY ’ S T R E AT Y By 1794 a
prolonged foreign-policy crisis
between the United States and
Great Britain threatened to
renew warfare between the old
enemies. The 1783 Peace of Paris
that ended the Revolutionary
War had left the western and
southern boundaries of the new
United States in dispute. In addi-
tion, in late 1793 British warships
violated international law by
seizing any American ship that
carried French goods or was sail-
ing for a French port. By early
1794 several hundred American
ships in the West Indies had been
confiscated. Their crews were
given the terrible choice of joining
the British navy or being impris-
oned. At the same time, British
troops in the Ohio River valley Jay’s Treaty
were arming Indians who in turn A firestorm of controversy greeted Jay’s
attacked American settlers. Early treaty in America. Opponents of the treaty
in 1794 the Republican leaders rioted and burned Jay in effigy.
304 • THE FEDERALIST ERA (CH. 7)

in Congress were gaining support for commercial retaliation to end British

trade abuses when the British gave President Washington a timely opening
for a settlement. They stopped seizing American ships, and on April 16,
1794, Washington asked Chief Justice John Jay to go to London to settle the
major issues between the two nations: to get British troops out of their forts
along the Great Lakes and to secure reparations for the losses of American
shippers, compensation for southern slaves carried away by British ships in
1783, and a new commercial treaty that would legalize American trade with
the British West Indies.
To win his objectives, Jay accepted the British definition of neutral
rights—that exports of tar, pitch, and other products needed for warships
were contraband (war supplies) and that such military products could not
go in neutral ships to enemy ports. Through Jay’s negotiations, Britain also
gained advantages in its trade with the United States and a promise that
French privateers would not be outfitted in American ports. Finally, Jay con-
ceded that the British need not compensate U.S. citizens for the enslaved
African Americans who had escaped during the Revolutionary War and that
the pre-Revolutionary American debts to British merchants would be paid
by the U.S. government. In return for these concessions, the chief justice
won three important promises from the British: they would evacuate their
six northwestern forts by 1796; reimburse Americans for the seizures of
ships and cargo in 1793–1794; and grant American merchants the right to
trade with the British West Indies. But the last of these (Article XII) was
hedged with restrictions.
Public outrage greeted the terms of Jay’s Treaty (also known as the Treaty
of London of 1794). The debate was so intense that some Americans feared
civil war might erupt. Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic Republicans
who favored France in its war with Britain were furious; they wanted no
concessions to the hated British. Jefferson dismissed Jay’s Treaty as an “infa-
mous act.” Opponents of the treaty took to the streets, hanged John Jay in
effigy, and claimed that the treaty was unconstitutional. The heated dispute
helped to crystallize the differences between the nation’s first competing
political parties, the Jeffersonian Republicans and the Federalists.
The uproar over the treaty created the gravest crisis of Washington’s pres-
idency. He worried that his opponents were prepared to separate “the Union
into Northern & Southern.” After he officially endorsed Jay’s Treaty, there
were even calls for his impeachment. Yet the president, while acknowledging
that the proposed agreement was imperfect, concluded that adopting it was
the only way to avoid a war with Britain that America was bound to lose. In
the end, Jay’s Treaty barely won the necessary two-thirds majority in the
 Crises Foreign and Domestic • 305

Senate on June 24, 1795. Some 80 percent of the votes for the treaty came
from New England or the middle Atlantic states; 74 percent of those voting
against the treaty were southerners.

FRONTIER TENSIONS Other events also had an important bearing on

Jay’s Treaty, adding force to the importance of its settlement of the Canadian
frontier and strengthening Spain’s conviction that it needed to settle long-
festering problems along America’s southwestern frontier. While Jay was
haggling in London, frontier conflict with Indians escalated, with U.S. troops
twice crushed by northwestern tribes. At last, President Washington named
General Anthony Wayne to head a military expedition into the Northwest
Territory. In the fall of 1793, Wayne marched into Indian country with some
two thousand six hundred men, built Fort Greenville, and went on the
offensive in 1794.
In August some two thousand Shawnee, Ottawa, Chippewa, and Potawatomi
warriors, reinforced by Canadian militias, engaged Wayne’s troops in the

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Why did General Wayne build Fort Greenville? What happened at

the Battle of Fallen Timbers? What were the terms of the Treaty of
Greenville?
306 • THE FEDERALIST ERA (CH. 7)

Battle of Fallen Timbers, south of Detroit. The Americans repulsed them

and then destroyed their fields and villages. The Indians, frustrated by their
inability to stop the relentless waves of white settlers encroaching upon their
tribal lands, finally agreed to the Treaty of Greenville, signed in August 1795.
According to the terms of the treaty, the United States bought from twelve
tribes the rights to the southeastern quarter of the Northwest Territory (now
Ohio and Indiana) and enclaves at the sites of Detroit, Chicago, and Vin-
cennes, Indiana.

THE WHISKEY REBELLION Soon after the Battle of Fallen Timbers,

the Washington administration resolved on another show of strength in the
backcountry, this time against the so-called Whiskey Rebellion. Alexander
Hamilton’s federal tax on liquor, levied in 1791, had outraged frontier farm-
ers because it taxed their most profitable commodity. During the eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries nearly all Americans drank alcoholic bever-
ages: beer, hard cider, ale, wine, rum, brandy, or whiskey. Alcoholic beverages
were safer to drink than the often-contaminated water and were cheaper
than tea. In the areas west of the Appalachian Mountains, the primary cash
commodity was liquor distilled from grain or fruit. Such emphasis on distill-
ing reflected a practical problem. Many farmers could not afford to transport
bulky crops of corn and rye across the mountains or down the Mississippi
River to the seaboard markets. Instead, it was much more profitable to distill
liquor from corn and rye or apples and peaches. Unlike grain crops, distilled
spirits could be easily stored, shipped, or sold—and at higher profits.
A bushel of corn worth 25¢ could yield two and a half gallons of liquor,
worth ten times as much.
Backcountry farmers were also suspicious of the new federal government
in Philadelphia. The frontiersmen considered the whiskey tax another part
of Hamilton’s scheme to pick the pockets of the poor to enrich the urban
rich. Throughout the backcountry, from Georgia to Pennsylvania and
beyond, the whiskey tax provoked resistance and evasion.
In the summer of 1794, discontent exploded into open rebellion in west-
ern Pennsylvania. A mob of five hundred armed men burned the house of
the federal tax collector. Other rebels destroyed the stills of those who paid
the whiskey tax, robbed the mails, stopped court proceedings, and threat-
ened an assault on Pittsburgh. On August 7, 1794, President Washington
issued a proclamation ordering the insurgents home and calling out twelve
thousand nine hundred militiamen from Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania,
and New Jersey. Getting no response from the “Whiskey boys,” he ordered
the army to suppress the rebellion.
 Crises Foreign and Domestic • 307

Whiskey Rebellion
George Washington as commander in chief reviews the troops mobilized to quell
the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794.

Under the command of General Henry Lee, thirteen thousand soldiers

marched out from Harrisburg across the Alleghenies. George Washington
himself accompanied the troops during the first few days, the only American
president to lead troops in the field while in office. The massive show of fed-
eral force worked. The whiskey rebels vanished into the hills, and the troops
met with little opposition. They finally rounded up twenty barefoot, ragged
prisoners, whom they paraded down Market Street in Philadelphia and
clapped into prison. The government had made its point and gained “repu-
tation and strength,” claimed Alexander Hamilton, by suppressing the elu-
sive rebellion—one that, according to Jefferson, “could never be found.” The
use of such excessive force, however, led many who sympathized with the
frontiersmen to become Republicans, and Jefferson’s party scored heavily in
308 • THE FEDERALIST ERA (CH. 7)

the next Pennsylvania elections. Nor was it the end of whiskey rebellions,
which continued in an unending war of wits between moonshiners and fed-
eral tax officers, known as revenuers.

P I N C K N E Y ’ S T R E AT Y
While these turbulent events were unfolding in
Pennsylvania, the Spanish were encouraging the Creeks, Choctaws, Chicka-
saws, and Cherokees in the Old Southwest to create the same turmoil that
the British had fomented along the Ohio River. In Tennessee white settlers
reacted by burning and leveling Indian villages. The defeat of Spain’s Indian
allies, combined with Britain’s concessions in the North and worries about
possible American intervention in Louisiana, led the Spanish to enter into
treaty negotiations with the Americans. U.S. negotiator Thomas Pinckney
pulled off a diplomatic triumph in 1795 when he won acceptance of a
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PINCKNEY’S TREATY, 1795

Area claimed by Spain after 1793
Line of Pinckney’s Treaty, 1795

Why did settlers in Tennessee start destroying Indian villages?

What were the terms of Pinckney’s Treaty? Why was the treaty
popular?
 Settlement of New Land • 309

boundary at the 31st parallel, open access for Americans to ship goods on
the Mississippi River, the right to transport goods to Spanish-controlled
New Orleans, and a promise by each side to refrain from inciting Indian
attacks on the other side. Senate ratification of Pinckney’s Treaty came
quickly. In fact, it was immensely popular, especially among westerners eager
to use the Mississippi River to transport their crops to market.

SETTLEMENT OF NEW LAND

The treaties signed by John Jay and Thomas Pinckney triggered a

renewed surge of settlers headed into the western territories. Their lust for
land ignited a fierce debate in Congress over the issue of federal land policy.
There were two basic viewpoints on the matter: some held that federal land
should serve mainly as a source of revenue, whereas others thought it was
more important to get the new country settled quickly, an endeavor that
required low land prices. In the long run, the evolution of policy would be
from the first to the second viewpoint, but for the time being the federal
government’s need for revenue took priority.

LAND POLICY Opinions on land policy, like opinions on other issues,

separated Federalists from Republicans. Influential Federalists, like Hamil-
ton and Jay, preferred to build the population of the eastern states first, lest
the East lose both political influence and a labor force important to the
growth of manufactures. Men of their persuasion favored high prices for
federal land to enrich the Treasury, and they preferred that federal lands be
sold in large parcels to speculators rather than small plots to settlers. Jeffer-
son and Madison were reluctantly prepared to go along for the sake of
reducing the national debt, but Jefferson expressed the hope for a plan by
which the lands could be more readily settled by the masses. In any case, he
suggested, frontiersmen would do as they had done before: “They will settle
the lands in spite of everybody.”
For the time being, however, Federalist policy prevailed. With the Land
Act of 1796, Congress extended the rectangular surveys ordained in 1785 but
doubled the price to $2 per acre, with only one year in which to complete
payment. Half the townships would be sold in 640-acre sections, making the
minimum cost $1,280, and alternate townships would be sold in blocks of
eight sections, or 5,120 acres, making the minimum cost $10,240. Either
price was well beyond the means of ordinary settlers and a bit much even for
speculators, who could still pick up state-owned lands at lower prices. By
310 • THE FEDERALIST ERA (CH. 7)

1800 federal land offices had sold fewer than 50,000 acres under the act.
Continuing criticism in the West led to the Land Act of 1800, which reduced
the minimum unit to 320 acres and spread payments over four years. Thus,
with a down payment of $160, one could buy a farm. Under the Land Act of
1804, the minimum unit was reduced to 160 acres, which became the tradi-
tional homestead, and the price per acre went down to $1.64.

T H E W I L D E R N E S S R OA D The lure of western lands led thousands of

settlers to follow pathfinder Daniel Boone along the Wilderness Road into
the territory known as Kentucky, or Kaintuck, from the Cherokee name
Ken-Ta-Ke (Great Meadow). In the late eighteenth century, the Indian-held
lands in Kentucky were a farmer’s fantasy and a hunter’s paradise; the vast

The prevalence of agriculture

This American folk painting by Edward Hicks shows the residence of David Twin-
ing, a Pennsylvania farmer, as it appeared in 1787.
 Settlement of New Land • 311

area boasted fertile soil and abundant forests teeming with buffalo, deer,
and wild turkeys. Over the years, Boone and other whites bought or stole the
Indians’ ancestral lands.
Boone himself was the product of a pioneer background. Born on a small
farm in 1734 in central Pennsylvania, he was a deadeye marksman by the age
of twelve and would soon become an experienced farmer and an accom-
plished woodsman. In 1750 the Boone family moved to western North Car-
olina. There Boone excelled at hunting, trading animal skins for salt and
other household needs. After hearing numerous reports about the territory
over the mountains, Boone set out alone in 1769 to find a trail into Ken-
tucky. Armed with a long rifle, tomahawk, and hunting knife, he found what
was called the Warriors’ Path, a narrow foot trail that buffalo, deer, and Indi-
ans had worn along the steep ridges. It took him through the Cumberland
Gap in southwestern Virginia.
In 1773, Boone led the first group of settlers through the Appalachian
Mountains at the Cumberland Gap. Two years later he and thirty woodsmen
used axes to widen the Warriors’ Path into what became known as the Wilder-
ness Road, a passage that more than three hundred thousand settlers would
use over the next twenty-five years. At a point where a branch of the Wilder-
ness Road intersected with the Kentucky River, near what is now Lexington,
Boone built the settlement of Boonesborough in an area called Transylvania.
A steady stream of settlers, mostly Scots-Irish migrants from Pennsylvania,
Virginia, and North Carolina, poured into Kentucky during the last quarter of
the eighteenth century. That they
were trespassing on Indian lands
did not faze them. The backcoun-
try pioneers came on foot or
horseback, often leading a mule
or a cow that carried their few
tools and other possessions. On
a good day they might cover
fifteen miles. Near a creek or
spring they would buy a parcel
or stake out a claim and mark its
boundaries by chopping notches
into “witness trees.” They would
then build a lean-to for tempo-
rary shelter and clear the land The Wilderness Road
for planting. The larger trees, Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers through the
those that could not be felled Cumberland Gap by George Caleb Bingham.
312 • THE FEDERALIST ERA (CH. 7)

with an ax, were girdled: a cut would be made around the trunk, and the tree
would be left to die. Because the process often took years, a farmer had to
hoe and plant a field filled with stumps. The pioneers grew melons, beans,
turnips, and other vegetables, but corn was the preferred crop because it
kept well and had so many uses. Ears were roasted and eaten on the cob, and
kernels were ground into meal for making mush, hominy grits, and hoe-
cakes, or johnnycakes (dry flour cakes, suitable for travelers, that were origi-
nally called journeycakes). Pigs provided pork, and cows supplied milk, but-
ter, and cheese. Many frontier families also built crude stills to manufacture
a potent whiskey they called corn likker.

TRANSFER OF P OW E R

By 1796, President Washington had decided that two terms in office

were enough. Weary of the increasingly bitter political quarrels and the
venom of the partisan newspapers, he was ready to retire at last to his
beloved home in northern Virginia, Mount Vernon. He would leave behind
a formidable record of achievement: the organization of a new national
government with demonstrated power, a secure national credit, the recov-
ery of territory from Britain and Spain, a stable northwestern frontier, and
the admission of three new states: Vermont (1791), Kentucky (1792), and
Tennessee (1796).

WA S H I N G T O N ’ S FA R E W E L L With the considerable help of Alexan-

der Hamilton, Washington drafted a valedictory speech to the nation. His
farewell address, dated September 17, 1796, called for unity among the peo-
ple in backing their new government. Washington decried the rising spirit of
partisanship and sectionalism; he feared the emergence of regional political
parties promoting local interests. In foreign relations, Washington said, the
United States should avoid both “an habitual hatred” and “an habitual fond-
ness” for other countries. Europe, he noted, “has a set of primary interests
which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged
in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our
concerns.” The United States should keep clear of those quarrels. It was,
moreover, “our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any por-
tion of the foreign world.” A key word here is permanent. Washington
opposed permanent alliances like the one with France, still technically in
effect, but he endorsed “temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.”
Washington’s warning against permanent foreign entanglements served as a
fundamental principle in U.S. foreign policy until the early twentieth century.
 Transfer of Power • 313

Mount Vernon
George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette at Mount Vernon in 1784.
Washington enlarged the estate, which overlooks the Potomac River, to nearly eight
thousand acres, dividing it among five farms.

THE ELECTION OF 1796 With George Washington out of the race,

the United States had its first partisan election for president. The logical
choice of the Federalists would have been Washington’s protégé, Alexander
Hamilton, the chief architect of their programs. But Hamilton’s policies had
left scars and made enemies. In Philadelphia a caucus of Federalist congress-
men passed over Hamilton and chose John Adams of Massachusetts as their
heir apparent, with Thomas Pinckney of South Carolina, fresh from his
diplomatic triumph in Spain, as the nominee for vice president. As expected,
the Republicans drafted Thomas Jefferson and added geographic balance to
the ticket with Senator Aaron Burr of New York.
The campaign of 1796 was intensely partisan. Republicans caricatured
John Adams as “His Rotundity” because of his short, paunchy body. They
also labeled him a pro-British monarchist. The Federalists countered that
Jefferson was a French-loving atheist eager to incite another war with Great
Britain. They also charged that the philosophical Jefferson was unsuited to
executive leadership; he was not decisive enough. The increasing strength of
the Republicans, fueled by the smoldering resentment of Jay’s Treaty, very
nearly swept Jefferson into office and perhaps would have but for the French
ambassador’s public appeals for his election—an action that backfired.
Then, despite a Federalist majority among the electors, Hamilton hatched an
314 • THE FEDERALIST ERA (CH. 7)

impulsive scheme that very nearly threw the election away after all. Hamil-
ton decided that Pinckney would be more subject to his influence than
would the strong-minded Adams. He therefore sought to have the South
Carolina Federalists withhold a few votes for Adams and bring Pinckney in
first. The Carolinians more than cooperated—they divided their vote
between Pinckney and Jefferson—but the New Englanders got wind of the
scheme and dropped Pinckney. The upshot of Hamilton’s scheme was to cut
Pinckney out of both the presidency and the vice presidency and elect Jeffer-
son as vice president with 68 electoral votes to Adams’s 71.

T H E A D A M S A D M I N I S T R AT I O N

Vain and cantankerous, John Adams had crafted a distinguished career

as a Massachusetts lawyer, as a leader in the Revolutionary movement, as the
hardest-working member of the Continental Congress, as a diplomat in
France, Holland, and Britain, and as George Washington’s vice president. His
political philosophy fell somewhere between Jefferson’s and Hamilton’s. He
shared neither the one’s faith in the common people nor the other’s fondness
for a financial aristocracy of “paper
wealth.” Adams feared the concept of
democracy and considered equality a
fanciful notion. He favored the classic
mixture of aristocratic, democratic,
and monarchical elements, though
his use of monarchical interchangeably
with executive exposed him to the
attacks of Republicans who saw a
monarchist in every Federalist. Adams
was always haunted by a feeling that he
was never properly appreciated—and
he may have been right. Yet on the
overriding issue of his administration,
war and peace, he kept his head when
others about him were losing theirs—
probably at the cost of his reelection.
John Adams
Political philosopher and politician,
T H E WA R W I T H F R A N C E As
Adams was the first president to take
up residence in the White House, in America’s second president, Adams
early 1801. faced the daunting task of succeeding
 The Adams Administration • 315

the most popular man in the nation. He also inherited an undeclared naval
war with France, a by-product of Jay’s Treaty. When Jay accepted the British
demand that food supplies and naval products, as well as war matériel, be
treated as contraband subject to seizure, the French reasoned that Ameri-
can cargo headed for British ports was subject to the same interpretation.
The French loosed their corsairs in the British West Indies, with an even
more devastating effect on American shipping than the British had had in
1793–1794. By the time of Adams’s inauguration, in 1797, the French had
plundered some three hundred American ships and broken diplomatic
relations with the United States. As ambassador to Paris, Monroe had
become so pro-French and so hostile to Jay’s Treaty that George Washing-
ton had removed him for his indiscretions. France, grown haughty and
contemptuous with Napoléon’s military conquests, had then refused to
accept Monroe’s replacement, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (brother of
Thomas), and ordered him out of the country.

Conflict with France

A cartoon indicating the anti-French sentiment generated by the XYZ affair. The
three American negotiators (at left) reject the Paris Monster’s demand for money.
316 • THE FEDERALIST ERA (CH. 7)

John Adams immediately acted to restore relations with France in the face
of an outcry for war from the “high Federalists,” including Secretary of State
Timothy Pickering. Alexander Hamilton agreed with Adams on this point
and approved his last-ditch effort for a diplomatic settlement. In 1797,
Pinckney returned to Paris with John Marshall, a Virginia Federalist, and
Elbridge Gerry, a Massachusetts Republican, for further negotiations. After
nagging delays the three commissioners were accosted by three French offi-
cials (whom Adams labeled X, Y, and Z in his report to Congress). The
French diplomats confided to the Americans that negotiations could begin
only if the United States paid a bribe of $250,000.
Such bribes were common eighteenth-century diplomatic practice, but
the answer from the American side, according to the commissioners’ report,
was “no, no, not a sixpence.” When the so-called XYZ affair was reported in
Congress and the public press, the response was translated into the more
stirring slogan “Millions for defense but not one cent for tribute.” There-
after, the expressions of hostility toward France rose in a crescendo and even
the most partisan Republicans—with the exception of Thomas Jefferson—
quit making excuses for the French, and many of them joined the cry for
war. Yet President Adams resisted a formal declaration of war; the French
would have to bear the onus for that. Congress, however, authorized the cap-
ture of armed French ships, suspended commerce with France, and
renounced the 1778 Treaty of Alliance, which was already a dead letter.
In 1798, George Logan, a Pennsylvania Quaker and Republican sympa-
thizer, visited Paris at his own expense, hoping to head off war. He secured
the release of some American seamen and won assurances that a new U.S.
minister to France would be welcomed. The fruit of his mission, otherwise,
was passage of the Logan Act (1799), still in effect, which forbids private cit-
izens to negotiate with foreign governments without official authorization.
Amid a nation churning with patriotism and war fever, Adams strength-
ened American defenses. Militias marched and mobilized, and a navy began
to emerge. An American navy had ceased to exist at the end of the Revolu-
tion. No armed ships were available when Algerian brigands began to prey
on American commerce in the Mediterranean in 1794. As a result, Congress
had authorized the arming of six ships. The job was still incomplete in 1796,
however, when President Washington bought peace with the Algerians, but
Congress allowed work on three of the ships to continue: the Constitution,
the United States, and the Constellation, all completed in 1797. In 1798, Con-
gress authorized a Department of the Navy, and by the end of the year, an
undeclared naval war had begun in the West Indies with the French capture
of an American schooner.
 The Adams Administration • 317

While the naval war was being fought, Congress, in 1798, authorized an
army of ten thousand men to serve three years. Adams called George Washing-
ton from retirement to be its commander, and Washington agreed only on con-
dition that Alexander Hamilton be named his second in command. Adams
relented but expressed his disgust at naming Hamilton a general, for he was
“the most restless, indefatigable and unprincipled Intriguer in the United
States, if not in the world.” The rift among the Federalists thus widened further.
Peace overtures began to come from the French by the autumn of 1798,
before the naval war was fully under way. In 1799, Adams dispatched a team
of three Americans to negotiate with a new French government under First
Consul Napoléon Bonaparte. By the Convention of 1800, they won the best
terms they could from the triumphant Napoléon. In return for giving up all
claims of indemnity for American losses, they got official suspension of the
1778 perpetual alliance with France and an end to the naval conflict with
France. The Senate ratified the agreement, contingent upon outright abro-
gation of the alliance, and it became effective on December 21, 1801.

T H E WA R AT HOME The simmering naval conflict with France

mirrored a ferocious ideological war at home between Federalists and
Republicans. The rhetoric grew so personal and tempers grew so short that
opponents commonly resorted to duels. Federalists and Republicans saw
each other as traitors to the principles of the American Revolution. Jeffer-
son, for example, decided that Hamilton, Washington, Adams, and other
Federalists were suppressing individual liberty in order to promote selfish
interests. He adamantly opposed Jay’s Treaty because it was pro-British and
anti-French, and he was disgusted by the army’s forceful suppression of the
Whiskey Rebellion.
Such combustible issues forced Americans to take sides, and the Revolu-
tionary generation of leaders, a group that John Adams had earlier called the
“band of brothers,” began to fragment into die-hard factions. Long-standing
political friendships disintegrated amid the partisan attacks, and sectional
divisions between North and South grew more fractious. Jefferson observed
that a “wall of separation” had come to divide the nation’s political leaders.
“Politics and party hatreds,” he told his daughter, “destroy the happiness of
every being here.”
Ironically, Jefferson’s combative tactics contributed directly to the partisan
tensions. He frequently planted rumors about his opponents in the press,
wrote anonymous newspaper attacks, and asked others to disparage his
opponents. As vice president under Adams, he displayed a gracious devious-
ness. Instead of supporting the president, he led the Republican faction
318 • THE FEDERALIST ERA (CH. 7)

opposed to Adams and actively

schemed to embarrass him. The vice
president told a French official that
President Adams was “a vain, irrita-
ble, stubborn” man. In 1797, Jeffer-
son secretly hired a rogue journalist,
James Callender, to produce a scur-
rilous pamphlet that described Presi-
dent Adams as a deranged monarchist
intent upon naming himself king. By
the end of the century, Jefferson had
become an ardent advocate of polar-
ized party politics: “I hold it as
immoral to pursue a middle line, as
between parties of Honest men and
The partisan divide
Rogues, into which every country
The war with France deepened the
division between the Federalists and
has divided.”
Republicans. For his part, John Adams refused to
align himself completely with the
Federalists, preferring instead to mimic George Washington and retain his
independence as chief executive. He was too principled and too prickly to
toe a party line. Soon after his election, he invited Jefferson to join him in
creating a bipartisan administration. After all, they had worked well together
in the Continental Congress and in France, and they had great respect for
each other. After consulting with James Madison, however, Jefferson refused
to accept the new president’s offer. Within a year he and Adams were at each
other’s throats. Adams expressed regret at losing Jefferson as a friend but
“felt obliged to look upon him as a man whose mind is warped by preju-
dice.” Jefferson, he claimed, had become “a child and the dupe” of the
Republican faction in Congress, which was led by Madison.
The conflict with France only deepened the partisan divide emerging in
the young United States. The real purpose of the French crisis all along, the
more ardent Republicans suspected, was to provide Federalists with an
excuse to suppress their American critics. The infamous Alien and Sedition
Acts of 1798 lent credence to the Republicans’ suspicions. These and two
other acts, passed in the wave of patriotic war fever, limited freedom of
speech and the press and the liberty of aliens. Proposed by extreme Federal-
ists in Congress, the acts did not originate with Adams but had his blessing.
Goaded by his wife, Abigail, his primary counselor, Adams signed the contro-
versial statutes and in doing so made the greatest mistake of his presidency.
Timothy Pickering, his secretary of state, claimed that Adams had acted
 The Adams Administration • 319

without consulting “any member of the government and for a reason truly
remarkable—because he knew we should all be opposed to the measure.”
By succumbing to the partisan hysteria and enacting the vindictive acts,
Adams seemed to bear out what Benjamin Franklin had said about him
years before: he “means well for his country, is always an honest man, often
a wise one, but sometimes and in some things, absolutely out of his senses.”
Three of the four repressive acts engineered by the Federalists reflected
hostility to foreigners, especially the French and the Irish, a large number of
whom had become active Republicans and were suspected of revolutionary
intent. The Naturalization Act lengthened from five to fourteen years the
residency requirement for citizenship. The Alien Act empowered the presi-
dent to deport “dangerous” aliens. The Alien Enemies Act authorized the
president in time of declared war to expel or imprison enemy aliens at will.
Finally, the Sedition Act defined as a high misdemeanor any conspiracy
against legal measures of the government, including interference with
federal officers and insurrection or rioting. What is more, the law forbade
writing, publishing, or speaking anything of “a false, scandalous and mali-
cious” nature against the government or any of its officers.
The Sedition Act was designed to punish Republicans, whom Federalists
lumped together with French revolutionary radicals and American traitors.
To be sure, partisan Republican journalists published scandalous lies and
misrepresentations, but so did Federalists; it was a time when both sides
seemed afflicted with paranoia. But the fifteen indictments brought under
the Sedition Act, with ten convictions, were all directed at Republicans.
The most conspicuous targets of prosecution were Republican editors and
a Republican congressman, Matthew Lyon of Vermont, a rough-and-tumble
Irishman who castigated Adams’s “continual grasp for power” and “unbounded
thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice.” Lyon was
imprisoned for four months and fined $1,000, but from his cell he continued
to write articles and letters for the Republican papers. The few convictions
under the act only created martyrs to the cause of freedom of speech and the
press and exposed the vindictiveness of Federalist judges.
Lyon and the others based their defense on the unconstitutionality of the
Sedition Act, but Federalist judges dismissed the notion. It ran against the
Republican grain, anyway, to have federal courts assume the authority to
declare laws unconstitutional. To offset the “reign of witches” unleashed by the
Alien and Sedition Acts, therefore, Jefferson and Madison drafted what came
to be known as the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, passed by the legisla-
tures of their respective states in 1798. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions,
much alike in their arguments, denounced the Alien and Sedition Acts as
“alarming infractions” of constitutional rights. Since the Constitution arose as
320 • THE FEDERALIST ERA (CH. 7)

Dispute in the House

Republican representative Matthew Lyon and Connecticut Federalist Roger Gris-
wold attack each other on the floor of the House (1798). Lyon soon became a target
of the Sedition Act.

a compact among the states, the resolutions argued, the states should decide
when Congress had exceeded its powers. The Virginia Resolutions, drafted by
James Madison, declared that states “have the right and are in duty bound to
interpose for arresting the progress of the evil.” The second set of Kentucky
Resolutions, in restating the states’ right to judge violations of the Constitu-
tion, added, “That a nullification of those sovereignties, of all unauthorized
acts done under color of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.”
These doctrines of interposition and nullification, reworked and edited
by later theorists, were destined to be used for causes unforeseen by their
authors. (Years later, Madison would disclaim the doctrine of nullification as
developed by John C. Calhoun, but his own doctrine of interposition would
resurface as late as the 1950s as a device to oppose racial integration.) At the
time, it seems, both men intended the resolutions to serve chiefly as propa-
ganda, the opening guns in the political campaign of 1800. Neither Ken-
tucky nor Virginia took steps to nullify or interpose its authority in the
enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Acts. Instead, both called upon the
other states to help them win a repeal. In Virginia, citizens talked of armed
resistance to the federal government. Jefferson counseled against any
thought of violence: it was “not the kind of opposition the American people
 The Adams Administration • 321

will permit.” He assured a fellow Virginian that the Federalist “reign of

witches” would soon end, that it would be discredited by the arrival of the
tax collector more than anything else.

R E P U B L I C A N V I C T O R Y As the presidential election of 1800

approached, civil unrest boiled over. Grievances mounted against Federalist
policies: taxation to support an unneeded army; the Alien and Sedition
Acts, which cast the Federalists as anti-liberty; the lingering fears of
“monarchism”; the hostilities aroused by Alexander Hamilton’s economic
programs; the suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion; and Jay’s Treaty. When
Adams opted for peace with France in 1800, he probably doomed his one
chance for reelection—a wave of patriotic war fever with a united party
behind him. His decision gained him much goodwill among Americans at
large but left the Hamiltonians angry and his party divided. In 1800 the
Federalists summoned enough unity to name as their candidates Adams
and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney; they agreed to cast all their electoral
votes for both. But the Hamiltonian Federalists continued to snipe at
Adams and his policies, and soon after his renomination Adams removed
two of them from his cabinet. A furious Hamilton struck back with a pam-
phlet questioning Adams’s fitness to be president, citing his “disgusting
egotism.” Intended for private distribution among Federalist leaders, the
pamphlet reached the hands of New York Republican Aaron Burr, who put
it in general circulation.
Jefferson and Burr, as the Republican presidential candidates, once again
represented the alliance of Virginia and New York. Jefferson, perhaps even
more than Adams, was attacked by Federalists as a supporter of the radical
French revolutionaries and an atheist. His election would supposedly bring
civil war—“dwellings in flames, hoary hairs bathed in blood, female
chastity violated . . . children writhing on the pike and halberd.” Jefferson
kept quiet, refused to answer the attacks, and directed the campaign by mail
from his home at Monticello. His supporters portrayed him as the farmers’
friend, the champion of states’ rights, frugal government, liberty, and peace.
Adams proved more popular than his party, whose candidates generally
fared worse than the president, but the Republicans edged him out by 73 elec-
toral votes to 65. The decisive states were New York and South Carolina,
either of which might have given the victory to Adams. But in New York for-
mer senator Aaron Burr’s organization won control of the legislature, which
cast the electoral votes. In South Carolina, Charles Pinckney (cousin of the
Federalist Pinckneys) won over the legislature by well-placed promises of
Republican patronage. Still, the result was not final, for Jefferson and Burr
had tied with 73 votes each, and the choice of the president was thrown into
 322 • THE FEDERALIST ERA (CH. 7)

NH 6
VT 4

MA 16
INDIANA NY 12
TERR. TERR. RI 4
NW OF PA CT 9
OHIO 8 7 NJ 7
R. DE 3
THE ELECTION OF 1800 Electoral Vote VA MD R 5
KY 4 21 F 5
Thomas Jefferson 73† NC
(Republican) TN 3 8 4
Aaron Burr 73† SC
(Republican) GA 8
John Adams 65 4
(Federalist)
Charles C. Pinckney 64*
(Federalist)
* One Rhode Island elector cast one of his ballots for John Jay.
† Tie resolved by House of Representatives; Jefferson elected.

Why was the election of 1800 a key moment in American history? How did the
Republicans win New York and South Carolina? How did Congress break the tie
between Jefferson and Burr?

the House of Representatives (a constitutional defect corrected by the Twelfth

Amendment), where Federalist diehards tried vainly to give the election to
Burr. This was too much for Hamilton, who opposed Jefferson but held a
much lower opinion of Burr. Jefferson, Hamilton wrote to a fellow Federalist,
at least had “pretensions to character,” but Burr had “nothing in his favor.”
The stalemate in the House continued for thirty-five ballots. The deadlock
was broken only when a confidant of Jefferson’s assured a Delaware congress-
man that Jefferson, if elected, would refrain from the wholesale removal of
Federalists appointed to federal offices and would uphold Hamilton’s finan-
cial policies. The representative resolved to vote for Jefferson, and several
other Federalists agreed simply to cast blank ballots, permitting Jefferson to
win without any of them having to vote for him.
Before the Federalists relinquished power to the Jeffersonian Republicans
on March 4, 1801, their lame-duck Congress passed the Judiciary Act of
1801. Intended to ensure Federalist control of the judicial system, this act
provided that the next vacancy on the Supreme Court would not be filled,
created sixteen federal circuit courts with a new judge for each, and
increased the number of federal attorneys, clerks, and marshals. Before he
 The Adams Administration • 323

left office, Adams named John Marshall to the vacant office of chief justice
and appointed Federalists to all the new positions, including forty-two jus-
tices of the peace for the new District of Columbia. The Federalists, defeated
and destined never to regain national power, had in the words of Jefferson
“retired into the judiciary as a stronghold.”
The election of 1800 harshly divided the young republic and marked a
major turning point in American political history. It was the first time that
one political party, however ungracefully, relinquished power to the opposi-
tion party. Jefferson’s hard-fought victory signaled the emergence of a new,
more democratic political system, dominated by parties, partisanship, and
wider public participation—at least by white men. Before and immediately
after independence, politics was popular but not democratic: people took a
keen interest in public affairs, but socially prominent families, the “rich, the
able, and the wellborn,” dominated political life. However, the fierce political
battles of the late 1790s, culminating in 1800 with Jefferson’s election as the
nation’s third president, wrested control of politics from the governing elite
and established the right of more people to play an active role in governing
the young republic. With the gradual elimination of property qualifications
for voting and the proliferation of newspapers, pamphlets, and other publi-
cations, the “public sphere” in which political issues were debated and
decided expanded enormously in the early nineteenth century.
The Republican victory in 1800 also marked the political triumph of the
slaveholding South. The population of the southern states was growing
rapidly at the end of the eighteenth century, and the burgeoning presence of
enslaved Africans increasingly distinguished the region from the rest of the
nation. Three Virginia slaveholders—Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and
James Monroe—would control the White House for the next twenty-four
years. While Republicans celebrated democracy, many of them also pros-
pered because of slavery. The tensions between republican ideals and planta-
tion slavery would eventually lead to civil war.
John Adams regretted the democratization of politics and the rise of frac-
tious partisanship. “Jefferson had a party, Hamilton had a party, but the com-
monwealth had none,” he sighed. The defeated president was so distraught at
the turn of events that he decided not to participate in Jefferson’s inauguration
in the new capital, Washington, D.C. Instead, he boarded a stagecoach for the
five-hundred-mile trip to his home in Quincy, Massachusetts. He and Jefferson
would not communicate for the next twelve years. As Adams returned to work
on his Massachusetts farm, he reported that he had exchanged “honors and
virtue for manure.” He told his son John Quincy, who would become president
himself, that the American president “has a hard, laborious, and unhappy life.”
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Formation of the Government The Constitution left many questions unan-

swered about the structure and conduct of the government. Congress had to
create executive departments and organize the federal judiciary. The ratification
of the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, was a leading issue; however,
strengthening the economy was the highest priority.

• Hamiltonian Vision Alexander Hamilton wanted to create a vibrant economy.

He succeeded in establishing a sound foundation for American capitalism by
crafting a budget with a funded national debt, a federal tax system, a national
bank, and a customs service.

• Religious Freedom In terms of religion, the Constitution does not mention a

deity and the First Amendment guarantees people the right to worship freely,
regardless of their religious persuasion.

• Neutrality With the outbreak of European-wide war during the French Revolu-
tion, George Washington’s policy of neutrality violated the terms of the 1778
treaty with France, which had established a perpetual alliance. The French began
seizing British and American ships and an undeclared war was under way. The
resulting unrest contributed to the creation of the first two political parties:
Hamiltonian Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans.

• Jeffersonian Vision James Madison and Thomas Jefferson became increasingly

critical of Hamilton’s policies, which favored a strong federal government and
weaker state governments. Jefferson, on the other hand, championed an agrarian
vision, in which independent small farmers were the backbone of American
society. He feared that the growth of cities would enrich the aristocracy and
widen divisions between the rich and the poor.
 CHRONOLOGY

1789
1789
1791
President George Washington is inaugurated
French Revolution begins
Bill of Rights is ratified
1791 Bank of the United States is created
1793 Washington issues a proclamation of neutrality
1794 Jay’s Treaty is negotiated with England
1794 Whiskey Rebellion
1795 By the Treaty of Greenville, the United States purchases western
lands from Native Americans
1795 Pinckney’s Treaty is negotiated with Spain
1796 President Washington delivers his farewell address
1797 XYZ affair
1798 Alien and Sedition Acts are passed
1800 Thomas Jefferson is elected president

KEY TERMS & NAMES

Alexander Hamilton’s Citizen Genet p. 302 Alien and Sedition Acts
“Report on Manufactures” p. 318
p. 295 Jay’s Treaty p. 304
Kentucky and Virginia
Bank of the United States Whiskey Rebellion p. 306 Resolutions p. 319
p. 295
Daniel Boone p. 310
Republicans p. 298
XYZ affair p. 316

8
THE EARLY REPUBLIC

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• What were the main achievements of Jefferson’s administration?

• What was the impact of the Marshall court on the U.S.
government?
• How did the Louisiana Purchase change the United States?
• What were the causes and effects of the War of 1812?

R ip Van Winkle, the easygoing farmer in Washington

Irving’s popular 1819 tale, supposedly fell asleep before
the American Revolution and did not awaken for twenty
years. When he rose from his “drowsy tranquility,” he was bewildered to
find himself in a transformed society that he hardly recognized. “Every
thing’s changed,” he said in astonishment. “The very village was altered—
it was larger and more populous.” Everyone was busily working, and they
were speaking a language filled with words such as the “rights of citizens—
elections—members of Congress—liberty.” The decades after the Revolu-
tion were indeed years of dynamic change as Americans laid the foundation
for the nation’s development as the first society in the world organized by
the principle of democratic capitalism and its promise of equal opportunity
for all—except African Americans, Native Americans, and women. As Thomas
Jefferson said, America was becoming an “empire of liberty” in which all
facets of society—politics, education, science, religion, and livelihoods—
were experiencing dynamic change.
 The New American Nation • 327

T H E N E W A M E R I C A N N AT I O N

In 1800 there were 5,300,000 people living in the United States, a fifth
of whom were enslaved blacks. Americans in the fifty years after indepen-
dence were in perpetual motion: they were on the move and on the make.
“The woods are full of new settlers,” marveled a traveler in upstate New York
in 1805. “Axes were resounding, and the trees literally were falling about us
as we passed.” Many Americans believed that they were a nation of destiny.
Their prospects seemed unlimited, their optimism unrestrained. The oppor-
tunity to pursue one’s dreams animated the drama of American life. As John
Adams observed, “There is no people on earth so ambitious as the people of
America . . . because the lowest can aspire as freely as the highest.”
Land sales west of the Appalachian Mountains soared in the early nine-
teenth century as aspiring farmers shoved Indians aside in order to establish
homesteads of their own. Enterprising, mobile, and increasingly diverse
in religion and national origin, tens of thousands of people uprooted
themselves from settled communities and went west in search of personal
advancement, occupying more territory in a single generation than had been
settled in the 150 years of colonial history. Between 1800 and 1820 the trans-
Appalachian population soared from 300,000 to 2 million. By 1840, over
40 percent of Americans lived west of the Appalachians in eight new states.
The spirit of opportunistic independence affected free African Americans
as well as whites, Indians as well as immigrants. Free blacks were the fastest-
growing segment of the population during the early nineteenth century.
Many enslaved Americans had gained their freedom during the Revolution-
ary War by escaping, joining the British forces, or serving in American mili-
tary units. Every state except South Carolina and Georgia promised freedom
to slaves who fought the British. Afterward, state after state in the North out-
lawed slavery, and anti-slavery societies blossomed, exerting increasing pres-
sure on the South to end the degrading practice. Pressure of another sort
affected the besieged Indian tribes. The westward migration of Americans
brought incessant conflict with Native Americans. Indians fiercely resisted
the invasion of their ancestral lands but ultimately succumbed to a federal
government and a federal army determined to displace them.
Most whites, however, were less concerned about Indians and slavery than
they were about seizing their own opportunities. Politicians north and south
suppressed the volatile issue of slavery; their priorities were elsewhere. West-
ward expansion, economic growth, urban-industrial development, and the
democratization of politics preoccupied a generation of Americans born after
1776—especially outside the South. In 1790 nine out of ten Americans lived
328 • THE EARLY REPUBLIC (CH. 8)

on the land and engaged in household rather than commercial production;

their sphere of activity was local. But with each passing year, more and more
farmers focused on producing surplus crops and livestock to sell in regional
markets. Such commercial agriculture was especially evident in the South,
where European demand for cotton caused prices to soar. The phenomenal
profits generated by “King Cotton” led the Deep South to become ever more
dependent on a plantation economy dependent upon three elements: enslaved
labor, New England merchants and shippers (“middlemen”), and worldwide
demand for cotton. The burgeoning market economy produced boom-and-
bust cycles, but overall the years from 1790 to 1830 were quite prosperous,
with young Americans experiencing unprecedented opportunities for eco-
nomic gain and geographic mobility.

E C O N O M I C G ROWT H The colonial American economy had been

organized according to what Great Britain demanded from its New World
possessions. This dependency brought the hated imperial restrictions on
manufacturing, commerce, and shipping. With independence, however,
Americans could create new industries and exploit new markets. It was not
simply Alexander Hamilton’s financial initiatives and the capitalistic ener-
gies of wealthy investors and speculators that sparked America’s dramatic
commercial growth in these years. It was also the strenuous efforts of ordi-
nary men and women who were willing to take risks, uproot families, use
unstable paper money issued by unregulated local banks, purchase factory-
made goods, and tinker with new machines and tools. Free enterprise was
the keynote of the era.
While most Americans continued to work as farmers, a growing number
found employment in new or greatly expanded enterprises: textiles, bank-
ing, transportation, publishing, retailing, teaching, preaching, medicine, law,
construction, and engineering. Technological innovations (steam power,
power tools, and new modes of transportation) and their social applications
(mass communication, turnpikes, the postal service, banks, and corpora-
tions) fostered an array of new industries and businesses. The emergence of
a factory system transformed the nature of work for many Americans. Proud
apprentices, journeymen, and master craftsmen, who controlled their labor
and invested their work with an individualistic emphasis on quality rather
than quantity, resented the proliferation of mills and factories populated by
masses of “half-trained” workers dependent upon an hourly wage and sub-
ject to the sharp fluctuations of the larger economy.
In short, the decentralized agrarian republic of 1776, nestled along
the Atlantic seaboard, had by 1830 become a sprawling commercial nation
 Jeffersonian Simplicity • 329

connected by networks of roads and canals and cemented by economic

relationships—all animated by a restless spirit of enterprise, experimenta-
tion, and expansion.

JEFFERSONIAN SIMPLICITY

Political life in the new republic was also transformed during the early
nineteenth century, as a greater proportion of white males gained the right
to vote when property qualifications were reduced. The first president of the
nineteenth century promoted such democratization. On March 4, 1801, the
fifty-seven-year-old Thomas Jefferson, tall and thin, with red hair and a
ruddy complexion, became the first president to be inaugurated in the new
national capital named Washington, District of Columbia. The new city was
still a motley array of buildings clustered around two centers, Capitol Hill
and the executive mansion. Congress, having met in eight towns and cities

The new federal city

Plan of Washington, D.C., from 1792.
330 • THE EARLY REPUBLIC (CH. 8)

since 1774, had at last found a permanent home but enjoyed few amenities.
There were only two places of amusement—one a racetrack, the other a the-
ater thick with “tobacco smoke, whiskey breaths, and other stenches.”
Jefferson’s informal inauguration befitted the primitive surroundings.
The new president left his lodgings and walked down a stump-strewn Penn-
sylvania Avenue to the unfinished Capitol. He entered the Senate chamber,
took the oath administered by Chief Justice John Marshall, read his inaugural
address in a barely audible voice, and returned to his boardinghouse for din-
ner. A tone of simplicity and conciliation ran through his inaugural speech.
The campaign between Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans had been so
fierce that some had predicted civil war. Jefferson now appealed for unity.
“We are all Republicans—we are all Federalists,” he said. “If there be any
among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican
form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which
error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.” Jef-
ferson concluded with a summary of the “essential principles” that would
guide his administration: “Equal and exact justice to all men . . . ; peace,
commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with
none . . . ; freedom of religion; freedom of the press; and freedom of person,
under the protection of the habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially
selected. . . . The wisdom of our sages and the blood of our heroes have been
devoted to their attainment.”

JEFFERSON IN OFFICE The deliberate display of republican simplic-

ity at Jefferson’s inauguration set the style of his administration. Although a
cosmopolitan man with expensive personal tastes, especially in land, wine,
and books, he took pains to avoid the “monarchical” occasions of pomp and
circumstance that had characterized the Federalist administrations. Jeffer-
son’s political platform called for shrinking the infant federal government
by slashing its budget and strictly interpreting the Constitution so as not to
infringe upon states’ rights.
Jefferson called his election the “revolution of 1800,” but the electoral mar-
gin had been razor thin, and the policies that he followed were more concil-
iatory than revolutionary. His overwhelming reelection in 1804 attested to
the popularity of his philosophy. Jefferson placed in policy-making posi-
tions men of his own party, and he was the first president to pursue the role
of party leader, cultivating congressional support at his dinner parties and
elsewhere. In the cabinet the leading figures were Secretary of State James
Madison, a longtime neighbor and political ally, and Secretary of the Trea-
sury Albert Gallatin, a Swiss-born Pennsylvania Republican whose financial
 Jeffersonian Simplicity • 331

The executive mansion

A watercolor of the president’s house during Jefferson’s term in office. Jefferson
described it as “big enough for two emperors, one pope, and the grand lama in
the bargain.”

skills had won him the respect of the Federalists. In an effort to cultivate
Federalist-controlled New England, Jefferson chose men from that region for
the positions of attorney general, secretary of war, and postmaster general.
In lesser offices, however, Jefferson often succumbed to pressure from the
Republicans to remove Federalists. In one area he removed the offices alto-
gether. In 1802, the Republican-controlled Congress repealed the Judiciary
Act of 1801 and so abolished the circuit judgeships and other offices to
which John Adams had made his “midnight appointments.”

M A R B U RY V. M A D I S O N The midnight judicial appointments that

John Adams made just before leaving office sparked the pathbreaking case of
Marbury v. Madison (1803), the first in which the Supreme Court declared a
federal law unconstitutional. The case involved the appointment of the
Maryland Federalist William Marbury, a prominent land speculator, as jus-
tice of the peace in the District of Columbia. Marbury’s letter of appoint-
ment, or commission, signed by President Adams two days before he left
office, was still undelivered when Madison took office as secretary of state,
and Jefferson directed him to withhold it. Marbury then sued for a court
order directing Madison to deliver his commission.
The Supreme Court’s unanimous opinion, written by Chief Justice John
Marshall, a brilliant Virginia Federalist and ardent critic of Jefferson, his
distant relative, held that Marbury deserved his commission but denied that
the Court had jurisdiction in the case. Section 13 of the Federal Judiciary Act
332 • THE EARLY REPUBLIC (CH. 8)

of 1789, which gave the Court original jurisdiction in such proceedings, was
unconstitutional, the Court ruled, because the Constitution specified that
the Court should have original jurisdiction only in cases involving foreign
ambassadors or states. The Court, therefore, could issue no order in the
case. With one bold stroke the Federalist Marshall had chastised the Jeffer-
sonian Republicans while subtly avoiding an awkward confrontation with an
administration that might have defied his order. At the same time, he estab-
lished a stunning precedent: the Court declared a federal law invalid on
the grounds that it violated provisions of the Constitution. The tall, gaunt
Marshall stressed that it “is emphatically the province and duty of the judi-
cial department to say what the law is.” In other words, the Supreme Court
was assuming the right of judicial review, meaning that it would decide
whether acts of Congress were constitutional. So even though Marbury
never gained his judgeship, Marshall established the Supreme Court as the
final judge of constitutional interpretation. Since the Marbury decision, the
Court has struck down over 150 acts of Congress and over 1,100 acts of state
legislatures.
The Marbury decision, about which President Jefferson could do noth-
ing, confirmed his fear of judicial partisanship, and he resolved to counter
the Federalist influence in the federal court system. In 1804, Jeffersonian
Republicans used the impeachment power against two of the most parti-
san Federalist judges and succeeded in ousting one of them, District Judge
John Pickering of New Hampshire. Pickering was clearly insane, which was
not a “high crime or misdemeanor,” but he also delivered profane, drunken
harangues from the bench, which the Senate quickly decided was an impeach-
able offense.
The bitter feud between Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall over the
Marbury case revealed fundamental divisions over the nature of the new
nation. Jefferson and other Republicans asserted that individual states
should remain the primary agents of political power. In contrast, Marshall
and the Federalists insisted that modern nationhood required a powerful
central government capable of creating and enforcing laws for all American
people. Marshall got the better of the argument. During his long tenure as
chief justice (1801–1835), which spanned the administrations of five presi-
dents, he established the foundations for American jurisprudence, the author-
ity of the Supreme Court, and the constitutional supremacy of the national
government over the states.

DOMESTIC REFORMS Although Marshall got the better of Jefferson in

court, the president’s first term produced a succession of triumphs in both
 Jeffersonian Simplicity • 333

domestic and foreign affairs. Jefferson did not set out to dismantle Alexander
Hamilton’s economic program, despite his harsh criticism of it. Under the
tutelage of Treasury Secretary Gallatin, he learned to accept the national
bank as an essential convenience. Jefferson detested Hamilton’s belief that a
federal debt was a national “blessing” because it gave the bankers and investors
who lent money to the U.S. government a direct financial stake in the success
of the new republic. Jefferson believed that a large federal debt would bring
only high taxes and government corruption, so he set about reducing gov-
ernment expenses and paying down the debt. At the same time, he won the
repeal of the whiskey tax, much to the relief of backwoods distillers, drinkers,
and grain farmers.
Without the income from such taxes, frugality was all the more necessary
to a federal government dependent for its revenues chiefly upon tariffs on
imports and the sale of government-owned western lands. Fortunately, how-
ever, both sources of income flourished during Jefferson’s presidency. The
continuing wars in Europe increased American shipping traffic and thus
padded the federal Treasury. Commercial prosperity was directly linked to
the ability of Americans to trade with both sides in the European wars. At the
same time, settlers flocked to land in the western territories they purchased
from the government. Ohio’s admission to the Union in 1803 increased to
seventeen the number of states.
Jefferson’s commitment to “wise and frugal government” enabled the
United States to live within its income, like a prudent farmer. The basic for-
mula was simple: cut back on military expenses. A large peacetime army
menaced a free society anyway, Jefferson believed. National defense should
be left to state militias. The navy, which the Federalists had already reduced,
ought to be reduced further. Coastal defense, Jefferson argued, should rely
upon land-based fortifications and a “mosquito fleet” of small gunboats.
While reducing the expense of the federal government, Jefferson in 1807
signed a landmark bill—long overdue—that outlawed the importation of
enslaved Africans into the United States. The new law took effect on January
1, 1808, the earliest date possible under the Constitution. At the time, South
Carolina was the only state that still permitted the foreign slave trade, having
reopened it in 1803. But for years to come, an illegal traffic in slaves would con-
tinue. By one informal estimate perhaps three hundred thousand enslaved
blacks were smuggled into the United States between 1808 and 1861.

T H E B A R B A R Y P I R AT E SIssues of foreign relations emerged early in

Jefferson’s first term, when events in the distant Mediterranean Sea gave
him second thoughts about the need for a navy. On the Barbary Coast of
334 • THE EARLY REPUBLIC (CH. 8)

Burning of the Frigate Philadelphia

Lieutenant William Decatur set fire to the captured Philadelphia during the United
States’ standoff with Tripoli over the enslavement of American sailors.

North Africa, the Islamic rulers of Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli had
for years promoted piracy and extortion, preying upon European and Amer-
ican merchant ships in the Mediterranean Sea. After the Revolution,
Mediterranean pirates in small, fast ships called corsairs captured American
vessels and enslaved the crews. The U.S. government made blackmail pay-
ments, first to Morocco in 1786, then to the others in the 1790s. In 1801,
however, the pasha (ruler) of Tripoli upped his demands and declared war
on the United States by the symbolic gesture of chopping down the flagpole
at the U.S. consulate. Jefferson sent warships to blockade Tripoli. A weari-
some naval war dragged on until 1805, punctuated in 1804 by the notable
exploit of Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, who slipped into Tripoli Harbor by
night and set fire to the frigate Philadelphia, which had been captured (along
with its crew) after it ran aground. The pasha finally settled for a $60,000
ransom and released the Philadelphia’s crew, whom he had held hostage for
 Jeffersonian Simplicity • 335

more than a year. It was still blackmail (called “tribute” in the nineteenth
century), but less than the $300,000 the pasha had demanded at first and
much less than the cost of war.

T H E L O U I S I A N A P U R C H A S E While the conflict with the Barbary

pirates continued, events elsewhere led to the greatest single achievement of
the Jefferson administration. The vast Louisiana Purchase of 1803 was a bril-
liant diplomatic coup that more than doubled the territory of the United
States. The purchase included territory extending far beyond the boundaries
of present-day Louisiana. Its estimated 875,000 square miles, from which
would be formed six states in their entirety and most or part of nine more,
comprised the entire Mississippi River valley west of the river itself. The
Louisiana territory, initially populated by Indians, then settled by the
French, had been ceded to Spain in 1763, following the Seven Years’ War,
with Great Britain receiving Florida from Spain in an exchange of sorts.
Since that time the dream of retaking Louisiana had stirred the French, and
the audacious general Napoléon Bonaparte had retrieved it for France from
his Spanish allies in 1800. Spain had decided, under French pressure, that the
region was too costly to administer—and defend.
When word of the deal transferring the Louisiana Territory from Spain to
France reached Washington in 1801, an alarmed President Jefferson sent
Robert R. Livingston to Paris as the new U.S. minister to France. Spain in
control of the Mississippi River outlet was bad enough, but the power-hungry
Napoléon in control could only mean serious trouble. “The day that France
takes possession of New Orleans,” Jefferson wrote Livingston, “we must marry
ourselves to the British fleet and nation,” an unhappy prospect for the French-
loving Jefferson.
Negotiations with the French dragged into 1803 while Spanish forces
remained in control in Louisiana, awaiting the arrival of the French. Early
that year, Jefferson sent his trusted Virginia friend James Monroe to assist
Livingston in Paris. Their goal was to purchase New Orleans from France.
No sooner had Monroe arrived than the French surprised Livingston by ask-
ing if the United States would like to buy the whole of the Louisiana Territory.
Livingston snapped up the offer. Napoléon was willing to sell the Louisiana
Territory because his French army in Saint-Domingue (Haiti) had been dec-
imated not only by a massive slave revolt but also by yellow fever. Some three
hundred fifty thousand Haitians and twenty-four thousand French soldiers
had died in Haiti. Concerned about financing another round of warfare in
Europe, Napoléon decided to cut French losses in the Americas by selling the
336 • THE EARLY REPUBLIC (CH. 8)

entire Louisiana Territory and thereby gaining cash for his ongoing war with
Great Britain.
By the Treaty of Cession, dated April 30, 1803, the United States obtained
the Louisiana Territory for about $15 million. The surprising turn of events
presented President Jefferson with a “noble bargain,” but also with a consti-
tutional dilemma. Nowhere did the Constitution mention the purchase of
territory. Jefferson acknowledged that the purchase was “beyond the Consti-
tution.” He first suggested a constitutional amendment, but his advisers
argued against delay lest Napoléon change his mind. The power to purchase
territory, they reasoned, resided in the power to make treaties. Like a velvet
hypocrite, Jefferson, the champion of states’ rights and “strict construction”
of the Constitution, allowed his desire for empire to trump his legal scru-
ples. He lamely expressed the hope “that the good sense of our country will
correct the evil of loose construction [of the Constitution] when it shall pro-
duce ill effects.”
Jefferson and other Republicans supported the Louisiana Purchase for sev-
eral reasons. Acquiring the immense territory, the president explained, would
be “favorable to the immediate interests of our Western citizens” and would
promote “the peace and security of the nation in general” by removing
French power from the region and by creating a protective buffer separating
the United States from the rest of the world. Jefferson also hoped that the
new territory might become a haven for free blacks and thereby diminish
racial tensions along the Atlantic seaboard. New England Federalists, how-
ever, were not convinced by such arguments. Many of them worried that the
growing westward exodus was driving up wages on the Atlantic coast by
reducing the workforce and lowering the value of real estate in their region.
They also boggled at the prospect of new western states that would likely be
settled by southern slaveholders who were Jeffersonian Republicans. In a
reversal that anticipated many more reversals on constitutional issues, Fed-
eralists found themselves arguing for strict construction of the Constitution
in opposing the Louisiana Purchase, while Jefferson and the Republicans
brushed aside Federalist reservations. The opportunity to double the size of
the United States trumped any legal reservations.
The Senate ratified the treaty by an overwhelming vote of 26 to 6, and on
December 20, 1803, U.S. officials took formal possession of the sprawling
Louisiana Territory. For the time being the Spanish kept West Florida, but
within a decade that area would be ripe for the plucking. In 1808, Napoléon
put his brother on the throne of Spain. With the Spanish colonial adminis-
tration in disarray, American settlers in 1810 staged a rebellion in Baton Rouge
and proclaimed the republic of West Florida, which was quickly annexed
 Jeffersonian Simplicity • 337

and occupied by the United States as far east as the Pearl River. In 1812, upon
becoming the Union’s eighteenth state, Louisiana absorbed the Florida
parishes. In 1813, with Spain itself a battlefield for French and British forces,
Americans took over the rest of West Florida, the Gulf coast of the future
states of Mississippi and Alabama. Legally, as the U.S. government has claimed
ever since, all these areas were included in the Louisiana Purchase.
Jefferson’s decision to swallow his constitutional reservations and acquire
the vast territory proved to be one of the most important factors shaping
America’s development. It was by far the most popular and significant event
of his presidency. His decision was also embedded with irony. By adding
the Louisiana Territory, Jefferson, the lover of liberty and owner of slaves,
helped expand the sphere of slavery, an institution that anguished him all
the while he reinforced it. As a newspaper editor asked in 1803, “Will Repub-
licans, who glory in their sacred regard to the rights of human nature, pur-
chase an immense wilderness for the purpose of cultivating it with the labor
of slaves?” The answer was a resounding yes.

LEWIS AND CLARK Thomas Jefferson was fascinated by the mysteri-

ous region he had purchased west of the Mississippi River. To learn more
about its geography, its flora and fauna, and its prospects for trade and agri-
culture, he asked Congress in 1803 to fund a mapping and scientific expedi-
tion to the far Northwest, beyond the Mississippi River, in what was still
foreign territory. Congress approved, and Jefferson assigned as the com-
manders of the expedition two former army officers: Meriwether Lewis and
William Clark.
In 1804 the “Corps of Discovery,” numbering nearly fifty, set out from a
small village near St. Louis to ascend the muddy Missouri River. Forced to live
off the land, they quickly adapted to the new environment. Local Indians
showed them how to fashion clothes from deer hides, taught them hunting
techniques, and traded horses. Lewis and Clark kept detailed journals of their
travels and drew maps of the unexplored regions. As they moved up the Mis-
souri, the landscape changed from forest to prairie grass. They saw immense
herds of bison and other animals, and they passed trappers and traders
headed south with rafts and boats laden with furs. Six months after leaving
St. Louis, near the Mandan Sioux villages in what would become North
Dakota, they built Fort Mandan and wintered in relative comfort, sending
downriver a barge loaded with maps, soil samples, and live specimens, such as
the prairie dog and the magpie, previously unknown in America.
In the spring, Lewis and Clark added to their main party a remarkable
young Shoshone woman named Sacagawea, who proved an enormous help
338 • THE EARLY REPUBLIC (CH. 8)

as a guide, translator, and negotiator

as the group headed westward into
uncharted territory. At the head of the
Missouri River, they took the north
fork, which they named the Jefferson
River, crossed the Rocky Mountains,
and in canoes descended the Snake
and Columbia Rivers to the Pacific.
Near the future site of Astoria, Ore-
gon, at the mouth of the Columbia
River, they built Fort Clatsop, where
they spent the winter, struggling to
find enough to eat. The following
spring they split into two parties, with
Lewis’s group backtracking by almost
the same route and Clark’s band going
by way of the Yellowstone River.
Remarkably, they reunited at the junc-
ture of the Missouri and Yellowstone
Rivers, returning together to St. Louis
in 1806, having been gone nearly two
and a half years. Along the way they
had been chased by grizzly bears,
attacked and aided by Indians, buf-
feted by blizzards and illness, and
forced by starvation to eat their own
horses. “I have been wet and as cold in
every part as I ever was in my life,”
William Clark wrote in his journal.
“Indeed I was at one time fearful my
feet would freeze in the thin moc-
casins which I wore.” But the intrepid
One of Lewis and Clark’s maps discoverers had, in their own words,
In their journals, Lewis and Clark “proceeded on” day after day against
sketched detailed maps of unex- the odds.
plored regions. No longer was the Far West unknown
country. It would be nearly a century
before a good edition of the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expe-
dition appeared in print; many of the explorers’ findings came out piece-
meal, however, including an influential map in 1814. Their reports of
 Jeffersonian Simplicity • 339

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How did the United States acquire the Louisiana Purchase? What was the mission of
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reports about the western territory?

friendly Indians and abundant beaver pelts quickly attracted traders and
trappers to the region and gave the United States a claim to the Oregon
Country by right of discovery and exploration.

POLITICAL Thomas Jefferson’s decisions and policies,

SCHEMES
including the Louisiana Purchase, brought him solid support in the South and
the West. Even New Englanders were moving to his side. By 1809, John Quincy
Adams, the son of the second president, would become a Republican. Other
New England Federalists, however, panicked at the implications of the
340 • THE EARLY REPUBLIC (CH. 8)

Louisiana Purchase. The acquisition of a vast new empire in the West would
reduce New England and the Federalist party to insignificance in political
affairs. Under the leadership of Thomas Pickering, secretary of state under
presidents Washington and Adams and now a U.S. senator, a group of ardent
Massachusetts Federalists, called the Essex Junto, considered seceding from the
Union, an idea that would simmer in New England circles for another decade.
Federalists also hatched a scheme to link New York to New England. To
that end, they contacted Vice President Aaron Burr, a prominent New
Yorker who had been on the outs with the Jeffersonians. Their plan, which
depended upon Burr’s election as governor of New York, could not win the
support of even the extreme Federalists: Alexander Hamilton bitterly
opposed it on the grounds that Burr was “a dangerous man, and one who
ought not to be trusted with the reins of government.”
Those remarks led to Hamilton’s famous duel with Burr, in July 1804 at
Weehawken, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York City.
Hamilton’s sense of honor compelled him to meet the vice president’s chal-
lenge and demonstrate his courage—yet he was determined not to fire at his
opponent. Burr had no such scruples; he shot and killed Hamilton. The
killing of Hamilton ended both Pickering’s secessionist threat and Burr’s
political career. Burr would lose the gubernatorial election, but his defeat
did not end his secret schemes to garner wealth and stature for himself.
In the meantime, the presidential campaign of 1804 began when a con-
gressional caucus of Republicans renominated Jefferson and chose the New
Yorker George Clinton for vice president. (By then, to avoid the problems
associated with parties running multiple candidates for the presidency, Con-
gress had passed, and the states would soon ratify, the Twelfth Amendment,
stipulating that electors use separate ballots to vote for the president and
vice president.) Opposed by the Federalists Charles C. Pinckney and Rufus
King, Jefferson and Clinton won 162 of the 176 electoral votes. It was the
first landslide election in American history.

DIVISIONS IN THE R E P U B L I C A N PA R T Y

Freed from a strong opposition—Federalists made up only a quarter of

the new Congress—the dominant Republican majority began to fragment
into warring factions during the first decade of the nineteenth century. The
Virginian John Randolph—known also as John Randolph of Roanoke—was
initially a loyal Jeffersonian, but over time he became the most conspicuous
of the Republican dissidents. He was a powerful combination of principle,
 Divisions in the Republican Party • 341

eccentricity, and rancor. Famous for his venomous assaults delivered in a

shrill soprano, the colorful congressman strutted about the House floor with
a whip in his hand, a symbol of his relish for contrarian positions. Few col-
leagues had the stomach for his tongue-lashings.
Randolph became the feisty spokesman for a shifting group of “Old
Republicans,” whose adherence to party principles had rendered them more
Jeffersonian than Jefferson himself. The Old Republicans were mostly south-
erners who defended states’ rights and strict construction of the Constitu-
tion. They opposed any compromise with the Federalists and promoted an
agrarian way of life. The Jeffersonian Republicans tended to be more moder-
ate, pragmatic, and nationalistic in their orientation. As Thomas Jefferson
himself demonstrated, they were willing to go along with tariffs on imports
and a national bank, and to stretch the “implied powers” of the Constitution
to accommodate the Louisiana Purchase.

T H E B U R R C O N S P I R A C Y For all of his popularity, Jefferson in some

quarters aroused intense opposition. Aaron Burr, for example, despised the
president. Sheer brilliance and oppor-
tunism had carried Burr to the vice
presidency in 1800. He might easily
have become Jefferson’s heir apparent,
but a taste for backroom deal making
was his tragic flaw. After the contro-
versy over his mortal duel with Alexan-
der Hamilton subsided, Burr focused
his attention on a cockeyed scheme to
get the Louisiana Territory to secede
from the Union and set up an inde-
pendent republic. Earlier Burr had
solicited British support for his scheme
to separate “the western part of the
United States in its whole extent.”
Burr learned in early 1807 that Jeffer-
son had ordered his arrest for trea-
son. He tried to flee to Florida but was
caught and brought for trial before
Aaron Burr
Chief Justice John Marshall.
Burr graduated from what is now
The case established two major Princeton University, where he
constitutional precedents. First, Jef- changed his course of study from
ferson ignored a subpoena requiring theology to law.
342 • THE EARLY REPUBLIC (CH. 8)

him to appear in court with certain papers in his possession. He refused, as

had George Washington, to submit the papers to Congress on the grounds
that the independence of the executive branch would be compromised if the
president were subject to a court writ. The second major precedent was Mar-
shall’s rigid definition of treason. Treason under the Constitution, Marshall
wrote, consists of “levying war against the United States or adhering to their
enemies” and requires “two witnesses to the same overt act” for conviction.
Since the prosecution failed to produce two witnesses to an overt act of trea-
son by Burr, the jury found him not guilty.
Whether or not Burr escaped his just deserts, Marshall’s strict construction
of the Constitution protected the United States, as its framers clearly intended,
from the capricious judgments of “treason” that governments through the
centuries have used to terrorize dissenters. As for Burr, with further charges
pending, he skipped bail and took refuge in France, but he returned unmo-
lested in 1812 to practice law in New York. He survived to a virile old age.
At seventy-eight, shortly before his death in 1836, he was divorced on the
grounds of adultery.

WA R IN EUROPE

Thomas Jefferson learned a hard lesson that would affect most presi-
dents of the United States: rarely did their second terms garner as much
success as their first terms. During Jefferson’s second term he ran afoul of
intractable problems created by the renewal of the European war pitting
Napoleonic France against Great Britain—and most of Europe—in 1803,
which tested Jefferson’s desire to avoid “entangling alliances” with Euro-
pean nations. In 1805, Napoléon’s crushing defeat of Russian and Austrian
forces left him in control of Europe. The same year, the British defeat of the
French and Spanish fleets in the Battle of Trafalgar secured control of the
seas for Great Britain. The war then turned into a battle of elephant and
whale, with Napoléon’s French armies dominant on land, the British navies
dominant on the water, neither able to strike a decisive blow at the other
and neither restrained by concerns over neutral shipping rights or interna-
tional law.

H A R A S S M E N T B Y B R I TA I N A N D F R A N C EFor two years after the

renewal of European warfare, American shippers reaped the financial bene-
fits, taking over trade with the French and Spanish West Indies. But the war-
ring powers soon started limiting the freedom of neutral nations to trade
 War in Europe • 343

with their enemies. In the case of the Essex (1805), a British court ruled
that the practice of shipping French and Spanish goods through U.S. ports on
their way elsewhere did not “neutralize” enemy goods from being subject to
seizure. The practice violated the British Rule of 1756, under which trade
closed in time of peace remained closed in time of war. Goods shipped in
violation of the rule would be seized. In 1807 the commercial provisions of
Jay’s Treaty expired, and the British interference with American shipping
increased, not just in a desperate effort to keep supplies from Napoléon’s con-
tinent but also to hobble U.S. competition with British merchant ships.
In a series of decrees in 1806 and 1807, the British government set up a
“paper blockade” of Europe. Vessels headed for European ports were
required to get British licenses and were subject to British inspection. It was
a paper blockade because even the powerful British navy was not large
enough to monitor every European port. Napoléon retaliated with his “Con-
tinental System,” as set forth in the Berlin Decree of 1806 and the Milan
Decree of 1807. In the Berlin Decree, Napoléon declared his own blockade
of the British Isles and barred British ships from ports under French control.
In the Milan Decree, he ruled that neutral ships that complied with British
regulations were subject to seizure when they reached European ports. The
situation presented American shippers with a dilemma: if they complied
with the demands of one of the warring sides, they were subject to seizure by
the other. In the meantime, British warships stopped, searched, and seized a
growing number of American merchant ships crossing the Atlantic.
The prospects for profits were so great, however, that American shippers
ran the risk. For seamen the danger was heightened by the British renewal
of the practice of impressment. Great Britain, locked in a global struggle
with Napoleonic France, needed twelve thousand new sailors each year to
man its warships. The use of armed “press-gangs” to kidnap men in British
(and colonial) ports was a long-standing method of recruitment used by
the British navy. The seizure of British subjects from American vessels pro-
vided a new source of recruits, justified on the principle that British citi-
zens remained British subjects for life: “Once an Englishman, always an
Englishman.” As a British naval captain admitted, “It is my duty to keep my
ship manned, & I will do so wherever I find men that speak the same lan-
guage as me.” The unwillingness of Great Britain to recognize its former sub-
jects as rightful citizens of the United States became one of the primary
threats to Anglo-American relations. To Americans, the British practice of
impressment assaulted the honor and dignity of the new nation.
On June 22, 1807, the British warship Leopard accosted a U.S. naval vessel,
the Chesapeake, on its maiden voyage, about eight miles off the Virginia
344 • THE EARLY REPUBLIC (CH. 8)

coast. After the Chesapeake’s

captain refused to be searched
for British deserters, the Leop-
ard opened fire, killing three
Americans and wounding eigh-
teen. The Chesapeake, unready
for battle, was forced to strike
its colors (to lower the flag as a
sign of surrendering). A British
search party seized four men,
one of whom was later hanged
for desertion from the British
navy. Soon after the Chesapeake
limped back into Norfolk, the
Washington Federalist editorial-
ized: “We have never, on any
Preparation for war to defend commerce
occasion, witnessed . . . such a
In 1806 and 1807, American shipping was thirst for revenge.” Public wrath
caught in the crossfire of the war between
Britain and France. was so aroused by the Chesapeake
incident that Jefferson could have
declared war on the spot. Had Congress been in session, he might have
been forced into one. But Jefferson, like John Adams before him, resisted war
fever—and suffered politically as a result. Jefferson ordered all British war-
ships out of U.S. ports on July 12, 1807. But such a timid response angered
many Americans. One Federalist called Jefferson a “dish of skim milk cur-
dling at the head of our nation.”

THE EMBARGO Congress decided to go beyond Jefferson’s effort at

“peaceable coercion.” In 1807 legislators passed the unprecedented—and
ill-conceived—Embargo Act, which stopped all exports of American goods
and prohibited American ships from leaving for foreign ports. The U.S. Navy
was deployed to enforce the embargo. In effect, the United States blockaded
its own shipping. Congress was empowered to declare an embargo by its
constitutional authority to regulate commerce, which in this case Republi-
cans interpreted broadly as the power to prohibit commerce altogether.
Jefferson supported the foolish embargo, which failed from the begin-
ning because few Americans were willing to make the necessary sacrifices
required by the shutting off of foreign trade. Merchants in New England
howled at the loss of their greatest industry: oceangoing commerce. The
value of American exports plummeted from $48 million in 1807 to $9 million
 War in Europe • 345

The election of 1808

This 1807 Federalist cartoon compares Washington and Jefferson. Washington (left)
is flanked by the British lion and the American eagle, while Jefferson (right) is
flanked by a snake and a lizard. Below Jefferson are volumes by French philosophers.

a year later. Meanwhile, smuggling grew rampant, especially along the bor-
der with Canada. The idealistic spirit that had made economic pressures
effective in the pre-Revolutionary crises was lacking. Illegal trade with
Britain and France flourished despite the risks, and violation of Jefferson’s
embargo was almost laughably easy. While American ships sat idle in ports,
their crews laid off and unpaid, the British enjoyed a near monopoly on trade
with Canada and the West Indies. As it turned out, France was little hurt by
the embargo, which led some Americans to argue that Jefferson intended the
embargo to aid the French in the war against Britain. The loss of access to
American cotton pinched some British manufacturers and workers, but
British shippers benefited. With American ports closed, they found a new
trade in Latin American ports thrown open by the colonial authorities when
Napoléon’s armies occupied the mother countries of Spain and Portugal.
American resistance to the embargo revived the Federalist party in New
England, which charged that Jefferson was in league with the French. At the
same time, commercial farmers and planters in the South and West suffered
for want of foreign outlets for their grain, cotton, and tobacco. After fifteen
months, Jefferson accepted failure and repealed the ineffective embargo in
1809, shortly before he relinquished the “splendid misery” of the presidency.
346 • THE EARLY REPUBLIC (CH. 8)

In the election of 1808 the presidential succession passed to another Vir-

ginian, Secretary of State James Madison. The Federalists, backing Charles C.
Pinckney of South Carolina and Rufus King of New York, revived enough as
a result of the public backlash against the embargo to win 47 electoral votes
to Madison’s 122.

T H E D R I F T T O WA R The brilliant Madison may have been the “Father

of the Constitution,” but he proved a mediocre chief executive. From the
beginning his presidency was entangled in foreign affairs and crippled by
naïveté. Madison and his advisers repeatedly overestimated the young
republic’s diplomatic leverage and military strength. The result was humilia-
tion. Like Jefferson, Madison insisted on upholding the principle of freedom
of the seas for neutral nations, but he was unwilling to create a navy strong
enough to support it. He continued Jefferson’s policy of “peaceable coer-
cion” by different but no more effective means. In place of the embargo,
Congress reopened trade with all countries except France and Great Britain
and authorized the president to reopen trade with whichever of these gave
up its restrictions on American trade. The British minister in Washington,
David Erskine, assured Madison’s secretary of state that Britain would revoke
its restrictions in 1809. With that assurance, Madison reopened trade with
Britain, but Erskine had acted on his own, and his superiors repudiated his
action and recalled him. Madison’s trade restrictions proved as ineffective as
the embargo. The president’s policies sparked an economic recession and
brought no change in British behavior. In the vain search for an alterna-
tive, Congress in 1810 reversed itself and adopted a measure introduced by
Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina. Called Macon’s Bill number 2, it reopened
trade with the warring powers but provided that if either Great Britain or
France dropped its restrictions on American trade, the United States would
embargo trade with the other.
This time, Napoléon took a turn at trying to bamboozle Madison. The
French foreign minister, the Duke de Cadore, informed the U.S. minister in
Paris that Napoléon had withdrawn the Berlin and Milan Decrees, but the
carefully worded Cadore letter had strings attached: revocation of the decrees
depended upon the British doing likewise. The strings were plain to see, but
Madison either misunderstood or, more likely, foolishly went along in the
hope of putting pressure on the British. The British initially refused to give
in, and on June 1, 1812, Madison reluctantly asked Congress to declare war.
On June 5, the House of Representatives voted for war by 79 to 49. Two
weeks later, the Senate concurred by a narrower vote, 19 to 13. The southern
and western states wanted war; the Northeast, fearful of losing its maritime
 The War of 1812 • 347

trade across the Atlantic, opposed war. Every Federalist in Congress opposed
the war; 80 percent of Republicans supported it.
On June 16, however, the British foreign minister, facing an economic cri-
sis, ended restraints on U.S. trade. Britain preferred not to risk war with the
United States on top of its war with Napoléon. But on June 18, not having
heard of the British action, Madison signed the declaration of war. He did so
for three reasons: (1) to protest the British Orders in Council, which allowed
the Royal Navy to interfere with American shipping; (2) to stop the British
impressments of sailors from American ships; and (3) to end British encour-
agement of Indian attacks on Americans living along the western and north-
ern frontiers. With more time or more patience, Madison’s policy would
have been vindicated without resort to war. By declaring war, Republicans
hoped to unite the nation and discredit the Federalists. To generate popular
support for the war, Jefferson advised Madison that he needed, above all, “to
stop Indian barbarities. The conquest of Canada will do this.”

T H E WA R OF 1812

In 1812 the United States found itself embroiled in another war against
Great Britain, barely thirty years after the Revolutionary War had ended.
How that happened remains contested terrain among historians.

C AU S E S The main cause of the war—the violation of American shipping

rights—dominated President Madison’s war message and provided the most
evident reason for a mounting American hostility toward the British. Yet the
geographic distribution of the congressional vote for war raises a troubling
question. The preponderance of the vote came from members of Congress
representing the farm regions from Pennsylvania southward and westward.
The maritime states of New York and New England, the region that bore
the brunt of British attacks on U.S. shipping, voted against the declaration of
war. One explanation for this seeming anomaly is simple enough: the farm-
ing regions suffered damage to their markets for grain, cotton, and tobacco
while New England shippers made profits from smuggling in spite of the
British restrictions.
Other plausible explanations for the sectional vote, however, include fron-
tier Indian attacks in the Old Northwest (Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky)
that were blamed on British agents, competition with the British over the
profitable fur trade in the Great Lakes region, and the desire among Ameri-
cans for new land in Canada and the Floridas (West and East). Conflicts with
348 • THE EARLY REPUBLIC (CH. 8)

Indians were endemic to a rapidly

expanding West. Land-hungry settlers
and speculators kept moving out ahead
of government surveys and sales in
search of fertile acres. The constant
pressure to sell tribal lands repeatedly
forced or persuaded Indians to sign
treaties they did not always understand.
It was an old story, dating from the
Jamestown settlement, but one that took
a new turn with the rise of two Shawnee
leaders, Tecumseh and his twin brother,
Tenskwatawa, “the Prophet.”

T H E B AT T L E O F T I P P E C A N O E
Tecumseh saw with blazing clarity the
consequences of Indian disunity. From
his base on the Tippecanoe River in
Tecumseh northern Indiana, he traveled from
The Shawnee leader who tried to Canada to the Gulf of Mexico to form
unite Indian tribes in defense of their
a confederation of tribes to defend
lands. Tecumseh was killed in 1813 at
the Battle of the Thames. Indian hunting grounds, insisting that
no land cession to whites was valid with-
out the consent of all tribes, since they held the land in common. In October
1811 the charismatic Tecumseh called on a council meeting of Creeks and
other southern tribes to “let the white race perish!” Tecumseh told them that
nothing good would come of continued treaty negotiations with whites. His
language was earnest, bellicose, and brutal: “They seize your land; they cor-
rupt your women; they trample on the bones of your dead! Back whence
they came, upon a trail of blood, they must be driven. . . . Burn their
dwellings—destroy their livestock—slay their wives and children, and the
very breed may perish. War now! War always!”
William Henry Harrison, the governor of the Indiana Territory, learned of
Tecumseh’s plans, met with him twice, and pronounced him “one of those
uncommon geniuses who spring up occasionally to produce revolutions and
overturn the established order of things.” In the fall of 1811, Harrison decided
that Tecumseh’s effort to organize a massive anti-American tribal confeder-
acy must be stopped. He gathered one thousand troops and advanced on
Tecumseh’s capital, Prophetstown, on the Tippecanoe River, while the leader
was away. Tecumseh’s followers attacked Harrison’s encampment on the
 The War of 1812 • 349

river, but the Shawnees lost a bloody engagement that left about a quarter of
Harrison’s men dead or wounded. Harrison’s troops burned the town and
destroyed its supplies. Tecumseh’s dreams of an Indian confederacy went up
in smoke, and Tecumseh himself fled to British protection in Canada.

T H E A S S AU LT O N C A N A D A The Battle of Tippecanoe reinforced

suspicions that British agents in the Great Lakes region were inciting the
Indians. Actually the incident was mainly Harrison’s doing. With little hope
of help from war-torn Europe, British officials in Canada had steered a careful
course, discouraging warfare but seeking to keep the Indians’ friendship and
fur trade. The British treated the Indians as independent peoples living
between British Canada and the United States. By contrast, most Americans
on the northern border loathed and feared Indians, deeming them murder-
ous, heathen savages deserving of extinction. Not surprisingly, most of the
Indians preferred the British and Canadians to the Americans.
To eliminate the Indian menace, Americans reasoned, they needed to
remove its foreign support, and they saw the British Canadian province of
Ontario as a pistol pointing at the United States. Conquest of Canada would
accomplish a twofold purpose: it would eliminate British influence among
the Indians and open a new empire for land-hungry Americans. Canada was
also one place where the British, in case of war, were vulnerable to an Amer-
ican attack. Madison and others acted on the mistaken assumption that many
Canadians were eager to be liberated from British control. That there were
nearly 8 million Americans in 1812 and only 300,000 Canadians led many
bellicose Americans to believe the conquest of Canada would be quick and
easy. New York alone had a million in habitants compared to just 75,000 in
neighboring Upper Canada.
Thomas Jefferson had told President Madison that the American “acquisi-
tion of Canada” was simply a “matter of marching” north with a military
force. To the far south, the British were also vulnerable. East Florida, still
under Spanish control, posed a similar threat to the Americans. Spain was
too weak or simply unwilling to prevent sporadic Indian attacks across the
border with Georgia. In addition, the British were suspected of smuggling
goods through Florida and conspiring with Indians along the coast of the
Gulf of Mexico.
Such concerns helped generate war fever. In the Congress that assembled
in late 1811, new members from southern and western districts clamored for
war in defense of “national honor” and to rid the Northwest of the “Indian
problem.” Among them were Henry Clay and Richard Mentor Johnson
of Kentucky, Felix Grundy of Tennessee, and John C. Calhoun of South
350 • THE EARLY REPUBLIC (CH. 8)

Carolina. John Randolph of Roanoke christened these “new boys” the “war
hawks.” After they entered the House, Randolph said, “We have heard but
one word—like the whip-poor-will, but one eternal monotonous tone—
Canada! Canada! Canada!” The new speaker of the house, young Henry
Clay, a tall, rawboned westerner who, like Andrew Jackson, was known for
his combative temperament and propensity for dueling, yearned for war.
“I am for resistance by the sword,” he vowed. He promised that the Kentucky
militia stood ready to march on Canada to acquire its lucrative fur trade and
to suppress the British effort to incite Indian attacks along the American
frontier. “I don’t like Henry Clay,” Calhoun said. “He is a bad man, an
imposter, a creator of wicked schemes. I wouldn’t speak to him, but, by God,
I love him.” When then Congressman Calhoun heard the news of the out-
break of war, he threw his arms around House Speaker Henry Clay’s neck
and led his war-hawk colleagues in an Indian war dance.

WA R P R E PA R AT I O N S As it turned out, the war hawks would get nei-

ther Canada nor Florida, for James Madison had carried into war a nation
that was ill prepared both financially and militarily. The Jeffersonian Repub-
lican emphasis on small federal budgets and military cutbacks was not an
effective way to win a war. And Madison, a studious, soft-spoken man, lacked
the martial qualities needed to inspire national confidence and resolve. He
was no George Washington.
Moreover, the national economy was not prepared for war. In 1811, despite
earnest pleas from Treasury Secretary Gallatin, Congress had let the twenty-
year charter of the Bank of the United States expire. In addition, once war
began, the British navy blockaded American ports, thereby cutting off imports,
a major source of national revenue. By March 1813, Gallatin warned Presi-
dent Madison that: “We have hardly enough money to last till the end of the
month.” Furthermore, the extinction of the Bank of the United States brought
chaos to the nation’s financial system. The number of state banks more than
doubled after 1811. Many of them were unregulated and mismanaged.
A Rhode Island bank, for example, issued $800,000 worth of banknotes even
though it only had $45 in gold. Trade had dried up, and tariff revenues had
declined. Loans were now needed to cover about two thirds of the war costs,
and northeastern opponents of the war were reluctant to lend money to the
federal government.
The military situation was almost as bad. War had become more and more
likely for nearly a decade, but the Jeffersonian defense cutbacks had pre-
vented preparations. When the War of 1812 began, the army numbered only
3,287 men, ill trained, poorly equipped, and miserably led by aging officers
past their prime and with little combat experience. A young Virginia officer
 The War of 1812 • 351

named Winfield Scott, destined for military distinction, commented that

most of the veteran commanders “had very generally slunk into sloth, igno-
rance, or habits of intemperate drinking.” He dismissed most of his fellow offi-
cers as “imbeciles and ignoramuses.” In January 1812 Congress authorized an
army of 35,000 men, but a year later, only 18,500 had been recruited—only
by enticing them with promises of land and cash bounties. The British, on
the other hand, had nearly 250,000 men in uniform worldwide.
The U.S. Navy was in comparatively good shape, with able officers and
trained men whose seamanship had been tested in the fighting against France
and Tripoli. Its ships were well outfitted and seaworthy—all sixteen of them
(the British had six hundred warships). In the first year of the war, it was the
navy that produced the only U.S. victories, in isolated duels with British ves-
sels, but their effect was mainly an occasional boost to morale. Within a year
the British had blockaded the U.S. coast, except for New England, where they
hoped to cultivate anti-war feeling, and most of the little American fleet was
bottled up in port.

The U.S. Navy

John Bull (the personification of England) “stung to agony” by Wasp and Hornet,
two American ships that won early victories in the War of 1812.
352 • THE EARLY REPUBLIC (CH. 8)

A C O N T I N E N TA L WA R The War of 1812 ended up involving three

wars fought on three separate fronts. One conflict occurred on the waters of
the Atlantic and the Chesapeake Bay and along the middle Atlantic coast. The
second war occurred in the south, in Alabama, Mississippi, and West and East
Florida, culminating in the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. In that theater,
American forces led by General Andrew Jackson invaded lands owned by the
Creeks and other Indians as well as the Spanish. The third war might be more
accurately called the Canadian-American War. It began in what was then
called the Old Northwest, in what is now northern Indiana and Ohio, south-
eastern Michigan, and regions around Lakes Huron and Michigan. There the
fighting raged back and forth along the ill-defined border between the
United States and British Canada.

T H E WA R I N T H E N O R T H The only place where the United States

could effectively strike at the British was Canada. There the war essentially
became a civil war, very much like the American Revolution, in which one
side (Canadians—many of whom were former American Loyalists who had
fled north in 1783) remained loyal to the British Empire while the other
side (Americans) sought to continue the continental revolution against
the empire. On both sides of the border the destruction and bloodshed
embittered the combatants as well as civilians. Indians dominated the heav-
ily wooded area around the Great Lakes, using British-supplied weapons and
ammunition to resist the steady advance of American settlers into the con-
tested region. At the same time, the British authorities had grown dependent
on the Indians to help them defend Canada from attack. Michigan’s gover-
nor recognized the reciprocal relationship: “The British cannot hold Upper
Canada without the assistance of the Indians,” but the “Indians cannot con-
duct a war without the assistance of a civilized nation [Great Britain].”
The Madison administration opted for a three-pronged assault on British
Canada: along the Lake Champlain route toward Montreal, with General
Henry Dearborn in command; along the Niagara River, with forces under
General Stephen Van Rensselaer; and into Upper Canada (today called Ontario)
from Detroit, with General William Hull and some two thousand men.
In 1812, Hull marched his troops across the Detroit River but was pushed
back by the British. Sickly and senile, the indecisive Hull procrastinated in
cramped, dirty Detroit while his position worsened. The British commander
cleverly played upon Hull’s worst fears. Gathering what redcoats he could to
parade in view of Detroit’s defenders, he announced that thousands of
Indian allies were at the rear and that once fighting began, he would be
unable to control them. Fearing a massacre of Detroit’s civilians, Hull sur-
 The War of 1812 • 353

rendered his entire force to British bluff and bravado. The shocking surren-
der stunned the nation and opened the entire Northwest to raids by British
troops and their Indian allies. Republicans felt humiliated. The American
soldiers appeared to be cowards. In Kentucky a Republican said General Hull
must be a “traitor” or “nearly an idiot.” He was eventually court-martialed
for cowardice and sentenced to death, only to be pardoned.
In the especially porous northern borderland between the United States
and Canada, a powerful combination of British regular troops and their
Indian allies repeatedly defeated U.S. invasion efforts. The botched Ameri-
can attempts revived the British contempt for the American soldiers as

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How did the War of 1812 begin? What was the American strategy in regard to
Canada? Describe the battle that is the subject of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
354 • THE EARLY REPUBLIC (CH. 8)

inept, unreliable, and cowardly. As one American complained, “the taunts

and sarcasms of the Tories on both sides of the river are not to be endured.”
Madison’s navy secretary now pushed vigorously for American naval control
of the Great Lakes and other inland waterways along the Canadian border. If
the Americans could break the British naval supply line and secure Lake
Erie, they could erect a barrier between the British and their Indian allies. At
Presque Isle (near Erie), Pennsylvania, in 1813, twenty-eight-year-old Oliver
Hazard Perry, already a fourteen-year veteran, was building ships from timber
cut in nearby forests. By the end of the summer, Commodore Perry set out in
search of the British, whom he found at Lake Erie’s Put-in-Bay on Septem-
ber 10. After completing the preparations for battle, Perry told an aide, “This
is the most important day of my life.”
Two British warships used their superior weapons to pummel the
Lawrence, Perry’s flagship. After four hours of intense shelling, none of
the Lawrence’s guns was working, and most of the crew was dead or wounded.
The British expected the Americans to flee, but Perry refused to quit. He had
himself rowed to another vessel, carried the battle to the enemy, and finally
accepted the surrender of the entire British squadron. Hatless and bloodied,
Perry sent to General William Henry Harrison the long-awaited message:
“We have met the enemy and they are ours.”
American naval control of Lake Erie forced the British to evacuate Upper
Canada. They gave up Detroit, and an American army defeated them at the
Battle of the Thames on October 5. British power in Upper Canada was
eliminated. In the course of the battle, Tecumseh fell, his dream of Indian
unity dying with him. Perry’s victory on Lake Erie and Harrison’s defeat of
Tecumseh enabled the Americans to recover control of Michigan and seize
the Western District of Upper Canada.

T H E WA R I N T H E S O U T H In the South, too, the war flared up in

1813. On August 30, so-called “Red Stick” Creeks allied with the British
attacked Fort Mims, on the Alabama River thirty miles above the Gulf coast
town of Mobile, killing 553 men, women, and children, butchering and scalp-
ing half of them. The news of the massacre outraged Americans, especially
those eager to remove the Creeks from the Mississippi Territory (which then
included Alabama). When word of the Fort Mims slaughter reached Andrew
Jackson at his home in Tennessee, he was in bed recovering from a Nashville
street brawl with Thomas Hart Benton, later a senator from Missouri. As the
commanding general of the Army of West Tennessee, the flinty Jackson, his
injured arm still in a sling, summoned about 2,500 volunteer state militia-
men (including Private David Crockett). Jackson told all “brave Tennesseans”
that their “frontier [was] threatened with invasion by the savage foe” and
 The War of 1812 • 355

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Why did Jackson march into Florida on his way to New Orleans?
Why did he have the advantage in the Battle of New Orleans?
Why was the Battle of New Orleans important to the Treaty
of Ghent?

that the Indians were advancing “towards your frontier with scalping knives
unsheathed, to butcher your wives, your children, and your helpless babes.
Time is not to be lost.”
Jackson’s volunteers then set out on a vengeful campaign southward across
Alabama that crushed the Creek resistance, village by village. David Crockett
remembered that the Americans, eager to exact revenge for the massacre
at Fort Mims, surrounded one Creek village and attacked at dawn. Dozens of
“Red Sticks” sought safety in a house, whereupon Crockett and the Ameri-
cans “shot them like dogs; and then set the house on fire, and burned it up
with the forty-six Creek warriors in it.”
The decisive battle in the “Creek War” occurred on March 27, 1814, at
Horseshoe Bend, on the Tallapoosa River, in the heart of Upper Creek coun-
try in east-central Alabama. Jackson’s Cherokee allies played a crucial role in
356 • THE EARLY REPUBLIC (CH. 8)

the assault against an elaborate Creek fort harboring 1,100 men, women,
and children. Jackson’s forces surrounded the fort, set fire to it, and shot the
Creeks as they tried to escape. Nine hundred of them were killed, including
three hundred who were slaughtered as they struggled to cross the river.
Jackson reported to his wife that the “carnage was dreadful.” His men had
“regained all the scalps taken from Fort Mims.” Fewer than fifty of Jackson’s
men and Indian allies were killed. The Battle of Horseshoe Bend was the
worst defeat ever inflicted upon Native Americans. With the Treaty of Fort
Jackson, signed in August 1814, the devastated Creeks were forced to cede
two thirds of their land to the United States, some twenty-three million
acres, including a third of Georgia and most of Alabama. Even those Creeks
who had fought on Jackson’s side were forced to give up their lands. Red
Eagle, the chief of the Creeks defeated by the Americans, told Jackson: “I am
in your power. . . . My people are all gone. I can do no more but weep over
the misfortunes of my nation.” For his part, Jackson declared that “the power
of the Creeks is I think forever broken.” President Madison rewarded Jack-
son by naming him a major general in the regular army of the United States.
Four days after the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, Napoléon’s European empire
collapsed with the defeat of his French army by British and Prussian forces at
the Battle of Waterloo in Belgium. Now free to deal solely with the United
States, the British in 1814 invaded America from Canada. They also imple-
mented a naval blockade of the New England ports and launched raids on
coastal towns from Delaware south to Florida. The final piece of the British
war plan was to seize New Orleans in order to sever American access to the
Mississippi River, lifeline of the West.

T H O M A S M A C D O N O U G H ’ S N AVA L V I C T O R Y The main British

military effort focused on launching from Canada a massive invasion of the
United States. The outnumbered American defenders were saved only by
the superb ability of Commodore Thomas Macdonough, commander of the
U.S. naval squadron on Lake Champlain. The British army bogged down
while its warships engaged Macdonough’s ships in a battle that ended with the
entire British fleet either destroyed or captured. The Battle of Lake Cham-
plain (also called the Battle of Plattsburgh) forced the British to abandon the
northern campaign. The British forces retreated to Canada.

FIGHTING IN THE CHESAPEAKE Meanwhile, however, U.S. forces

suffered the most humiliating experience of the war as British troops cap-
tured and burned Washington, D.C. In August 1814, four thousand British
troops landed at Benedict, Maryland, and headed for undefended Washing-
 The War of 1812 • 357

ton, thirty-five miles away. Thousands of frightened Americans fled the city.
All President Madison could do was frantically call out the poorly led ragtag
militia. The president then left the White House to join the militiamen
marching to confront the British in Maryland, but their feeble defense disin-
tegrated as the British invaders attacked.
On August 24 the redcoats marched unopposed into the American capi-
tal, where British officers ate a meal in the White House that had been pre-
pared for President Madison and his wife, Dolley, who had fled the grounds
just in time, after first saving a copy of the Declaration of Independence and
George Washington’s portrait. The vengeful British, aware that American
troops had earlier burned and sacked the Canadian capital at York (Toronto),
then burned the White House, the Capitol, the Library of Congress, and most
other government buildings. A tornado the next day compounded the dam-
age, but a violent thunderstorm dampened both the fires and the enthusi-
asm of the British forces, who headed north to assault Baltimore.
The British destruction of Washington, D.C., infuriated Americans. A Bal-
timore newspaper reported that the “spirit of the nation is roused.” That
vengeful spirit showed itself when fifty British warships sailed into Balti-
more harbor on September 13. About a thousand Americans held Fort
McHenry on an island in the harbor. The British fleet unleashed a ferocious,
nightlong bombardment of the fort. Yet the Americans refused to surrender.
Francis Scott Key, a Washington, D.C., lawyer and occasional poet, watched
the siege on a British ship in the harbor, having been dispatched to negotiate
the release of a captured American. The sight of the American flag (the “star-
spangled banner”) still in place at dawn meant that the fort and the city had
survived the British onslaught. The scene inspired him to scribble the verses
of what came to be called “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which began, “Oh,
say can you see by the dawn’s early light?” Later revised and set to the tune of
an English drinking song, it eventually became America’s national anthem.
The inability of the British to conquer Fort McHenry led them to abandon
the attack on Baltimore.
While the fighting raged in the United States, American representatives,
including Albert Gallatin, Henry Clay, and John Quincy Adams, had begun
meetings in Ghent, near Brussels in present day Belgium, to discuss ending
the war. The prolonged, contentious negotiations began just after British
victories in the war, and the British diplomats responded by making outra-
geous demands about transferring American territory to Canada. The
American delegation refused. Then, after the Battle of Lake Champlain and
the failure of the British invasion of Baltimore, the British grew more flexi-
ble. Still, the negotiations dragged on throughout the fall of 1814. Finally, on
Christmas Eve, 1814, the diplomats reached an agreement.
358 • THE EARLY REPUBLIC (CH. 8)

The willingness of the British to continue fighting in North America was

eroded by the eagerness of British merchants to renew trade with America,
and by the war-weariness of a tax-burdened public. The British finally
decided that the American war was not worth the cost. One by one, demands
were dropped on both sides, until the envoys agreed to end the war, return
the prisoners, restore the previous boundaries, and settle nothing else. What
had begun as an American effort to invade and conquer Canada had turned
into a second war of independence against the world’s greatest empire.
Although the Americans lost the northern war for Canada, they had won the
western and southern wars to subdue the Indians.

T H E B AT T L E O F N E W O R L E A N S The signing of the peace treaty in

Belgium did not end the fighting, however. It took weeks for news of the
Treaty of Ghent to arrive in the United States, so the fighting continued in
America even after the treaty was signed in Europe. Along the Gulf coast,
forty-seven-year-old Major General Andrew Jackson had been busy shoring
up the defenses of Mobile and New Orleans. Without authorization he had
invaded the Panhandle region of Spanish Florida and took Pensacola, putting
an end to British efforts to organize Indian attacks on American settlements.
In mid-December he was back in Louisiana, where he began to erect defen-
sive barriers on the approaches to New Orleans as a British fleet, with some
eight thousand soldiers under General Sir Edward Pakenham fresh from
their victory over Napoléon in Europe, took up positions just south of New
Orleans, the second-busiest port in the United States (after New York). The
British hoped to capture New Orleans and thereby control the entire Missis-
sippi River Valley. Federalists fed up with “Mr. Madison’s War” predicted
that New Orleans would be lost; some called for Madison’s impeachment.
General Pakenham’s painfully careful approach—he waited weeks until
all his artillery was available—gave Jackson time to build defensive earth-
works bolstered by barrels and casks of sugar. It was an almost invulnerable
position, but Pakenham, contemptuous of Jackson’s much smaller multi-
ethnic and multiracial force of four thousand frontier militiamen, Creole
aristocrats, free blacks, a few slaves, and several notorious pirates rashly
ordered a frontal assault at dawn on January 8, 1815. His brave but blunder-
ing redcoats ran into a murderous hail of artillery shells and rifle fire. Before
the British withdrew, about two thousand had been wounded or killed,
including Pakenham himself. There were only a handful of American casual-
ties. A British officer, after watching his battered and retreating troops, wrote
that there “never was a more complete failure.”
Although the Battle of New Orleans occurred after the peace treaty had
already been signed in Europe, the battle was still strategically important,
 The War of 1812 • 359

Jackson’s army defends New Orleans

Andrew Jackson’s defeat of the British at New Orleans, January 1815.

as the treaty had yet to be officially ratified by either the United States or
Great Britain. Had the British won at New Orleans, they might have tried to
revise the treaty in their favor. Jackson’s lopsided victory ensured that both
governments acted quickly to ratify the treaty. The unexpected American
triumph at New Orleans also generated a wave of patriotic nationalism that
would later help transform a victorious general, Andrew Jackson, into a
dynamic president.

T H E H A R T F O R D C O N V E N T I O N While the diplomats converged on

a peace settlement in Europe, an entirely different kind of meeting was tak-
ing place in Hartford, Connecticut. The Hartford Convention represented
the climax of New England’s disaffection with “Mr. Madison’s war.” New
England had managed to keep aloof from the war while extracting a profit
from illegal trading and privateering. Both Massachusetts and Connecticut
had refused to contribute militias to the war effort; merchants had contin-
ued to sell supplies to British troops in Canada. After the fall of Napoléon in
1815, however, the British extended their blockade to New England, occupied
Maine, and conducted several raids along the coast. Even Boston seemed
threatened. Instead of rallying to the American flag, however, Federalists in
the Massachusetts legislature voted in October 1814 to hold a convention of
New England states to plan independent action.
On December 15 the Hartford Convention assembled with delegates chosen
by the legislatures of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut as well
360 • THE EARLY REPUBLIC (CH. 8)

as two delegates from Vermont and one from New Hampshire—twenty-two

in all. The convention proposed seven constitutional amendments designed
to limit Republican (and southern) influence: abolishing the counting of
slaves in apportioning state representation in Congress, requiring a two-
thirds vote to declare war or admit new states, prohibiting embargoes lasting
more than sixty days, excluding foreign-born individuals from holding fed-
eral office, limiting the president to one term, and forbidding successive pres-
idents from the same state.
Their call for a later convention in Boston carried the unmistakable threat
of secession if the demands were ignored. Yet the threat quickly evaporated.
In February 1815, when messengers from Hartford reached Washington, D.C.,
they found the battered capital celebrating the good news from Ghent and
New Orleans. “Their position,” according to a French diplomat, was “awkward,
embarrassing, and lent itself to cruel ridicule,” and they swiftly withdrew
their recommendations. The consequence was a fatal blow to the Federalist
party, which never recovered from the stigma of disloyalty stamped on it
by the Hartford Convention. News of the victory at New Orleans and the
arrival of the peace treaty from Europe transformed the national mood.
Almost overnight, President Madison had gone from being impeached to
being a national hero.

T H E A F T E R M AT H For all the fumbling ineptitude with which the

strange War of 1812 was fought, it generated an intense patriotism. Despite
the standoff with which it ended at Ghent, Americans nourished a sense of
victory, courtesy of Andrew Jackson and his men at New Orleans as well as
the heroic exploits of American frigates in their duels with British ships. Under
Republican leadership, the nation had survived a “second war of indepen-
dence” against the greatest power on earth and emerged with new symbols
of nationhood and a new gallery of heroes. The people, observed Albert
Gallatin in 1815, “are more American; they feel and act more as a nation;
and I hope that the permanency of the Union is thereby better secured.” The
war also launched the United States toward economic independence as the
interruption of trade with Europe had encouraged the growth of American
manufactures. After forty years of independence, it dawned on the world
that the new American republic was rapidly emerging as a world power.
“Never did a country occupy more lofty ground,” said U.S. Supreme Court
Justice Joseph Story in 1815. “We have stood the contest, single-handed,
against the conqueror of Europe; and we are at peace, with all our blushing
victories thick crowding on us.”
As if to underline the point, Congress authorized a quick, decisive blow at
the pirates of the Barbary Coast. During the War of 1812, North Africans
 The War of 1812 • 361

had again set about plundering

American ships in the Mediter-
ranean. On March 3, 1815, little
more than two weeks after the
Senate ratified the Treaty of
Ghent, Congress sent Captain
Stephen Decatur with ten vessels
to the Mediterranean. Decatur
seized two Algerian ships and
then sailed boldly into the har-
bor of Algiers. On June 30, 1815,
the Algerian ruler agreed to cease
molesting American ships and
to give up all U.S. prisoners.
Decatur’s show of force induced
similar treaties from other North We Owe Allegiance to No Crown
African countries. This time the The War of 1812 generated a renewed spirit
United States would not pay of nationalism.
blackmail; this time, for a change,
the Barbary pirates paid for the damage they had done. This time, victory
put an end to the region’s tradition of piracy and extortion.
One of the strangest results of the War of 1812 and its aftermath was a
reversal of roles by the Republicans and the Federalists. Out of the wartime
experience the Republicans had learned some lessons in nationalism. Certain
needs and inadequacies revealed by the war had “Federalized” Madison or
“re-Federalized” this Father of the Constitution. Perhaps, he reasoned, a
peacetime army and navy were necessary. The lack of a national bank had
added to the problems of financing the war; half of the state banks opened
between 1810 and 1820 went bankrupt. In 1816 Madison chartered the Sec-
ond Bank of the United States for twenty years. The rise of new industries
during the war prompted calls for increased tariffs on imports to protect the
infant American companies from foreign competition. Madison went along.
The problems of overland transportation in the West experienced by Ameri-
can armies had revealed the need for better roads and bridges. Madison
agreed, but on that point kept his constitutional scruples. He wanted a consti-
tutional amendment that would authorize the federal government to con-
struct such “internal improvements.” So while Madison embraced national-
ism and broad construction of the Constitution, the Federalists took up the
Jeffersonians’ position of states’ rights and strict construction in an effort to
oppose Madison’s policies. It was the first great reversal of partisan political
roles in constitutional interpretation. It would not be the last.
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Jefferson’s Administration Thomas Jefferson did not dismantle much of

Hamilton’s economic program, but he did promptly repeal the whiskey tax and
cut back on government expenditures. He involved the navy in subduing the
Barbary pirates and negotiated with the Spanish and then with the French to
ensure that the Mississippi River remained open to American commerce. The
purchase of the Louisiana Territory through negotiations with French Emperor
Napoléon Bonaparte dramatically expanded the boundaries of the United States.
• Marshall Court John Marshall, a Federalist, played influential roles in many
crucial decisions during his long tenure as chief justice of the Supreme Court.
In Marbury v. Madison, the Court declared a federal act unconstitutional for
the first time. With that decision, the Court assumed the right of judicial review
over acts of Congress. As chief justice, Marshall established the constitutional
supremacy of the federal government over state governments.
• Louisiana Purchase The Louisiana Purchase led to a debate on the nature
of the Constitution, in which Federalists feared the addition of new territories
would strengthen the Republicans. Jefferson’s “Corps of Discovery,” led by
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, explored the new region’s resources,
captured the public imagination, and gave the United States a claim to the
Oregon Country.
• War of 1812 Renewal of the European war in 1803 created conflicts with
Britain and France. Neither country wanted its enemy to purchase U.S. goods,
so both declared blockades. In retaliation, Jefferson had Congress pass the
Embargo Act, which prohibited all foreign trade. James Madison ultimately
declared war over the issue of neutral shipping rights and the fear that the
British were inciting Native Americans to attack frontier settlements.
• Aftermath of the War of 1812 The Treaty of Ghent, signed in 1814, ended the
War of 1812 without settling any of the disputes. One effect of the conflict over
neutral shipping rights was to launch the economic independence of the United
States, as goods previously purchased from Britain were now manufactured at
home. Federalists and Republicans seemed to exchange roles: delegates from the
waning Federalist party met at the Hartford Convention to defend states’ rights
and threaten secession, whereas Republicans promoted nationalism and a broad
interpretation of the Constitution.
 CHRONOLOGY

1803
1803
1804–1806
Marbury v. Madison
Louisiana Purchase
Lewis and Clark expedition
1807 Chesapeake affair
1807 Embargo Act is passed
1808 International slave trade is outlawed
1811 Battle of Tippecanoe
1814 Battle of Horseshoe Bend
1814 Treaty of Ghent
1814 Hartford Convention
1815 Battle of New Orleans

KEY TERMS & NAMES

Marbury v. Madison p. 331 Aaron Burr p. 340 Francis Scott Key p. 357

Chief Justice John Marshall impressment p. 343 Treaty of Ghent p. 358

p. 331
Tecumseh p. 348 Hartford Convention
Barbary pirates p. 333 p. 359
war hawks p. 350
Corps of Discovery
p. 337 Andrew Jackson p. 350
 Part Three


AN

EXPANSIVE

NATION
D uring the nineteenth century, the United States experienced a
wrenching transformation from an agrarian to an urban industrial
society. In 1800, most Americans grew food and made things for
themselves or to barter with their neighbors. By 1900 such a local or
“household” economy had given way to market capitalism whereby
most people grew food and made things to sell to distant markets.
Most Americans welcomed such changes, for their standard of living
rose. But the transition from an agrarian to a capitalist society was
neither easy nor simple; it involved massive changes in the way people
lived, worked, and voted.
During the early nineteenth century, most Americans continued to
earn their living from the soil, but textile mills and manufacturing
plants began to dot the landscape and transform the nature of work
and the pace of life. By mid-century, the United States was emerging as
one of the world’s major commercial and manufacturing nations.
In addition, the lure of cheap land and plentiful jobs, as well as the
promise of political equality and religious freedom, attracted hundreds
of thousands of immigrants from Europe. The newcomers, mostly
from Germany and Ireland, benefited from the civil liberties and higher
standard of living in America, but they also faced ethnic prejudices,
religious persecution, and language barriers that made assimilation
into American culture a difficult process.
Accompanying and accelerating the “market revolution” was the
expansion of the United States across the continent. During the
early nineteenth century, thousands of Americans spilled over the
Appalachian Mountains, crossed the Mississippi River, and in the 1840s
reached the Pacific Ocean. Wagons, canals, flatboats, steamboats, and
eventually railroads helped transport them. The feverish expansion of
the United States into new Western territories brought Americans into
more conflict with Native Americans, Mexicans, the British, and the
Spanish. Only a few people, however, expressed moral reservations
about displacing others. Most Americans believed it was the “manifest
destiny” of the United States to spread throughout the continent—at
whatever cost and at whomever’s expense. Americans generally believed
that they enjoyed the blessing of Providence in their efforts to consoli-
date the continent and bring it under their control.
 These developments gave life in the second
quarter of the nineteenth century a
dynamic quality. The United
States, said the philosopher-
poet Ralph Waldo Emerson,
was “a country of begin-
nings, of projects, of
designs, of expectations.”
A restless optimism charac-
terized the period. People of
a lowly social status who
heretofore had accepted the
deprivations of their lot in
life now strove to climb the
social ladder and enter the
political arena. The patri-
cian republic espoused by
Jefferson and Madison
gave way to the frontier
democracy promoted
by the Jacksonians. Americans
were no longer content to be governed
by a small, benevolent aristocracy of talent and wealth. They began to
demand—and obtain—government of, by, and for the people.
The dynamic economic environment during the first half of the
nineteenth century helped foster the egalitarian idea that individuals
(except African Americans, Native Americans, and women) should have
an equal opportunity to better themselves and should be granted
political rights and privileges. In America, observed a journalist in 1844,
“one has as good a chance as another according to his talents, prudence,
and personal exertions.”
The exuberant individualism embodied in such mythic expressions
of economic equality and political democracy spilled over into the cul-
tural arena during the first half of the century. The so-called Romantic
movement applied democratic ideals to philosophy, religion, literature,
and the fine arts. In New England, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry
David Thoreau joined other “transcendentalists” in espousing a radical
individualism. Other reformers were motivated more by a sense of
spiritual mission than by democratic individualism. Reformers sought
to promote public-supported schools, abolish slavery, reduce the con-
sumption of alcoholic beverages, and improve the lot of the disabled,
the insane, and the imprisoned. Their efforts ameliorated some of the
problems created by the frenetic economic growth and territorial expan-
sion. But reformers made little headway against slavery, which intensi-
fied sectional differences and political conflicts. Ultimately, only a brutal
civil war would dislodge America’s “peculiar institution.”

9
THE DYNAMICS
OF GROWTH

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• How did the explosive growth of industry, agriculture, and

transportation change America?
• What were some of the inventions that economically and socially
improved the country?
• How had immigration changed by the mid–nineteenth century?
• Why did early labor unions emerge?

A mid the jubilation that followed the War of 1812, Ameri-

cans were transforming their young nation. Hundreds of
thousands of people streamed westward to the Mississippi
River and beyond. The largely local economy was being transformed into a
national marketplace enabled by dramatic improvements in communication
and transportation. The spread of plantation slavery and the cotton culture
into the Old Southwest—Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and
Texas as well as the frontier areas of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Florida—
disrupted family ties and transformed social life. In the North and the West,
meanwhile, an urban middle class began to flourish in towns and cities. Such
changes prompted vigorous political debates over economic policies, trans-
portation improvements, and the extension of slavery into the new territo-
ries. In the process the nation began to divide into three powerful regional
blocs—North, South, and West—whose shifting alliances would shape the
political landscape until the Civil War.
Between 1815 and 1850, the United States became a transcontinental
power, expanding all the way to the Pacific coast. An industrial revolution in
the Northeast began to reshape the region’s economy and propel an unrelenting
370 • THE DYNAMICS OF GROWTH (CH. 9)

process of urbanization. In the West, commercial agriculture began to

emerge, in which surplus corn, wheat, and cattle were sold to distant mar-
kets. In the South, cotton became king, and its reign fed upon the expanding
institution of slavery. At the same time, innovations in transportation and
communications—larger horse-drawn wagons, called Conestogas; canals;
steamboats; railroads; and the new telegraph system—knit together an
expanding national market for goods and services. In sum, the eighteenth-
century economy based primarily upon small-scale farming and local com-
merce was maturing rapidly into a far-flung capitalist marketplace entwined
with world markets. These economic developments in turn helped expand
prosperity and freedom. The dynamic economy generated changes in every
other area of life, from politics to the legal system, from the family to social
values, from work to recreation.

T R A N S P O R TAT I O N AND THE M A R K E T R E VO L U T I O N

N E W R OA D S Transportation improvements helped spur the develop-

ment of a national market. As settlers moved west, people demanded better
roads. In 1795 the Wilderness Road, along the trail blazed by Daniel Boone
twenty years before, was opened to wagon and stagecoach traffic, thereby eas-
ing the route through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky and along the Wal-
ton Road, completed the same year, into Tennessee. Even so, travel remained
difficult. Stagecoaches crammed with as many as a dozen people crept along
at four miles per hour. South of these roads there were no similar major high-
ways. South Carolinians and Georgians pushed westward on whatever trails
or rutted roads had appeared.
To the northeast a movement for graded and paved roads (macadamized
with packed-down crushed stones) gathered momentum after completion
of the Philadelphia-Lancaster Turnpike in 1794 (the term turnpike derives
from a pole, or pike, at the tollgate, which was turned to admit the traffic).
By 1821, some four thousand miles of turnpikes had been completed.

WAT E R T R A N S P O R TAT I O N By the early 1820s, the turnpike boom

was giving way to developments in water transportation: river steamboats,
flatboats, and canal barges carried people and commodities far more cheaply
than did wagons. The first commercially successful steamboat appeared when
Robert Fulton and Robert R. Livingston sent the Clermont up New York’s
Hudson River in 1807. Thereafter the use of steamboats spread rapidly to
 Transportation and the Market Revolution • 371

Traveling the western waters

Steamboats at the levee at St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1859.

other eastern rivers and to the Ohio and Mississippi, opening nearly half a
continent to water traffic. Steamboats transformed inland water transporta-
tion. To travel downstream from Pittsburgh to New Orleans on a flatboat
took up to six weeks. And because flatboats could not make the return trip
upstream, they were chopped up in New Orleans for firewood, and the crews
had to make their way back home by other means. In 1815, the first steam-
boat made the trip upriver from New Orleans to Pittsburgh; it took twenty-
five days.
By 1836, 361 steamboats were navigating the western waters, reaching
ever farther up the tributaries that fed into the Mississippi River. The
durable flatboat, however, still carried to market most of the western wheat,
corn, flour, meal, bacon, ham, pork, whiskey, soap and candles (byproducts
of slaughterhouses), lead from Missouri, copper from Michigan, timber
from the Rockies, and ironwork from Pittsburgh. But the steamboat, by
bringing two-way traffic to the Mississippi Valley, created a transcontinental
market and an agricultural empire that became the nation’s new breadbas-
ket. Villages at strategic trading points along the streams evolved into centers
of commerce and urban life. The port of New Orleans grew in the 1830s and
1840s to lead all others in exports.
But by then the Erie Canal in New York was drawing eastward much of
the midwestern trade that earlier had been forced to make the long journey
372 • THE DYNAMICS OF GROWTH (CH. 9)

TRANSPORTATION WEST, ABOUT 1840

Canals Roads

La
ke
Navigable rivers

Huron
n
Michiga
WISCONSIN
IOWA TERRITORY MICHIGAN

TERRITORY Detroit

L a ke
Chicago Toledo
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sippi

Fort Wayne
sis

is
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OHIO
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ILLINOIS Nationa
Ill

Columbus
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ve

Ri
Wabash

St. Louis io Portsmouth

Oh

MISSOURI Frankfort

W
ilde
rn
KENTUCKY ss R

e
o

ad
CUMBERLAND
GAP

ARKANSAS Nashville Knoxville

TENNESSEE
Why were river towns important commercial centers? What was the
impact of the steamboat and the flatboat on travel in the West? How
did the Erie Canal transform the economy of New York and the
Great Lakes region?

down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to the Gulf of Mexico. This develop-
ment would have major economic and political consequences, tying
together the West and the East while further isolating the Deep South. In
1817 the New York legislature had endorsed Governor DeWitt Clinton’s
dream (President Jefferson called the idea “madness”) of connecting the
Hudson River with Lake Erie to the west across New York. Eight years later,
in 1825, the Erie Canal, forty feet wide and four feet deep, was open for the
entire 363 miles from Albany to Buffalo; branches soon put most of the state
 Transportation and the Market Revolution • 373

r
ve
e Ri MAINE
CANADA nc VERMONT
re

aw
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St
NEW
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e Ontari
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Lowell
Eri

Troy
Albany MA Boston
Syracuse

iver
Northampton
Buffalo Mohawk and Genesee
ie

nR
Er Turnpike
Kingston RI
ake

Hudso
CT
L Delaware and
Hudson Canal
New Haven
R.

Cleveland
na

Delaware and
PENNSYLVANIA
an

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sq New York
Akron Su
Harrisburg New Brunswick
Pittsburgh a Trenton
l

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Wheeling Ca Delware River
or Penn. State Philadelphia
F

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sR
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DELAWARE
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Po t o m

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Mo

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a

VIRGINIA iver

Richmond
Buchanan James
Riv
Lynchburg er
Chesapeake Bay
Portsmouth

0 100 200 Miles

NORTH CAROLINA
0 100 200 Kilometers

within its reach. The Erie Canal brought a “river of gold” to New York City
and caused small towns such as Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo in New
York, as well as Cleveland, Ohio, and Chicago, Illinois, to blossom into major
commercial cities.
The Erie Canal was the longest canal in the world. It virtually revolu-
tionized American economic development. It reduced travel time from
New York City to Buffalo from twenty days to six, and the cost of moving a
ton of freight plummeted from $100 to $5. After 1828 the Delaware and
Hudson Canal linked New York to the coalfields of northeastern Pennsyl-
vania. The speedy success of the New York system inspired a mania for
canals in other states that lasted more than a decade and spawned about
three thousand miles of waterways by 1837. But no canal ever matched the
374 • THE DYNAMICS OF GROWTH (CH. 9)

The Erie Canal

Junction of the Northern and Western Canals (1825), an aquatint by John Hill.

spectacular success of the Erie, which rendered the entire Great Lakes
region an economic tributary to the port of New York City. With the further
development of canals spanning Ohio and Indiana from north to south,
much of the upper Ohio Valley also came within the economic sphere of
New York.

R A I L R OA D S The financial panic of 1837 and the subsequent depression

cooled the canal fever. Meanwhile, a more versatile form of transportation
was gaining on the canal: the railroad. In 1825, the year the Erie Canal was
completed, the world’s first commercial steam railway began operation in
England. By the 1820s, the American port cities of Baltimore, Charleston,
and Boston were alive with schemes to connect the port cities to the hinter-
lands by rail. In 1831 a New Yorker took a ride on a new railway and called it
“one of the noblest triumphs of human ingenuity.” An “epidemic” of rail-
road building thereafter swept across the United States. Over the next twenty
years, railroads grew nearly tenfold, covering 30,626 miles; more than two
 Transportation and the Market Revolution • 375

thirds of that total was built in the 1850s. A writer in the Quarterly Review
predicted that “as distances [are] thus annihilated [by the railroads], the
surface of our country would, as it were, shrivel in size until it became not
much bigger than one immense city.”
Like many technological innovations, railroads began as a novelty and
quickly became a necessity. The railroad gained supremacy over other forms
of transportation because of its speed, carrying capacity, and reliability. The
early trains averaged ten miles per hour, more than twice the speed of stage-
coaches and four times that of boats. By 1859, railroads had greatly reduced
the cost of freight and passenger transportation. Railroads were also less
expensive to build than canals and more reliable, since they relied on steam
power rather than animals. Railroads also provided indirect benefits by
encouraging new settlement and the expansion of farming. The railroads’
demand for iron and equipment of various kinds created an enormous market
for the industries that made these capital goods. And the ability of railroads to
operate year-round in most kinds of weather gave them an advantage in carry-
ing finished goods, too.
But the railroad mania had negative effects as well. By opening up possi-
bilities for quick and shady profits, it helped corrupt political life. Railroad
titans often bribed legislators. By facilitating access to the trans-Appalachian
West, the railroad helped accelerate the decline of Native American culture.
In addition, it dramatically quickened the tempo and mobility of everyday
life. The writer Nathaniel Hawthorne spoke for many Americans when he
said the locomotive, with its unsettling whistle, brought “the noisy world
into the midst of our slumberous space.”

O C E A N T R A N S P O R TAT I O N The year 1845 witnessed a great inno-

vation in ocean transport with the launching of the first clipper ship, the
Rainbow. Built for speed, the sleek clippers were the nineteenth-century
equivalent of the supersonic jetliner. They doubled the speed of the older
merchant ships. Long and lean, with taller masts and more sails, they cut
dashing figures during their brief but colorful career, which lasted less than
two decades. The lure of Chinese tea, a drink long coveted in America but
in scarce supply, prompted the clipper boom. Asian tea leaves were a perish-
able commodity that had to reach the market quickly after harvest, and the
new clipper ships made this possible. Even more important, the discovery of
California gold in 1848 lured thousands of prospectors and entrepreneurs
from the Atlantic seaboard. The massive wave of miners generated an urgent
demand for goods, and the clippers met it. In 1854 the Flying Cloud took
eighty-nine days and eight hours to travel from New York to San Francisco.
 376 • THE DYNAMICS OF GROWTH (CH. 9)

CANADA NH MAINE
VT

MINNESOTA
NEW
TERRITORY YORK
Boston
Mi MA
ss Albany
is s WISCONSIN MICHIGAN
ipp Providence
i R Buffalo
ive
r Detroit RI
CT
New York
PENNSYLVANIA NJ
Chicago
Philadelphia
IOWA Pittsburgh
INDIANA DE
ILLINOIS Baltimore
OHIO MD
Indianapolis Washington, D.C.

Hannibal Cincinnati
UNORGANIZED

Springfield Oh VIRGINIA Richmond

io River Norfolk
Louisville

MISSOURI
KENTUCKY Raleigh
Cairo NORTH
CAROLINA
TENNESSEE
TERR

Chattanooga Wilmington
Memphis SOUTH
ITO

ARKANSAS Atlanta Hamburg CAROLINA

RY

ALABAMA Augusta
Charleston

MISSISSIPPI
GEORGIA Savannah
ATLANTIC

LOUISIANA OCEAN
TEXAS
FLORIDA
New Orleans

THE GROWTH OF RAILROADS, 1850

Railroads in 1850

0 100 200 Miles

0 100 200 Kilometers

What role did railroads play in the development of the nation?

 Transportation and the Market Revolution • 377

CANADA MAINE
NH
VT

MINNESOTA NEW
YORK
Boston
R
tral R MA
Mi Cen Albany
ss MICHIGAN Y.
is s
ipp WISCONSIN N. Providence
i R
Buffalo
ive La Crosse
r Erie RR RI
Milwaukee Detroit CT
New York
PA NJ
Chicago . RR
Penn Philadelphia
IOWA DE
IN Pittsburgh
Baltimore
OH MD
IL Indianapolis
Washington, D.C.
B&O RR
Hannibal Springfield
Cincinnati
r
VIRGINIA
UNORGANIZED

ve
Richmond
St. Joseph
Ri

Ohio Norfolk
Louisville
St. Louis
MISSOURI
KENTUCKY Raleigh
Cairo
NORTH
TENNESSEE
CAROLINA
TERR

Chattanooga Wilmington
Memphis
SOUTH
ITO

ARKANSAS ALABAMA Atlanta Hamburg CAROLINA

RY

Augusta
Charleston

MS GEORGIA Savannah
ATLANTIC

LOUISIANA Jacksonville OCEAN

TEXAS Mobile

New Orleans
FLORIDA
Galveston

THE GROWTH OF RAILROADS, 1860

Railroads in 1860
Principal east-west lines

0 100 200 Miles

0 100 200 Kilometers

Why did railroads expand rapidly from 1850 to 1860? What were the principal
east–west lines?
378 • THE DYNAMICS OF GROWTH (CH. 9)

But clippers, while fast, lacked ample cargo space, and after the Civil War
they would give way to the steamship.

T H E R O L E O F G OV E R N M E N T The dramatic transportation improve-

ments of the nineteenth century were financed by both state governments
and private investors. The federal government helped too, despite ferocious
debates over whether direct involvement in internal improvements was con-
stitutional. The national government bought stock in turnpike and canal
companies and, after the success of the Erie Canal, extended land grants to
several western states for the support of canal projects. Congress provided
for railroad surveys by government engineers and reduced the tariff duties
on iron used in railroad construction. In 1850, Senator Stephen A. Douglas
of Illinois and others prevailed upon Congress to extend a major land grant
to support a north–south rail line connecting Chicago and Mobile,
Alabama. Regarded at the time as a special case, the 1850 grant set a prece-
dent for other bounties that totaled about 20 million acres by 1860—a small
amount compared with the land grants that Congress awarded transconti-
nental railroads during the 1860s.

New oceangoing vessels

Clipper ship in New York Harbor in the 1840s.
 A Communications Revolution • 379

A C O M M U N I C AT I O N S R E VO L U T I O N

The transportation revolution helped Americans overcome the chal-

lenge of distance and thereby helped expand markets for goods and services,
which in turn led to fundamental changes in the production, sale, and con-
sumption of agricultural products and manufactured goods. Innovations in
transportation also helped spark dramatic improvements in communica-
tions. At the beginning of the century, it took days—often weeks—for news
to travel along the Atlantic seaboard. For example, after George Washington
died in 1799 in Virginia, the news of his death did not appear in New York
City newspapers until a week later. Naturally, news took even longer to travel
to and from Europe. It took forty-nine days for news of the peace treaty end-
ing the War of 1812 to reach New York from Europe.
The speed of communications accelerated greatly as the nineteenth cen-
tury unfolded. The construction of turnpikes, canals, railroads, and scores of
post offices, as well as the development of steamships and the telegraph, gen-
erated a communications revolution. By 1830 it was possible to “convey”
Andrew Jackson’s inaugural address from Washington, D.C., to New York
City in sixteen hours. It took six days to reach New Orleans. Mail began to be
delivered by “express,” a system in which riders could mount fresh horses at a
series of relay stations. Still, even with such advances, the states and territo-
ries west of the Appalachian Mountains struggled to get timely deliveries
and news.

AMERICAN TECHNOLO GY During the nineteenth century, Ameri-

cans became famous for their “practical” inventiveness. One of the most
striking examples of the connection between pure research and innovation
was in the work of Joseph Henry, a Princeton physicist. His research in elec-
tromagnetism provided the basis for Samuel F. B. Morse’s invention of the
telegraph and for the invention of electric motors. In 1846, Henry became
head of the new Smithsonian Institution, founded in Washington, D.C.,
with a bequest from the Englishman James Smithson “for the increase and
diffusion of knowledge.” Two years later, in 1848, the American Association
for the Advancement of Science was founded to “advance science and serve
society.”
Technological advances helped improve living conditions: houses could be
larger, better heated, and better illuminated. Although working-class residences
had few creature comforts, the affluent were able to afford indoor plumbing,
central heating, gas lighting, bathtubs, and iceboxes. Even working-class
380 • THE DYNAMICS OF GROWTH (CH. 9)

Americans were able to afford new coal-burning cast-iron cooking stoves,

which facilitated the preparation of more varied meals, improved heating,
and lightened the daily burdens of women. The first sewer systems helped
cities begin to rid their streets of human and animal waste, while under-
ground water lines enabled firemen to use hydrants rather than bucket
brigades. Machine-made clothes usually fit better and were cheaper than
those sewed by hand from homespun cloth; newspapers and magazines were
more abundant and affordable, as were clocks and watches.
A spate of inventions in the 1840s generated dramatic changes. In 1844,
Charles Goodyear patented a process for “vulcanizing” rubber, which made
the product stronger and more elastic. In 1846, Elias Howe patented his
design of the sewing machine, soon improved upon by Isaac Merritt Singer.
The sewing machine, incidentally, actually slowed the progress of the fac-
tory; because it was adapted to use in the home, it enabled women to work
for pay from home.
In 1844 the first intercity telegraph message was transmitted, from Balti-
more to Washington, D.C., on the device Samuel Morse had invented back in
1832. The telegraph may have triggered more social changes than any other
invention. Until it appeared, communications were conveyed by boat, train,
or horseback or delivered by hand. With the telegraph, people could learn of
events and exchange messages instantaneously. By the end of the 1840s, tele-
graph lines connected all major cities.
Taken together, the communications and transportation improvements of
the first half of the nineteenth century reshaped the contours of economic,
social, and political life. Steamboats, canals, and railroads helped unite the
western areas of the country with the East, boost trade, open up the West for
settlement, and spark dramatic growth of cities such as Buffalo, Cleveland,
and Chicago. Between 1800 and 1860 an undeveloped nation dotted with
scattered farms, primitive roads, and modest local markets was transformed
into an engine of capitalist expansion, audacious investment, urban energy,
and global reach. It was during the 1840s that modern marketing emerged as
a national enterprise. That decade saw the emergence of the first national
brands, the first department stores, and the first advertising agencies.

A G R I C U LT U R E AND THE N AT I O N A L E C O N O M Y

The first stage of industrialization brought with it an expansive com-

mercial and urban outlook that supplanted the agrarian philosophy
espoused by Thomas Jefferson and many others. “We are greatly, I was about
 Agriculture and the National Economy • 381

to say fearfully, growing,” South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun told his con-
gressional colleagues in 1816, and many other statesmen shared his ambiva-
lent outlook. Would the agrarian Republic retain its virtue and cohesion
amid the chaotic commercial development? In the brief Era of Good Feel-
ings after the War of 1812, such a troublesome question was easily brushed
aside. Economic opportunities seemed abundant, especially in Calhoun’s
native South Carolina. The reason was cotton, the profitable new cash crop
of the South, which spread rapidly from South Carolina and Georgia into
the fertile lands of Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas.

COT TON Cotton had been used from ancient times, but the Industrial
Revolution and its spread of textile mills created a rapidly growing global mar-
ket for the fluffy fiber. Cotton cloth had remained for many years rare and
expensive because of the need for hand labor to separate the lint (fibers) from
tenacious seeds. One person working all day could separate barely one pound
by hand. The profitability of cotton depended upon finding a better way to
separate the seeds from the fiber.
At a plantation called Mul-
berry Grove in coastal Georgia,
the home of Catharine Greene,
widow of the Revolutionary War
hero Nathanael Greene, discus-
sion often focused on the prob-
lem of separating cotton seeds
from the cotton fiber. In 1792
young Eli Whitney, recently
graduated from Yale, visited
Mulberry Grove, where he
devised a mechanism for
removing the seeds from
upland cotton. In the spring of
1793, Whitney’s cotton “gin”
(short for engine) enabled the
operator to gin fifty times as
much cotton as a worker could
Whitney’s cotton gin
separate by hand.
Whitney’s invention launched Eli Whitney’s drawing, which accompanied
his 1794 federal patent application, shows
a revolution. Green-seed cotton the side and top of the machine as well as
first engulfed the upcountry hills the sawteeth that separated the seeds
of South Carolina and Georgia from the fiber.
382 • THE DYNAMICS OF GROWTH (CH. 9)

and after the War of 1812 migrated into the former Indian lands to the west.
Cotton prices and production soared, and in the process planters found a prof-
itable new use for slavery. A lucrative trade in the sale of slaves emerged from the
coastal South to the Southwest. The cotton culture became a way of life that tied
the Old Southwest to the coastal Southeast in a common interest.
Cotton also became a major export commodity. From the mid-1830s to
1860, cotton accounted for more than half the value of all exports in the
nation. The South supplied the North with both raw materials and markets
for manufactures. Income from the North’s role in handling the cotton trade
then provided surpluses for capital investment in new factories and busi-
nesses. Cotton thereby became a crucial element of the national economy—
and the driving force behind the expansion of slavery.

FA R M I N G T H E W E S T The westward flow of planters and their slaves

to Alabama and Mississippi during these flush times mirrored another
migration through the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes region, where the
Indians had been forcibly pushed westward. By 1860 more than half the
nation’s population resided in trans-Appalachia, and the restless migrants
had long since spilled across the Mississippi River and touched the shores of
the Pacific.
North of the expanding cotton belt, the fertile woodland soil, riverside
bottomlands, and black loam of the prairies drew farmers from the rocky
lands of New England and the exhausted soils of the Southeast. A new
national land law of 1820, passed after the panic of 1819, reduced the price
of federal land. A settler could get a farm for as little as $100, and over the
years the proliferation of state banks made it possible to continue buying
land on credit. Even that was not enough for westerners, however, who
began a long—and eventually victorious—agitation for further relaxation of
the federal land laws. They favored “preemption,” the right of squatters to
purchase land at the minimum price, and “graduation”, the progressive
reduction of the price of land that did not sell immediately.
Congress eventually responded to the land mania with two bills. Under
the Preemption Act of 1830, squatters could stake out claims ahead of the
land surveys and later get 160 acres at the minimum price of $1.25 per acre.
Under the Graduation Act of 1854, prices of unsold lands were to be lowered
in stages over thirty years.
The process of settling new lands followed the old pattern of clearing
trees, grubbing out the stumps and underbrush, and settling down at first to
a crude subsistence. The development of effective iron plows greatly eased
 Agriculture and the National Economy • 383

McCormick’s Reaping Machine

This illustration appeared in the catalog of the Great Exhibition, held at the
Crystal Palace in London in 1851. The plow eased the transformation of rough
plains into fertile farmland, and the reaping machine accelerated farm
production.

the backbreaking job of tilling the soil. In 1819, Jethro Wood of New York
developed an improved iron plow with separate replaceable parts. Further
improvements would follow, including John Deere’s steel plow (1837) and
James Oliver’s chilled-iron and steel plow (1855).
Other technological improvements quickened the growth of commercial
agriculture. By the 1840s new mechanical seeders had replaced the process of
sowing seed by hand. Even more important, twenty-two-year-old Cyrus Hall
McCormick of Virginia in 1831 invented a mechanical reaper to harvest
wheat, a development as significant to the agricultural economy of the Mid-
west, Old Northwest, and the Great Plains as the cotton gin was to the South.
After tinkering with his strange-looking horse-drawn machine for almost a
decade, in 1847 McCormick began selling his reapers so fast that he moved to
Chicago and built a manufacturing plant for his reapers and mowers. Within a
few years he had sold thousands of machines, transforming the scale of agri-
culture. Using a handheld sickle, a farmer could harvest half an acre of wheat a
day; with a McCormick reaper two people could work twelve acres a day. By
reducing the number of farm workers, such new agricultural technologies
helped send displaced rural laborers to work in textile mills, iron foundries,
and other new industries.
McCormick’s success inspired other manufacturers and inventors, and
soon there were mechanical threshers to separate the grains of wheat from
 384 • THE DYNAMICS OF GROWTH (CH. 9)

PACIFIC
OCEAN ATLANTIC
OCEAN

POPULATION DENSITY, 1820

Persons per Square Mile
Over 90 7 to 18
46 to 90 2 to 6 0 150 300 Miles
19 to 45 Under 2
0 150 300 Kilometers

In 1820, which regions had the greatest population density? Why? How did changes
in the 1820 land law encourage western expansion? What events caused the price of
land to decrease between 1800 and 1841?

the straw. By the 1850s, farming had become a major commercial activity. As
the volume of agricultural products soared, prices dropped, income rose,
and the standard of living improved for many farm families in the West.

T H E I N D U S T R I A L R E VO L U T I O N

While the South and the West developed the agricultural basis for a
national economy, the North was initiating an industrial revolution. Techno-
logical breakthroughs such as the cotton gin, mechanical harvester, and rail-
road had quickened agricultural development and to some extent decided its
direction. But technology altered the economic landscape even more pro-
foundly, by giving rise to the factory system.

E A R LY T E X T I L E M A N U FA C T U R E SIn the eighteenth century, Great

Britain enjoyed a long head start in industrial production. The foundations
 The Industrial Revolution • 385

PACIFIC
OCEAN ATLANTIC
OCEAN

POPULATION DENSITY, 1860

Persons per Square Mile
Over 90 7 to 18
46 to 90 2 to 6 0 150 300 Miles
19 to 45 Under 2
0 150 300 Kilometers

In 1860, which regions had the greatest population density? Why? How did new
technologies allow farmers to grow more crops on larger pieces of land?

of Britain’s advantage were the invention of the steam engine in 1705, its
improvement by James Watt in 1765, and a series of inventions that mecha-
nized the production of textiles. By the end of the eighteenth century, Great
Britain had become the central dynamo of an expanding world market for
manufactured goods. Britain carefully guarded its hard-won secrets, forbid-
ding the export of machines or the publication of descriptions of them, even
restricting the emigration of skilled mechanics. But the secrets could not be
kept. In 1789, Samuel Slater arrived in America from England with a
detailed plan of a water-powered spinning machine in his head. He con-
tracted with an enterprising merchant-manufacturer in Rhode Island to
build a mill in Pawtucket, and in that little mill, completed in 1790, nine
children turned out a satisfactory cotton yarn, which was then worked up by
the putting-out system, whereby women would weave the yarn into cloth in
their homes.
The growth of American textile production was slow and faltering until
Thomas Jefferson’s embargo in 1807 stimulated domestic production. Policies
adopted during the War of 1812 further restricted imports and encouraged
386 • THE DYNAMICS OF GROWTH (CH. 9)

New England Factory Village (ca. 1830)

Mills and factories gradually transformed the New England landscape in the early
nineteenth century.

the merchant capitalists of New England to transfer their resources from ship-
ping to manufacturing. By 1815, textile mills numbered in the hundreds. A
flood of British textile imports after the War of 1812 dealt a temporary setback
to the infant American industry. But the foundations of textile manufacture
were laid, and they spurred the growth of garment trades and a machine-tool
industry that built and serviced the mills.

T H E LOW E L L S YS T E M The factory system sprang full-blown upon

the American scene at Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1813, in the integrated
plant of the Boston Manufacturing Company, formed by the Boston Associ-
ates, one of whom was Francis Cabot Lowell. Their plant was the first factory
in which the processes of spinning and weaving by power machinery were
brought together under one roof, with every process mechanized, from the
production of the raw material to that of finished cloth. In 1822 the Boston
Associates developed a new water-powered mill at a village along the Merri-
mack River, which they renamed Lowell.
The founders of the Lowell mills sought to design model factory commu-
nities. To avoid the drab, crowded, and wretched life of the English mill vil-
lages, they located their mills in the countryside and established an ambitious
program of paternal supervision of the workers.
 The Industrial Revolution • 387

The factory workers at Waltham and Lowell were mostly young women
from New England farm families. Employers preferred to hire women
because of their dexterity in operating machines and their willingness to
work for wages lower than those paid to men. Moreover, by the 1820s there
was a surplus of women in the region because so many men had migrated
westward in search of cheap land and new economic opportunities. In the
early 1820s a steady stream of single women began flocking toward Lowell.
To reassure worried parents, the mill owners promised to provide the “Low-
ell girls” with tolerable work, prepared meals, comfortable boardinghouses,
moral discipline, and educational and cultural opportunities.
Initially the “Lowell idea” worked pretty much according to plan. Visitors
commented on the well-designed red brick mills with their lecture halls and
libraries. The “Lowell girls” appeared “healthy and happy.” The female
workers lived in dormitories staffed by matronly supervisors who enforced
mandatory church attendance and curfews. Despite thirteen-hour work days
and six-day workweeks spent tending the knitting looms, some of the
women found the time and energy to form study groups, publish a literary
magazine, and attend lectures. But Lowell soon lost its innocence as it expe-
rienced mushrooming growth. By 1840 there were thirty-two mills and
factories in operation, and the once rural town had become an industrial
city—bustling, grimy, and bleak.

The Union Manufactories of Maryland in Patapsco Falls, Baltimore County

(ca. 1815)
A textile mill established during the embargo of 1807. The Union Manufactories
would eventually employ more than 600 people.
388 • THE DYNAMICS OF GROWTH (CH. 9)

Other factory centers sprouted up across New England, displacing forests

and farms and engulfing villages, filling the air with smoke, noise, and stench.
Between 1820 and 1840, the number of Americans engaged in manufacturing
increased eightfold, and the number of city dwellers more than doubled. The
number of skilled workers increased dramatically, as the new machinery
required technical expertise. Booming growth transformed the Lowell exper-
iment. By 1846 a concerned worker told young farm women thinking about
taking a mill job that “it will be better for you to stay at home on your fathers’
farms than to run the risk of being ruined in a manufacturing village.”
During the 1830s, as textile prices and mill wages dropped, relations
between workers and managers deteriorated. A new generation of owners
and foremen began stressing efficiency and profit margins over community
values. They worked employees and machines at a faster pace. In response,
the women organized strikes to protest deteriorating conditions. In 1834,
for instance, they unsuccessfully “turned out” (went on strike) against the
mills after learning of a pro-
posed sharp cut in their wages.
The “Lowell girls” drew atten-
tion less because they were typical
than because they were special.
An increasingly common pattern
in industrial New England was
the family system, sometimes
called the Rhode Island system or
the Fall River system, which pre-
vailed in textile companies out-
side northern New England. The
Rhode Island factories, which
relied upon water power, were
often built in unpopulated areas,
and the complexes included tene-
ments or mill villages. Whole
families might be hired, the men
for heavy labor, the women and
Mill girls children for lighter work. Like
Massachusetts mill workers of the mid- the Lowell model, the Rhode
nineteenth century, photographed holding Island system promoted pater-
shuttles. Although mill work initially
provided women with an opportunity for
nalism. Employers dominated the
independence and education, conditions life of the mill villages. Employees
soon deteriorated as profits took precedence. worked from sunup to sunset
 The Industrial Revolution • 389

and longer in winter—a sixty-eight- to seventy-two-hour week. Such hours

were common on the farms of the time, but in textile mills the work was
more intense and less varied, with no slow season.

I N D U S T R I A L I Z AT I O N AND THE Between

ENVIRONMENT
1820 and 1850, some forty textile and flour mills were built along the Merri-
mack River, which runs from New Hampshire through northeastern Massa-
chusetts. In pre-industrial England and America the common-law tradition
required that water be permitted to flow as it had always flowed; the right to
use it was reserved to those who owned land adjoining streams and rivers. In
other words, running water, by nature, could not be converted into private
property. People living along rivers could divert water for domestic use or to
water livestock but could not use naturally flowing water to irrigate land or
drive machinery.
The rise of the water-powered textile industry challenged those long-
standing assumptions. Entrepreneurs acquired water rights by purchasing
land adjoining rivers and buying the acquiescence of nearby landowners;
then, in the 1820s, they began renting the water that flowed to the textile

THE GROWTH OF INDUSTRY IN THE 1840s

Principal industrial areas
MAINE

VERMONT
NEW
NEW
YORK
HAMPSHIRE
Lowell
Boston
MA
MICHIGAN
Providence
CT
New RI
Haven
New York
PENNSYLVANIA Newark

Pittsburgh NEW JERSEY

Philadelphia

OHIO
Baltimore
Washington DELAWARE
Cincinnati
MARYLAND
VIRGINIA 0 100 200 Miles

KENTUCKY
0 100 200 Kilometers

What made the Lowell system unique? What were the

consequences of industrial expansion in the Northeast?
390 • THE DYNAMICS OF GROWTH (CH. 9)

mills. Water suddenly became a commodity independent of the land. It was

then fully incorporated into the industrial process. Canals, locks, and dams
were built to facilitate the needs of the proliferating mills. Flowing water was
transformed from a societal resource to a private commodity.
The changing uses of water transformed the region’s ecology. Rivers
shape regions far beyond their banks, and the changing patterns of streams
now affected marshlands, meadows, vegetation, and the game and other
wildlife that depended upon those habitats. The dams built to harness
water to turn the mill wheels that ground corn and wheat flooded pastures
and decimated fish populations, spawned urban growth that in turn pol-
luted the rivers, and aroused intense local resentment, particularly among
the New Hampshire residents far upstream of the big Massachusetts
textile factories. In 1859 angry farmers, loggers, and fishermen tried to
destroy a massive dam in Lake Village, New Hampshire. But their axes and
crowbars caused little damage. By then the Industrial Revolution could not

Milling and the environment

A milldam on the Appomattox River near Petersburg, Virginia, in 1865. Milldams
were used to produce a head of water for operating a mill.
 The Industrial Revolution • 391

be stopped. The textile system was not only transforming lives and prop-
erty; it was reshaping nature as well.

I N D U S T R I A L I Z AT I O N A N D C I T I E SThe rapid growth of commerce

and industry spurred the growth of cities. The census defined urban as a place
with eight thousand inhabitants or more, the proportion of urban to rural
populations grew from 3 percent in 1790 to 16 percent in 1860. Because of
their strategic locations, the four great Atlantic seaports of New York, Philadel-
phia, Baltimore, and Boston remained the largest cities. New Orleans became
the nation’s fifth-largest city from the time of the Louisiana Purchase because
of its role as a major port shipping goods to the East coast and Europe. Its
focus on cotton exports to the neglect of imports eventually caused it to lag
behind its northeastern competitors, however. New York City outpaced all its
competitors and the nation as a whole in its population growth. By 1860, it
was the first city to reach a population of more than 1 million, largely because
of its superior harbor and its unique access to commerce.
Pittsburgh, at the head of the Ohio River, was already a center of iron pro-
duction by 1800, and Cincinnati, at the mouth of the Little Miami River,
soon surpassed all other meatpacking centers. Louisville, because it stood

Broadway and Canal Street, New York City (1836)

New York’s economy and industry, like those of many other cities, grew rapidly in
the early nineteenth century.
 392 • THE DYNAMICS OF GROWTH (CH. 9)

Boston
Albany
Providence

New York
Philadelphia
Baltimore
Washington

Richmond

Charleston

THE GROWTH OF CITIES, 1820 New Orleans

Population
Over 100,000
35,000 to 100,000 0 150 300 Miles
10,000 to 34,999
0 150 300 Kilometers

What were the largest cities in the United States in 1820? Why did those cities have
the densest populations? Why did New Orleans grow rapidly yet eventually lag
behind its northeastern counterparts?

at the falls of the Ohio River, became an important trading center. On the
Great Lakes the leading cities—Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and
Milwaukee—also stood at important breaking points in water transporta-
tion. Chicago was well located to become a hub of both water and rail trans-
portation, connecting the Northeast, the South, and the trans-Mississippi
West. During the 1830s, St. Louis tripled in size mainly because most of the
western fur trade was funneled down the Missouri River. By 1860, St. Louis
and Chicago were positioned to challenge Baltimore and Boston for third
and fourth places.

T H E P O P U L A R C U LT U R E

During the colonial era, Americans had little time for play or amuse-
ment. Most adults worked from dawn to dusk six days a week. In rural areas,
free time was often spent in communal activities, such as barn raisings and
 The Popular Culture • 393

Lowell Boston
Providence
Rochester Troy
Buffalo Albany
New York
Milwaukee Detroit Newark New
Pittsburgh Haven
Chicago Cleveland Brooklyn
Philadelphia
Cincinnati Washington
Baltimore
San Francisco Richmond
St. Louis Louisville

Charleston

Montgomery

New Orleans

THE GROWTH OF CITIES, 1860

Population
Over 100,000 0 150 300 Miles
35,000 to 100,000
0 150 300 Kilometers

What is the connection between industrialization and urbanization? Why did

Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and St. Louis become major urban centers in the
mid-nineteenth century?

corn-husking parties, shooting matches and footraces, while residents of the

seacoast sailed and fished. In colonial cities, people attended balls, went on
sleigh rides and picnics, and played “parlor games” such as billiards, cards,
and chess, at home. By the early nineteenth century, however, a more urban
society enjoyed more diverse forms of recreation. As more people moved to
cities in the first half of the nineteenth century, they created a distinctive
urban culture. Laborers and shopkeepers sought new forms of leisure and
entertainment as pleasant diversions from their long workdays.

U R B A N R E C R E AT I O N Social drinking was pervasive during the first

half of the nineteenth century. In 1829 the secretary of war estimated that
three quarters of the nation’s laborers drank at least four ounces of “hard
liquor” daily. This drinking culture cut across all regions, races, and classes.
Taverns and social or sporting clubs in the burgeoning cities served as the
nexus of recreation and leisure. So-called blood sports were also a popular
form of amusement. Cockfighting and dogfighting at saloons attracted
394 • THE DYNAMICS OF GROWTH (CH. 9)

Bare Knuckles
Blood sports emerged as popular urban entertainment for men of all social classes.

excited crowds and frenzied betting. Prizefighting, also known as boxing,

eventually displaced the animal contests. Imported from Britain, boxing
proved popular with all social classes. The early contestants tended to be Irish
or English immigrants, often sponsored by a neighborhood fire company,
fraternal association, or street gang. In the antebellum era, boxers fought with
bare knuckles, and the results were brutal. A match ended only when a con-
testant could not continue. A bout in 1842 lasted 119 rounds and ended when
one fighter died in his corner. Such deaths prompted several cities to outlaw
the practice, only to see it reappear as an underground activity.

T H E P E R F O R M I N G A RT S Theaters were the most popular form of

indoor entertainment during the first half of the nineteenth century. People
of all classes flocked to opera houses, playhouses, and music halls to watch a
wide spectrum of performances: Shakespeare’s tragedies, “blood and thun-
der” melodramas, comedies, minstrel shows, operas, performances by acro-
batic troupes, and local pageants. Audiences were predominantly young and
middle aged men. “Respectable” women rarely attended; the prevailing “cult
of domesticity” kept women in the home. Behavior in antebellum theaters
was raucous. Audiences cheered the heroes and heroines and hissed at the
villains. If an actor did not meet expectations, spectators hurled curses, nuts,
eggs, fruit, shoes, or chairs.
 Immigration • 395

The 1830s witnessed the

emergence of the first uniquely
American form of mass enter-
tainment: blackface minstrel
shows, featuring white perform-
ers made up as blacks. “Min-
strelsy” drew upon African
American subjects and reinforced
prevailing racial stereotypes. It
featured banjo and fiddle music,
“shuffle” dances, and lowbrow
humor. Between the 1830s and
the 1870s, minstrel shows were
immensely popular, especially
among northern working-class
ethnic groups and southern
whites. The Crow Quadrilles
The most popular minstrel This sheet-music cover, printed in 1837,
songs were written by a young shows eight vignettes caricaturing
African Americans. Minstrel shows enjoyed
white composer named Stephen nationwide popularity while reinforcing
Foster. Born near Pittsburgh on racial stereotypes.
July 4, 1826, Foster was a self-
taught musician who could pick up any tune by ear. In 1846 he composed
“Oh! Susanna,” which immediately became a national favorite. Its popularity
catapulted Foster into the national limelight, and equally popular tunes fol-
lowed, such as “Old Folks at Home” (popularly known as “Way Down upon
the Swanee River”), “Massa’s in de Cold, Cold Ground,” “My Old Kentucky
Home,” and “Old Black Joe,” all of which perpetuated the sentimental myth of
contented slaves, and none of which used actual African American melodies.

I M M I G R AT I O N

The United States remained a nation of immigrants during the nine-

teenth century. Throughout the nineteenth century, land and jobs in Amer-
ica were plentiful. The United States thus remained a strong magnet for
immigrants, offering them chances to take up farming or urban employ-
ment. Glowing reports from early arrivals who made good reinforced
romantic views of American opportunity and freedom. “Tell Miriam,” one
immigrant wrote, “there is no sending children to bed without supper, or
husbands to work without dinner in their bags.” A German immigrant in
396 • THE DYNAMICS OF GROWTH (CH. 9)

Missouri applauded America’s “absence of overbearing soldiers, haughty

clergymen, and inquisitive tax collectors.” In 1834 an English immigrant
reported that America is ideal “for a poor man that is industrious, for he has
to want for nothing.”
During the forty years from the outbreak of the Revolution to the end of
the War of 1812, immigration had slowed to a trickle. The French Revolu-
tion and the Napoleonic Wars restricted travel from Europe until 1815.
Thereafter, however, the number of immigrants to America rose steadily.
After 1837, a worldwide economic slump accelerated the tempo of immigra-
tion to the United States. The years from 1845 to 1854 saw the greatest
proportional influx of immigrants in U.S. history, 2.4 million, or about
14.5 percent of the total population in 1845. In 1860, America’s population
was 31 million, with more than one of every eight residents foreign-born.
The three largest groups were the Irish (1.6 million), the Germans (1.2 mil-
lion), and the British (588,000).

THE IRISH What caused so many Irish to flee their homeland in the nine-
teenth century was the onset of a prolonged depression that brought immense
social hardship. The most densely populated country in Europe, Ireland was so
ravaged by its economic collapse that in rural areas the average age at death
declined to nineteen. After an epidemic of potato rot in 1845, called the
Irish potato famine, killed more than 1 million peasants, the flow of Irish
immigrants to Canada and the United States became a flood. Thousands died
of dysentery, typhus, and malnutrition during the six-week ocean crossing on
what came to be called “coffin ships.” In 1847 alone, forty thousand Irish per-
ished at sea.
By 1850 the Irish constituted 43 percent of the foreign-born population
of the United States. Unlike the German immigrants, who were predomi-
nantly male, the Irish newcomers were divided evenly by sex; in fact a slight
majority of them were women. Most of the Irish arrivals had been tenant
farmers, but their rural sufferings left them with little taste for farmwork
and little money with which to buy land in America. Great numbers of the
men hired on with the construction crews building canals and railways. Oth-
ers worked in iron foundries, steel mills, warehouses, mines, and shipyards.
Many Irish women found jobs as servants, laundresses, or workers in textile
mills in New England. In 1845 the Irish constituted only 8 percent of the
workforce in the Lowell mills; by 1860 they made up 50 percent. Relatively
few immigrants found their way to the South, where land was expensive and
 Immigration • 397

industries scarce. The wide-

spread use of slavery also left
few opportunities in the region
for immigrant laborers.
Too poor to move inland,
most of the destitute Irish
immigrants congregated in the
eastern cities, in or near their
port of entry. By the 1850s the
Irish made up over half the pop-
ulation of Boston and New York
City and were almost as promi-
nent in Philadelphia. They typi-
cally crowded into filthy, poorly
ventilated tenements, plagued
by high rates of crime, infec- Irish immigration
tious disease, prostitution, alco-
In 1847 nearly 214,000 Irish immigrated to
holism, and infant mortality. the United States and Canada aboard the
The archbishop of New York ships of the White Star Line and other
at mid-century described the companies. Despite promises of spacious,
Irish as “the poorest and most well-lit, well-ventilated, and heated
accommodations on ships, 30 percent
wretched population that can be of these immigrants died on board.
found in the world.”
But many enterprising Irish
immigrants forged remarkable careers. Twenty years after arriving in New
York, Alexander T. Stewart became the owner of the nation’s largest depart-
ment store and thereafter accumulated vast real estate holdings in Manhat-
tan. Michael Cudahy, who began work in a Milwaukee meatpacking business
at age fourteen, became head of the Cudahy Packing Company and devel-
oped a process for the curing of meats under refrigeration. Dublin-born Vic-
tor Herbert emerged as one of America’s most revered composers, and Irish
dancers and playwrights came to dominate the stage. Irishmen were equally
successful in the boxing arena and on the baseball diamond.
These accomplishments, however, did little to quell the anti-Irish senti-
ments prevalent in nineteenth-century America. Irish immigrants confronted
demeaning stereotypes and intense anti-Catholic prejudices. Protestants
remained fearful of a “papist plot” to turn America into a Catholic nation.
And ethnic prejudice was widespread. Many employers posted “No Irish
Need Apply” signs. But Irish Americans could be equally contemptuous of
398 • THE DYNAMICS OF GROWTH (CH. 9)

other groups, such as free African Americans, who competed with them for
low-status jobs. In 1850 the New York Tribune expressed concern that the
Irish, having themselves escaped from “a galling, degrading bondage” in
their homeland, voted against proposals for equal rights for blacks and fre-
quently arrived at the polls shouting, “Down with the Nagurs! Let them go
back to Africa, where they belong.” For their part, many African Americans
viewed the Irish with equal disdain. In 1850 a slave expressed a common
sentiment: “My Master is a great tyrant, he treats me badly as if I were a com-
mon Irishman.”
After becoming citizens, the Irish formed powerful voting blocs. Drawn
mainly to the party of Andrew Jackson, they set a crucial example of identi-
fication with the Democrats, one that other ethnic groups by and large
followed. In Jackson, the Irish immigrants found a hero. Besides being the
son of Scots-Irish colonists, Jackson was also popular with Irish immi-
grants for having defeated the hated English at New Orleans. In addition,
the Irish immigrants’ loathing of aristocracy, which they associated with
English rule, attracted them to a politician and a party claiming to repre-
sent “the common man.” Although property requirements initially kept
most Irish Americans from voting, a New York State law extended the
franchise in 1821, and five years later the state removed the property quali-
fication altogether. In the 1828 election, masses of Irish voters made the
difference in the race between Jackson and John Quincy Adams. One news-
paper expressed alarm at this new force in politics: “It was emphatically an
Irish triumph. The foreigners have carried the day.” With African Ameri-
cans, women, and Native Americans still years from enfranchisement, Irish
men became perhaps the first “minority group” to exert a remarkable polit-
ical influence.
Perhaps the greatest collective achievement of the Irish immigrants was
stimulating the growth of the Catholic Church in the United States. Years of
persecution had instilled in Irish Catholics a fierce loyalty to the doctrines of
the church as “the supreme authority over all the affairs of the world.” Such
passionate attachment to Catholicism generated both community cohesion
among Irish Americans and fears of Roman Catholicism among American
Protestants. By 1860, Catholicism had become the largest denomination in
the United States.

THE GERMANS A new wave of German immigration peaked in 1854,

just a few years after the crest of Irish arrivals, when 215,000 Germans disem-
barked in U.S. ports. These immigrants included a large number of learned,
cultured professional people—doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers—some
 Immigration • 399

German Beer Garden, New York (1825)

German immigrants established their own communities, where they maintained
the traditions of their homeland.

of them refugees from the failed German revolution of 1848. In addition to

an array of political opinions, the Germans brought with them a variety of
religious preferences: most of the new arrivals were Protestants (usually
Lutherans), a third were Catholics, and a significant number were Jews or
freethinking atheists or agnostics. By the end of the century, some 250,000
German Jews had emigrated to the United States.
Unlike the Irish, more Germans settled in rural areas than in cities, and
the influx included many independent farmers, skilled workers, or shop-
keepers who arrived with the means to get themselves established on the
land or in skilled jobs. More so than the Irish, they migrated in families and
groups rather than individually, and this clannish quality helped them better
sustain elements of their language and culture in the New World. More of
them also tended to return to their native country. About 14 percent of the
Germans eventually went back to their homeland, compared with 9 percent
of the Irish.
Among the German immigrants who prospered in the New World were
Ferdinand Schumacher, who began peddling flaked oatmeal in Ohio and
whose business eventually became part of the Quaker Oats Company;
Heinrich Steinweg, a piano maker who in America changed his name to
Steinway and became famous for the quality of his instruments; and Levi
Strauss, a Jewish tailor who followed the gold rushers to California and
began making durable work pants that were later dubbed blue jeans, or
400 • THE DYNAMICS OF GROWTH (CH. 9)

Levi’s. Major centers of German settlement developed in southwestern Illi-

nois and Missouri (around St. Louis), Texas (near San Antonio), Ohio, and
Wisconsin (especially around Milwaukee). The larger German communi-
ties developed traditions of bounteous food, beer, and music, along with
German turnvereins (gymnastic societies), sharpshooter clubs, fire-engine
companies, and kindergartens.

T H E B R I T I S H , S C A N D I N AV I A N S , A N D C H I N E S E
British immi-
grants continued to arrive in the United States in large numbers during the
first half of the nineteenth century. They included professionals, indepen-
dent farmers, and skilled workers. Two other groups that began to arrive in
noticeable numbers during the 1840s and 1850s served as the vanguard for
greater numbers of their compatriots. Annual arrivals from Scandinavia
did not exceed 1,000 until 1843, but by 1860, 72,600 Scandinavians were
living in the United States. The Norwegians and Swedes gravitated to Wis-
consin and Minnesota, where the climate and woodlands reminded them of
home. By the 1850s the rapid development of California was attracting Chi-
nese, who, like the Irish in the East, did the heavy work of construction.
Infinitesimal in number until 1854, the Chinese in America numbered
35,500 by 1860.

N AT I V I S M Not all Americans welcomed the flood of immigrants. Many

“natives” resented the newcomers, with their alien languages and mysterious
customs. The flood of Irish and German Catholics aroused Protestant hos-
tility to “popery.” A militant Protestantism growing out of the evangelical
revivals of the early nineteenth century fueled the anti-Catholic hysteria.
There were also fears that German communities were fomenting political
radicalism and that the Irish were forming ethnic voting blocs, but above all
hovered the “menace” of unfamiliar religious practices. Catholic authoritar-
ianism was widely perceived as a threat to hard-won religious and political
liberties.
In 1834 a series of anti-Catholic sermons by Lyman Beecher, a popular
Congregationalist minister who served as president of Lane Theological
Seminary in Cincinnati, incited a mob to attack and burn the Ursuline Con-
vent in Charlestown, Massachusetts. In 1844 armed clashes between Protes-
tants and Catholics in Philadelphia caused widespread injuries and deaths.
Sporadically nativism took organized form in groups that claimed to prove
their patriotism by hating foreigners and Catholics.
As early as 1837, a Native American Association emerged in Washington,
D.C., but the most significant such group was the Order of the Star-Spangled
 Immigration • 401

A Know-Nothing cartoon
This cartoon shows the Catholic Church supposedly attempting to control American
religious and political life through Irish immigration.

Banner, founded in New York City in 1849. Within a few years, this group had
grown into a formidable third party known as the American party, which had
the trappings of a secret fraternal order. Members pledged never to vote for
any foreign-born or Catholic candidate. When asked about the organization,
they were to say, “I know nothing.” In popular parlance the American party
became the Know-Nothing party. For a season, the party appeared to be on
the brink of achieving major-party status. In state and local campaigns during
1854, the Know-Nothings carried one election after another. They swept the
Massachusetts legislature, winning all but two seats in the lower house. That
fall they elected more than forty congressmen. For a while the Know-Nothings
threatened to control New England, New York, and Maryland and showed
strength elsewhere, but the anti-Catholic movement subsided when slavery
became the focal issue of the 1850s.
The Know-Nothings demanded the exclusion of immigrants and Catholics
from public office and the extension of the period for naturalization (citizenship)
from five to twenty-one years, but the American party never gathered the political
strength to enact such legislation. Nor did Congress restrict immigration in any
way during that period.
402 • THE DYNAMICS OF GROWTH (CH. 9)

ORGANIZED LABOR

Skilled workers in American cities before and after the Revolution were
called artisans, craftsmen, or mechanics. They made or repaired shoes, hats,
saddles, ironware, silverware, jewelry, glass, ropes, furniture, tools, weapons,
and an array of wooden products, and printers published books, pamphlets,
and newspapers. These skilled workers operated within a guild system, a
centuries-old economic and social structure developed in medieval Europe
to serve the interests of particular crafts.
As in medieval guilds, skilled workers in the United States organized
themselves by individual trades. These trade associations pressured politi-
cians for tariffs to protect them from foreign imports, provided insurance
benefits, and drafted regulations to improve working conditions, ensure
quality control, and provide equitable treatment of apprentices and jour-
neymen. In addition, they sought to control the total number of tradesmen
in their profession so as to maintain wage levels. The New York shoemakers,
for instance, complained about employers taking on too many apprentices,
insisting that “two was as many as one man can do justice by.”
The use of slaves as skilled workers also caused controversy among trades-
men. White journeymen in the South objected to competing with enslaved
laborers. Other artisans refused to take advantage of slave labor. The Balti-
more Carpenters’ Society, for example, admitted as members only those
employers who refused to use forced labor.
During the 1820s and 1830s, artisans who emphasized quality and crafts-
manship for a custom trade found it hard to meet the low prices made possi-
ble by the new factories and mass-production workshops. At the time few
workers belonged to unions, but a growing fear that they were losing status
led artisans in the major cities to become involved in politics and unions.

E A R LY U N I O N S Early labor unions faced serious legal obstacles—they

were prosecuted as unlawful conspiracies. In 1806, for instance, Philadelphia
shoemakers were found guilty of a “combination to raise their wages.” The
court’s decision broke the union. Such precedents were used for many years
to hamstring labor organizations, until the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial
Court made a landmark ruling in Commonwealth v. Hunt (1842). In this case,
the court declared that forming a trade union was not in itself illegal, nor was
a demand that employers hire only members of the union. The court also
declared that workers could strike if an employer hired nonunion laborers.
Until the 1820s labor organizations took the form of local trade unions,
confined to one city and one craft. From 1827 to 1837, however, organization
 Organized Labor • 403

on a larger scale began to take

hold. In 1834 the National
Trades’ Union was set up to fed-
erate the city societies. At the
same time, shoemakers, print-
ers, combmakers, carpenters,
and handloom weavers estab-
lished national craft unions, but
all the national groups and most
of the local ones vanished in the
economic collapse of 1837.

LAB OR POLITICS With the

widespread removal of property
qualifications for voting, work-
ing-class politics flourished
briefly during the Jacksonian
Era, especially in Philadelphia. A The Shoemaker, from The Book of Trades
Workingmen’s party, formed (1807)
there in 1828, gained the balance When Philadelphia boot makers and shoemak-
of power in the city council that ers went on strike in 1806, a court found them
fall. This success inspired other guilty of a “conspiracy to raise their wages.”
Workingmen’s parties in about
fifteen states. The Workingmen’s parties were broad reformist groups devoted
to the interests of labor, but they faded quickly. The inexperience of labor
politicians left the parties prey to manipulation by political professionals. In
addition, major national parties co-opted some of their issues. Labor parties
also proved vulnerable to charges of radicalism, and the courts typically sided
with management.
Once the labor parties had faded, many of their supporters found their
way into a radical wing of the Jacksonian Democrats. This faction acquired
the name Locofocos in 1835, when their opponents in New York City’s
regular Democratic organization, Tammany Hall, turned off the gaslights at
one of their meetings and they produced candles, lighting them with the
new friction matches known as Locofocos. The Locofocos soon faded as
a separate group but endured as a radical faction within the Democratic
party.
While the working-class parties elected few candidates, they did suc-
ceed in drawing notice to their demands, many of which attracted the
support of middle-class reformers. Above all they promoted free public
404 • THE DYNAMICS OF GROWTH (CH. 9)

education for all children and the aboli-

tion of imprisonment for debt, causes
that won widespread popular support.
The labor parties and unions actively pro-
moted the ten-hour workday to prevent
employers from abusing workers. In 1836
President Andrew Jackson established the
ten-hour workday at the Naval Shipyard
in Philadelphia in response to a strike,
and in 1840 President Martin Van Buren
extended the limit to all government
offices and projects. In private jobs the
Symbols of organized labor ten-hour workday became increasingly
A pocket watch with an International common, although by no means univer-
Typographical Union insignia. sal, before 1860. Other reforms put
forward by the Workingmen’s parties
included mechanics’ lien laws, to protect workers from nonpayment of wages;
limits on the militia system, which allowed the rich to escape military service
with fines but forced poor resisters to face jail terms; the abolition of “licensed
monopolies,” especially banks; measures to ensure payment in hard money and
to protect workers from inflated bank-note currency; measures to restrict com-
petition from prison labor; and the abolition of child labor.

T H E R E V I VA L O F U N I O N S After the financial panic of 1837, the

infant labor movement declined, and unions did not begin to revive until
business conditions improved in the early 1840s. Even then unions
remained local and weak. Often they came and went with a single strike.
The greatest labor dispute before the Civil War occurred on February 22,
1860, when shoemakers at Lynn and Natick, Massachusetts, walked out
after their requests for higher wages were denied. Before the strike
ended, it had spread through New England, involving perhaps twenty-
five towns and twenty thousand workers. The strike stood out not just
for its size but also because the workers won. Most of the employers
agreed to wage increases, and some also agreed to recognize the union as
a bargaining agent.
By the mid–nineteenth century, the labor union movement was matur-
ing. Workers began to emphasize the importance of union recognition and
regular collective-bargaining agreements. They also shared a growing
sense of solidarity. In 1852 the National Typographical Union revived the
effort to organize skilled crafts on a national scale. Others followed, and by
1860 about twenty such organizations had appeared, although none was
 The Rise of the Professions • 405

yet strong enough to do much more than hold national conventions and
pass resolutions.

THE RISE OF THE PROFESSIONS

The dramatic social changes of the first half of the nineteenth century
opened up an array of new professions. Bustling new towns required new
services—retail stores, printing shops, post offices, newspapers, schools,
banks, law firms, medical practices, and others—that created more high-
status jobs than had ever existed before. By definition, professional workers
are those who have specialized knowledge and skills that ordinary people
lack. To be a professional in Jacksonian America, to be a self-governing
individual exercising trained judgment in an open society, was the epitome
of the democratic ideal, an ideal that rewarded hard work, ambition, and
merit.
The rise of various professions resulted from the rapid expansion of new
communities, public schools, and institutions of higher learning; the emer-
gence of a national market economy; and the growing sophistication of
American life and society, which was fostered by new technologies. In the
process, expertise garnered special prestige. In 1849, Henry Day delivered a
lecture titled “The Professions” at the Western Reserve School of Medicine.
He declared that the most important social functions in modern life were
the professional skills. In fact, Day claimed, American society had become
utterly dependent upon “professional services.”

T E AC H I N G Teaching was one of the fastest-growing vocations in the

antebellum period. Public schools initially preferred men as teachers, usu-
ally hiring them at age seventeen or eighteen. The pay was so low that few
stayed in the profession their entire career, but for many educated, restless
young adults, teaching was a convenient first job that offered independence
and stature, as well as an alternative to the rural isolation of farming. Church
groups and civic leaders started private academies, or seminaries, for girls.
Initially viewed as finishing schools for young women, these institutions
soon added courses in the liberal arts: philosophy, music, literature, Latin,
and Greek.

L AW , M E D I C I N E , A N D E N G I N E E R I N G Teaching was a common

stepping-stone for men who became lawyers. In the decades after the Revo-
lution, young men, often hastily or superficially trained, swelled the ranks of
406 • THE DYNAMICS OF GROWTH (CH. 9)

the legal profession. They typically would teach for a year or two before
clerking for a veteran attorney, who would train them in the law in exchange
for their labors. The absence of formal standards for legal training helps
explain why there were so many attorneys in the antebellum period. In 1820
eleven of the twenty-three states required no specific length or type of study
for aspiring lawyers.
Like attorneys, physicians in the early nineteenth century often had little
formal academic training. Healers of every stripe and motivation assumed
the title of doctor and established a medical practice without regulation.
Most of them were self-taught or had learned their profession by assisting a
doctor for several years, occasionally supplementing such internships with a
few classes at the handful of new medical schools, which in 1817 graduated
only 225 students. That same year there were almost ten thousand physi-
cians in the nation. By 1860 there were sixty thousand self-styled physicians,
and quackery was abundant. As a result, the medical profession lost its social
stature and the public’s confidence.
The industrial expansion of the United States during the first half of the
nineteenth century spurred the profession of engineering, a field that has since
become the single largest professional occupation for men in the United States.
Specialized expertise was required for the building of canals and railroads, the
development of machine tools and steam engines, and the construction of
roads and bridges. Beginning in the 1820s, Americans gained access to techni-
cal knowledge in mechanics’ institutes, scientific libraries, and special schools
that sprouted up across the young nation. By the outbreak of the Civil War,
engineering had become one of the largest professions in the nation.

WO M E N ’ S WO R K Women during the first half of the nineteenth

century still worked primarily in the home. The prevailing assumption was
that women by nature were most suited to marriage, motherhood, and
domesticity. The only professions readily available to women were nursing
(often midwifery, the delivery of babies) and teaching, both of which were
extensions of the domestic roles of health care and child care. Teaching and
nursing commanded relatively lower status and pay than did the male-
dominated professions.
Many middle-class and affluent women spent their time outside the
home engaged in religious and benevolent work. They were unstinting
volunteers in churches and reform societies. A very few women, however,
courageously pursued careers in male-dominated professions. Harriet
Hunt of Boston was a teacher who, after nursing her sister through a seri-
ous illness, set up shop in 1835 as a self-taught physician and persisted in
medical practice, although the Harvard Medical School twice rejected her
 Jacksonian Inequality • 407

for admission. Elizabeth Blackwell of Ohio managed to gain admission to

the Geneva Medical College of Western New York despite the disapproval of
the faculty. When she arrived at her first class, “a hush fell upon the class as
if each member had been struck with paralysis.” Blackwell had the last
laugh when she finished first in her class in 1849, but thereafter the medical
school refused to admit any more women. Blackwell went on to found the
New York Infirmary for Women and Children and later had a long career as
a professor of gynecology at the London School of Medicine for Women.

J A C K S O N I A N I N E Q UA L I T Y

During the years before the Civil War, the American legend of young
men rising from rags to riches was a durable myth. Speaking to the Senate in
1832, Kentucky’s Henry Clay claimed that almost all the successful factory
owners he knew were “enterprising self-made men, who have whatever
wealth they possess by patient and diligent labor.” The legend had just
enough basis in fact to gain credence. John Jacob Astor, the wealthiest man
in America (worth more than $20 million at his death in 1848), came of
humble if not exactly destitute origins. The son of a minor official in Ger-
many, he arrived in the United States in 1784 with little or nothing and made
a fortune on the western fur trade, which he then parlayed into a much
larger fortune in New York real estate. But his and similar cases were more
exceptional than common.
While men of moderate means could sometimes turn an inheritance into
a fortune by good management and prudent speculation, those who started
out poor and uneducated seldom made it to the top. In 1828 the top 1 per-
cent of New York’s families (worth $34,000 or more) held 40 percent of the
wealth, and the top 4 percent held 76 percent. Similar circumstances pre-
vailed in Philadelphia, Boston, and other cities.
A supreme irony of the times was that the age of the so-called common
man, the age of Jacksonian democracy, seems actually to have been an age of
growing economic and social inequality. Why that happened is difficult to say,
except that the boundless wealth of the untapped frontier narrowed as the land
was taken up and claims on various entrepreneurial opportunities were staked
out. Such developments had taken place in New England towns even before the
end of the seventeenth century. But despite growing social distinctions, it
seems likely that the white population of America, at least, was better off than
the general run of Europeans. New frontiers, both geographic and technologi-
cal, raised the level of material well-being for all. And religious as well as politi-
cal freedoms continued to attract people eager for liberty in a new land.
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Transportation and Communication Revolutions While the cotton

culture boomed in the South, with a resultant increase in slavery, commercial
agriculture emerged in the West, aided by a demand for corn, wheat, and cattle
and by many inventions. The first stages of the Industrial Revolution in the
Northeast reshaped the region’s economy and led to the explosive growth of
cities and factories. The Erie Canal contributed to New York City’s status as
the nation’s economic center and spurred the growth of Chicago and other
midwestern cities. The revolution in transportation and communication
linked rural communities to a worldwide marketplace.
• Inventions and the Economy Inventions in agriculture included the cotton
gin, which increased cotton production in the South. Other inventions, such
as John Deere’s steel plow and Cyrus McCormick’s mechanized reaper, helped
Americans, especially westerners, farm their land more efficiently and more
profitably. Canals and other improvements in transportation allowed goods to
reach markets quicker and more cheaply than ever before. The railroads, which
expanded rapidly during the 1850s, and the telegraph diminished the isolation
of the West and united the country economically and socially.
• Immigration The promise of cheap land and good wages drew millions of
immigrants to America. Those who arrived in the 1840s came not just from the
Protestant regions of Britain and Europe that had supplied most of America’s
previous immigrants. The devastating potato famine led to an influx of destitute
Irish Catholic families. Also, Chinese laborers were drawn to California’s
goldfields, where nativists objected to their presence because of their poverty
and their religion.
• Workers Organize The first unions, formed by artisans who feared a loss of
status in the face of mechanization, were local and based on individual crafts.
An early attempt at a national union collapsed with the panic of 1837. Unions
faced serious legal obstacles even after a Massachusetts court ruled in 1842
that the formation of unions was legal. Weak national unions had reappeared
by 1860.
 CHRONOLOGY

1793
1794
1795
Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin
Philadelphia-Lancaster Turnpike is completed
Wilderness Road opens
1807 Clermont, the first successful steamboat, sails to Albany
1825 Erie Canal opens
1831 Cyrus McCormick invents a mechanical reaper
1834 National Trades’ Union is organized
1837 John Deere invents the steel plow
1842 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court issues Commonwealth
v. Hunt decision
1845 Rainbow, the first clipper ship, is launched
1846 Elias Howe invents the sewing machine
1848 California gold rush begins

KEY TERMS & NAMES

Conestoga wagons p. 370 Lowell girls p. 387 Levi Strauss p. 399

Erie Canal p. 372 cult of domesticity p. 394 nativism p. 400

Samuel F. B. Morse p. 379 minstrelsy p. 395 Know-Nothing party

p. 401
Eli Whitney p. 381 Irish potato famine p. 396

Cyrus Hall McCormick coffin ships p. 396

p. 383

10
NATIONALISM AND
SECTIONALISM

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• How did economic policies after the War of 1812 reflect the
nationalism of the period?
• What characterized the Era of Good Feelings?
• What were the various issues that promoted sectionalism?
• How did the Supreme Court under John Marshall strengthen
the federal government and the national economy?
• What were the main diplomatic achievements of these years?

E C O N O M I C N AT I O N A L I S M

Immediately after the War of 1812, Americans experienced a new surge

of nationalism. The young United States was growing from a loose confeder-
ation of territories into a fully functioning nation-state that spanned almost
an entire continent. An abnormal economic prosperity after the war fed a
feeling of well-being and enhanced the prestige of the national government.
Ironically, Thomas Jefferson’s embargo had spawned the factories that he
abhorred. During the War of 1812, the idea spread that the young agricul-
tural nation needed a more balanced economy of farming, commerce, and
manufacturing. After a generation of war, shortages of farm products in
Europe forced up the prices of American products and stimulated agricul-
tural expansion—indeed, they induced a wild speculation in farmland.
Southern cotton, tobacco, and rice would form about two thirds of U.S.
exports. At the same time, the postwar market was flooded with cheap Eng-
lish goods that threatened America’s new manufacturing sector.
 Economic Nationalism • 411

President James Madison, in his first annual message to Congress after

the war, recommended several steps to strengthen the government and the
national economy: improved fortifications, a permanent army and a strong
navy, a new national bank, protection of new industries from foreign compe-
tition, a system of canals and roads for commercial and military use, and to
top it off, a great national university. “The Republicans have out-Federalized
Federalism,” one New Englander remarked. Congress responded by authoriz-
ing a standing army of ten thousand and strengthening the navy as well.

T H E B A N K O F T H E U N I T E D S TAT E S The trinity of ideas promot-

ing postwar economic nationalism—proposals for a second national bank;
for tariffs to protect American manufacturers from cheap British imports;
and for government-financed roads, canals, and eventually railroads (called
internal improvements) inspired the greatest controversies. Issues related to
money—the reliability and availability of currency, the relative value of
paper money and “specie” (silver and gold coins), and the structure and
regulation of the banking system—often dominated political debates. After
the first national bank expired, in 1811, the country fell into a financial
muddle. States began chartering new local banks with little or no regulation,
and their banknotes (paper money) flooded the economy with currency of
uncertain value. Because state banks were essentially unregulated, they often
issued paper money for loans far in excess of the “hard money” they stored
in their vaults. Such loose lending practices led initially to an economic
boom but were followed by a dramatic inflation fed by the excess of
paper money circulating in the economy. Eventually the true value of the
excess banknotes would plummet and the bubble would burst, causing
recession and depression. Because gold and silver coins had been in such
short supply during the war, many state banks suspended specie payments,
meaning that they stopped exchanging coins for paper money submitted
by depositors. The result was chronic instability and occasional chaos in
the banking sector. The absence of a central national bank had also become
a source of financial embarrassment to the government, which had neither a
ready means of floating loans nor a way of transferring funds across the
country.
In the face of this growing financial turmoil, President Madison and most
of the younger generation of Republicans swallowed their constitutional
reservations about a powerful national bank. The issue of a central bank,
Madison said, had been decided “by repeated recognitions . . . of the validity of
such an institution in acts of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of
412 • NATIONALISM AND S ECTIONALISM (CH. 10)

the Government, accompanied by . . . a concurrence of the general will of the

nation.” In 1816, Congress adopted, over the protest of Old Republicans, a
provision for a second Bank of the United States (B.U.S.), which would be
located in Philadelphia. Once again the charter would run for twenty years,
and the federal government owned a fifth of the stock and named five of the
twenty-five directors, with the B.U.S., as it was called, serving as the govern-
ment depository for federal funds. The B.U.S. could establish branches
throughout the states. Its banknotes were accepted in payments to the govern-
ment. In return for its privileges, the bank had to handle the government’s
funds without charge, lend the government up to $5 million upon demand,
and pay the government a cash bonus of $1.5 million.
The bitter debate over the B.U.S., then and later, helped set the pattern of
regional alignment for most other economic issues. Missouri senator Thomas
Hart Benton predicted that the currency-short western towns would be at the
mercy of a centralized eastern bank. “They may be devoured by it any
moment! They are in the jaws of the monster! A lump of butter in the mouth
of a dog! One gulp, one swallow, and all is gone!”
The debate over the B.U.S. was also noteworthy because of the leading roles
played by the era’s greatest statesmen: John C. Calhoun of South Carolina,
Henry Clay of Kentucky, and Daniel Webster of New Hampshire. Calhoun,
still in his youthful phase as a war-hawk nationalist, introduced the banking
bill and pushed it through, justifying its constitutionality by citing the con-
gressional power to regulate the currency. Clay, who had long opposed a
national bank, reversed himself; he now asserted that circumstances had made
one indispensable. Webster, on the other hand, led the opposition of the New
England Federalists, who did not want the banking center moved from Boston
to Philadelphia. Later, after he had moved from New Hampshire to Massachu-
setts, Webster would return to Congress as the champion of a much stronger
national government, whereas events would steer Calhoun toward a defiant
embrace of states’ rights.

A P R O T E C T I V E TA R I F FThe shift of investment capital from com-

merce to manufactures, begun during the embargo of 1807, had speeded up
during the war. But new American manufacturers needed “protection” from
foreign competitors. After the War of 1812 ended, a sudden renewal of cheap
British imports generated pleas for tariffs (taxes on imports) to “protect”
infant American industries from foreign competition. The self-interest of
the manufacturers, who as yet had little political influence, was reinforced by
a patriotic desire for economic independence from Britain. New England
shippers and southern farmers opposed tariffs, but in both regions sizable
 Economic Nationalism • 413

minorities believed that the promotion of new industry by means of tariffs

enhanced both local economic interests and the national welfare.
The Tariff of 1816, the first intended more to protect industry against for-
eign competition than to raise revenue, passed easily in Congress. New
England supported the tariff and the South opposed it, and the middle
Atlantic states and the Old Northwest cast only five negative votes alto-
gether. The minority of southerners who voted for the tariff, led by John C.
Calhoun, did so because they hoped that the South itself might become a
manufacturing center. South Carolina was then developing a few textile
mills. According to the census of 1810, the southern states had approxi-
mately as many manufacturers as New England. Within a few years, however,
New England would move well ahead of the South and Calhoun would do
an about-face and oppose tariffs. The tariff would then become a sectional
issue, with manufacturers, wool processors, and food, sugar, and hemp
growers favoring higher tariffs while southern cotton planters and northern
shipping interests would favor lower duties or none at all.

I N T E R NA L I M P ROV E M E N TS The third major issue of the time

involved government support for internal improvements: the building of
roads and the development of water transportation. The war had high-
lighted the shortcomings of the nation’s transportation network: the move-
ment of troops through the western wilderness had proved very difficult. At
the same time, settlers found that unless they located themselves near navi-
gable waters, they were cut off from trade.
The federal government had entered the field of internal improvements
under Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson and both of his successors recommended a
constitutional amendment to give the federal government undisputed author-
ity to improve the national transportation system. Lacking that, the constitu-
tional grounds for federal action rested mainly on the provision of national
defense and the expansion of the postal system. In 1803, when Ohio became a
state, Congress decreed that 5 percent of the proceeds from land sales in the
state would go toward building a National Road from the Atlantic coast into
Ohio and beyond as the territory developed. Construction of the National
Road began in 1815.
Originally called the Cumberland Road, it was the first federally financed
interstate roadway. By 1818 it was open from Cumberland, Maryland, to
Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia), on the Ohio River. By 1838 it extended
all the way to Vandalia, Illinois. By reducing transportation costs and opening
up new markets, the National Road and other privately financed turnpikes
helped accelerate the commercialization of agriculture.
 414 • NATIONALISM AND S ECTIONALISM (CH. 10)

Lake Michigan
CANADA NEW YORK
MICHIGAN
ie
Er Erie
e
L ak
r
ve

Chicago
Toledo New York
Ri
pi

Cleveland PENNSYLVANIA
sip

NEW
sis

INDIANA
Mis

OHIO Philadelphia JERSEY

ILLINOIS Wheeling
Columbus Cumberland
Richmond Springfield
Springfield Zanesville Baltimore
Indianapolis DELAWARE
Terre Haute Dayton Lancaster Washington,
Potomac D.C.
Cincinnati MARYLAND
Vandalia River
VIRGINIA
St. Louis
Vincennes

Ohio Rive
r THE NATIONAL ROAD, 1811–1838 Chesapeake
Bay
0 100 200 Miles KENTUCKY Built 1811–1818
0 100 200 Kilometers
Built 1825–1838

Why were internal improvements so important? How did the National Road affect
agriculture and trade? What were the constitutional issues that limited the federal
government’s ability to enact internal improvements?

In 1817, John C. Calhoun put through the House a bill to fund internal
improvements. He believed that western development would help his native
South by opening up trading relationships. Opposition to federal spending
on transportation projects centered in New England and the South, which
expected to gain the least from federal projects intended to spur western
development, and support came largely from the West, which badly needed
good roads. On his last day in office, President Madison vetoed the bill.
While sympathetic to its purpose, he could not overcome his “insuperable
difficulty . . . in reconciling the bill with the Constitution” and suggested
instead a constitutional amendment. Internal improvements remained for
another hundred years, with few exceptions, the responsibility of states and
private enterprise. The federal government did not enter the field on a large
scale until passage of the Federal Highways Act of 1916.

THE AMERICAN SYSTEM The national banking system, protective

tariffs, and transportation improvements were all intended to spur the
development of what historians have called the “market revolution” that was
transforming the young American economy. With each passing year, farm-
ers, merchants, and manufacturers devoted themselves more and more to
 “An Era of Good Feelings” • 415

producing commodities and goods for commercial markets, which often

lay far from the sources of production. American capitalism was maturing—
rapidly. While many Old Republicans lamented the transition to an increasingly
urban-industrial-commercial society, others decided that such democratic capi-
talism was the wave of the future.
Henry Clay emerged during the first half of the nineteenth century as the
foremost spokesman for what he came to call the “American System.” Born
and raised in Virginia, Clay became a successful attorney in Lexington, Ken-
tucky, before launching a political career. He was fond of gambling, liquor, and
women, and like his foe Andrew Jackson, he had a brawling temper that led to
several duels. During the 1820s, as Speaker of the House, Clay became the
chief proponent of economic nationalism. Prosperity, he insisted, depended
upon the federal government’s assuming an active role in shaping the econ-
omy. He scoffed at the old Jeffersonian fear that an urban-industrial society
would necessarily grow corrupt. Clay instead promoted the “market revolu-
tion” and the rapid development of the new western states and territories. The
American System he championed included several measures: (1) high tariffs to
impede the import of European products and thereby “protect” fledgling
American industries, (2) higher prices for federal lands, the proceeds of which
would be distributed to the states to finance internal improvements that
would facilitate the movement of goods to markets, and (3) a strong national
bank to regulate the nation’s money supply and thereby ensure sustained eco-
nomic growth.
Clay’s American System aroused intense support—and opposition. Some
critics argued that higher prices for federal lands would discourage western
migration. Others believed that tariffs benefited industrialists at the expense
of farmers and the “common” people, who paid higher prices for the goods
produced by tariff-protected manufacturers. And many feared that the
B.U.S. was potentially a tyrannical force, dictating the nation’s economic
future and in the process centralizing power at the expense of states’ rights
and individual freedoms. The debates grew in scope and intensity during the
first half of the nineteenth century. In the process, they would aggravate sec-
tional tensions to the breaking point.

“A N E R A OF GOOD FEELINGS”

J A M E S M O N R O E As James Madison approached the end of a turbu-

lent two-term presidency, he, like Thomas Jefferson, turned to a fellow
Virginian, another secretary of state, to be his successor. For Madison that
416 • NATIONALISM AND S ECTIONALISM (CH. 10)

man would be James Monroe, who

won the Republican nomination. In
the 1816 election, he overwhelmed
his Federalist opponent, Rufus King of
New York, with 183 to 34 votes in the
Electoral College. The “Virginia dynasty”
continued. Like three of the four presi-
dents before him, Monroe was a Vir-
ginia planter, but with a difference: his
plantation holdings were much smaller.
At the outbreak of the Revolution, he
was just beginning his studies at the
College of William and Mary. He
James Monroe joined the army at the age of sixteen,
Portrayed as he entered the presi- fought with Washington during the
dency in 1817. Revolution, and later studied law with
Jefferson.
Monroe had served as a representative in the Virginia assembly, as gover-
nor of the state, as a representative in the Confederation Congress, as a U.S.
senator, and as U.S. minister in Paris, London, and Madrid. Under Madison,
he was secretary of state and doubled as secretary of war. Monroe, with his
powdered wig, cocked hat, and knee breeches, was the last of the Revolution-
ary generation to serve in the White House and the last president to dress in
the old style.
Firmly grounded in traditional Republican principles, Monroe failed to
keep up with the onrush of the “new nationalism.” He accepted as an accom-
plished fact the Bank of the United States and the protective tariff, but during
his tenure there was no further extension of economic nationalism. Indeed,
there was a minor setback: he permitted the National Road to be extended,
but in his veto of the 1822 Cumberland Road bill, he denied the authority of
Congress to collect tolls to pay for its repair and maintenance. Like Jefferson
and Madison, Monroe urged a constitutional amendment to remove all
doubt about federal authority in the field of internal improvements.
Monroe surrounded himself with some of the ablest young Republican
leaders. John Quincy Adams became secretary of state. William H. Crawford
of Georgia continued as secretary of the Treasury. John C. Calhoun headed
the War Department after Henry Clay refused the job in order to stay on as
Speaker of the House. The new administration found the country in a state of
well-being: America was at peace, and the economy was flourishing. Soon
after his inauguration, in 1817, Monroe embarked on a goodwill tour of
 “An Era of Good Feelings” • 417

New England. In Boston, lately a hotbed of wartime dissent, a Federalist news-

paper commented upon the president’s visit under the heading “Era of Good
Feelings.” The label became a popular catchphrase for Monroe’s administra-
tion, one that historians would later seize upon as a label for the period.
In 1820 the president was reelected without opposition. The Federalists
were too weak to put up a candidate. Monroe won all the electoral votes
except three abstentions and one vote from New Hampshire for John Quincy
Adams. The Republican party was dominant—for the moment. In fact, it was
about to follow the Federalists into oblivion. Amid the general political con-
tentment of the era, the first party system was fading away, but rivals for the
succession soon began forming new parties.

R E L AT I O N S W I T H B R I TA I NFueling the contentment after the War

of 1812 was a growing trade with Britain (and India). The Treaty of Ghent
had ended the war but left unsettled a number of minor disputes. Subse-
quently two important treaties, the Rush-Bagot Agreement of 1817 and
the Convention of 1818, removed several potential causes of irritation. In
the first, resulting from an exchange of letters between Acting Secretary of
State Richard Rush and the British minister to the United States, Charles
Bagot, the threat of naval competition on the Great Lakes vanished with an
arrangement to limit forces there to several U.S. ships collecting customs
duties. Although the exchange made no reference to the land boundary
between the United States and Canada, its cooperative spirit gave rise to the
tradition of an unfortified border between the two North American coun-
tries, the longest in the world.
The Convention of 1818 covered three major points. It settled the north-
ern limit of the Louisiana Purchase by extending the national boundary
along the 49th parallel west from Lake of the Woods in what would become
Minnesota to the crest of the Rocky Mountains. West of that point the Oregon
Country would be open to joint occupation by the British and the Ameri-
cans, but the boundary remained unsettled. The right of Americans to fish off
Newfoundland and Labrador, granted in 1783, was acknowledged once again.
The chief remaining problem was Britain’s exclusion of American ships
from the British West Indies in order to reserve that lucrative trade for the
British. This remained a chronic irritant, and the United States retaliated
with several measures. Under the Navigation Act of 1817, importation of
West Indian products was restricted to American vessels or vessels belonging
to West Indian merchants. In 1818, U.S. ports were closed to all British ves-
sels arriving from a colony that was legally closed to vessels of the United
States. In 1820, Monroe approved an act of Congress that specified total
 418 • NATIONALISM AND S ECTIONALISM (CH. 10)

B R I T I S H P O S S E S S I O N S
Convention Lake of
of 1818
the Woods
OREGON
COUNTRY
49th parallel
Joint occupation
by Britain and U.S.,
1818
U.S.
TERRITORIES
42nd parallel UNITED
A r ka S TAT E S
nsas Riv
er

Adams-Onís
Nashville

Mis
Treaty Line,
Re

siss
d 1819
SPANISH Rive AT L A N T I C

ippi River
r
PA C I F I C OCEAN
POSSESSIONS
OCEAN Sabine River
Pensacola St. Marks St. Augustine

FLORIDA
Ceded
GULF OF MEXICO by Spain BRITISH
to U.S., 1819

BOUNDARY TREATIES, 0 150 300 Miles

1818–1819 SPANIS
0 150 300 Kilometers H

What territorial terms did the Convention of 1818 settle? How did Andrew
Jackson’s actions in Florida help John Quincy Adams claim the territory from
Spain? What were the terms of the treaty with Spain?

“nonintercourse”—with British vessels, with all British colonies in the

Americas, and even with goods taken to England and reexported. The rap-
prochement with Britain therefore fell short of perfection.

T H E E X T E N S I O N O F B O U N DA R I E S The year 1819 was one of the

more fateful years in American history. Controversial efforts to expand U.S.
territory, an intense financial panic, a tense debate over the extension of
slavery, and several landmark Supreme Court cases combined to bring an
unsettling end to the Era of Good Feelings. The new spirit of nationalism
reached a climax with the acquisition of Florida and the extension of America’s
southwestern boundary to the Pacific, but nationalism quickly began to run
afoul of domestic crosscurrents that would enmesh the nation in sectional
squabbles.
Spanish sovereignty over Florida during the early nineteenth century was
more a technicality than an actuality, and in the calculations of global power,
American leaders assumed that Florida would someday pass to the United
 “An Era of Good Feelings” • 419

States. Spain, once dominant in the

Americas, was now a declining power,
unable to enforce its obligations, under
Pinckney’s Treaty of 1795, to pacify the
Florida frontier. In 1816, U.S. soldiers
clashed with a group of escaped slaves
who had taken over a British fort on the
Apalachicola River in West Florida.
Seminole Indians were soon fighting
white settlers in the area, and in 1817,
Americans burned a Seminole border Unrest in Florida
settlement, killed five of its inhabitants, Portrait of an escaped slave who
and dispersed the rest across the border lived with the Seminoles in Florida.
into Florida.
At that point, Secretary of War Calhoun authorized the use of federal
troops against the Seminoles, and he summoned General Andrew Jackson
from Nashville to take command. Jackson’s orders allowed him to pursue the
offenders into Spanish territory but not to attack any Spanish posts. A frus-
trated Jackson pledged to President Monroe that if the United States wanted
Florida, he could wind up the whole controversy in sixty days.
When it came to Spaniards or Indians, few white Tennesseans—and cer-
tainly not Andrew Jackson—bothered with technicalities. In early 1818,
without presidential approval, Jackson ordered his force of two thousand
federal soldiers, Tennessee volunteers, and Creek allies to cross the border
into Spanish Florida from their encampment in south Georgia. In April the
Americans assaulted a Spanish fort at St. Marks and destroyed Seminole vil-
lages. They also captured and court-martialed two Indian chiefs and two
British traders accused of inciting Indian attacks. Jackson ordered their
immediate execution, an act that outraged the British government and caused
great consternation among President Monroe’s cabinet. But the Tennessee
general kept moving. In May he captured Pensacola, the Spanish capital of
West Florida, established a provisional American government, and then
returned to Tennessee.
Jackson’s exploits excited American expansionists and aroused anger in
Spain and concern in Washington, D.C. Spain demanded the return of its
territory and the punishment of Jackson, but Spain’s impotence was plain
for all to see. Monroe’s cabinet was at first prepared to disavow Jackson’s
actions, especially his direct attack on Spanish posts. Secretary of War Cal-
houn was inclined, at least officially, to discipline Jackson for disregard of
orders—a stand that would later cause bad blood between the two men—but
420 • NATIONALISM AND S ECTIONALISM (CH. 10)

privately confessed a certain pleasure at

Jackson’s expedition. In any case a man
as popular as Jackson was almost invul-
nerable. And he had one important
friend, Secretary of State John Quincy
Adams, who realized that Jackson’s
conquest of West Florida had strength-
ened his own hand in negotiations
under way with the Spanish minister to
purchase the territory. U.S. forces with-
drew from Florida, but negotiations
resumed with the knowledge that the
United States could retake Florida at
Andrew Jackson
any time.
With the fate of Florida a foregone con-
Victor at the Battle of New Orleans,
Indian fighter, and future president. clusion, John Quincy Adams turned his
eye to a larger goal, a precise definition
of the ambiguous western boundary of the Louisiana Purchase and—his
boldest stroke—extension of its boundary to the Pacific coast. In lengthy
negotiations with Spain, Adams gradually gave ground on claims to Texas but
stuck to his demand for a transcontinental line for the Louisiana Territory,
extending that boundary to the Pacific Ocean. In 1819 he convinced the
Spanish to sign the Transcontinental Treaty (also called the Adams-Onís
Treaty), which gave all of Florida to the United States in return for a cash set-
tlement. In addition, the treaty specified that the western boundary of the
Louisiana Purchase would run along the Sabine River and then, in stair-step
fashion, up to the Red River, along the Red, and up to the Arkansas River.
From the source of the Arkansas, it would go north to the 42nd parallel and
thence west to the Pacific coast. A dispute over land claims held up ratifica-
tion for another two years, but those claims were revoked and final ratifica-
tions were exchanged in 1821. Florida became a U.S. territory, and its first
governor, albeit briefly, was Andrew Jackson. In 1845, Florida would achieve
statehood.

CRISES AND COMPROMISES

T H E PA N I C O F 1 8 1 9 John Quincy Adams’s Transcontinental Treaty

of 1819 was a diplomatic triumph and the climactic event of the postwar
nationalism. Even before it was signed, however, two thunderclaps signaled
 Crises and Compromises • 421

the end of the brief Era of Good Feelings and gave warning of stormy
weather ahead: the financial panic of 1819 and the controversy over Mis-
souri statehood. The occasion for the panic was the sudden collapse of
cotton prices after British textile mills spurned high-priced American
cotton in favor of cheaper East Indian cotton. The collapse of cotton
prices set off a decline in the demand for other American goods and sud-
denly revealed the fragility of the prosperity that had begun after the War
of 1812.
New American factories struggled to find markets for their goods. Even
the Tariff of 1816 had not been high enough to eliminate British competi-
tion. Moreover, businessmen, farmers, and land speculators had recklessly
borrowed money to fuel their entrepreneurial schemes. Under the Land Act
of 1800, the government had extended four years’ credit to those who
bought western land. After 1804, one could buy as little as 160 acres at a
minimum price of $1.64 per acre (although in auctions the best land went
for more). In many cases, land speculators had purchased large tracts, pay-
ing only a fourth down, and then sold the parcels to settlers with the under-
standing that the settlers would pay the remaining installments. With the
collapse of crop prices and the decline of land values during and after 1819,
both speculators and settlers saw their income plummet.
The reckless practices of the mushrooming state banks compounded the
economic turbulence. To generate more loans, the state banks issued more
paper money than they could redeem with gold or silver coins. Even the sec-
ond Bank of the United States, which was supposed to bring stability to the
chaotic financial arena, got caught up in the easy-credit mania. Its first presi-
dent yielded to the contagion of the get-rich-quick fever that was sweeping the
country. The proliferation of branches, combined with little supervision by
the central bank, carried the national bank into the same reckless extension of
loans that state banks had pursued. In 1819, just as alert businessmen began to
take alarm, newspapers revealed a case of extensive fraud and embezzlement
in the Baltimore branch of the B.U.S. The disclosure prompted the appoint-
ment of Langdon Cheves, a former congressman from South Carolina, as the
bank’s new president.
Cheves reduced salaries and other costs, postponed the payment of divi-
dends, cut back on the volume of loans, and presented for redemption the
state banknotes that came in, thereby forcing the state-chartered banks to keep
specie reserves. Cheves rescued the bank from near ruin, but only by putting
pressure on the state banks. State banks in turn put pressure on their debtors,
who found it harder to renew old loans or get new ones. In 1822, considering
his task completed, Cheves retired and was succeeded in the following year by
422 • NATIONALISM AND S ECTIONALISM (CH. 10)

Nicholas Biddle of Philadelphia. The Cheves policies were the result rather
than the cause of the panic, but they pinched debtors. Hard times lasted about
three years, and many people blamed the B.U.S. After the panic passed, resent-
ment of the national bank lingered in the South and the West.

THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE Just as the financial panic spread

over the country, another cloud appeared on the horizon: the onset of a
fierce sectional controversy over efforts to expand slavery into the new west-
ern territories. By 1819 the country had an equal number of slave and free
states—eleven of each. The line between them was defined by the southern
and western boundaries of Pennsylvania and the Ohio River. Although slav-
ery lingered in some places north of the line, it was on its way to extinction
there. In the vast region west of the Mississippi River, however, no move had
been made to extend the dividing line across the Louisiana Territory, where
slavery had existed since the days when France and Spain had colonized the
area. At the time, the Missouri Territory encompassed all of the Louisiana
Purchase except the state of Louisiana and the Arkansas Territory. The old
French town of St. Louis became the funnel through which settlers, largely
southerners who brought their slaves with them, rushed westward beyond
the Mississippi River.
In 1819 the House of Representatives was asked to approve legislation
enabling the Missouri Territory to draft a state constitution, its population
having passed the minimum of sixty thousand. At that point, Representative
James Tallmadge Jr., a New York congressman, proposed a resolution pro-
hibiting the transport of more slaves into Missouri, which already had some
ten thousand, and providing freedom at age twenty-five to those slaves born
after the territory’s admission as a state. After brief but fiery exchanges, the
House passed the Tallmadge Amendment on an almost strictly sectional
vote. The Senate rejected it by a similar tally, but with several northerners
joining in the opposition. With population growing faster in the North, a
balance between the two sections could be held only in the Senate. In the
House, slave states had 81 votes, while free states had 105; a balance was
unlikely ever to be restored there.
Maine’s coincidental application for statehood made it easier to arrive at
an agreement. Since colonial times, Maine had been the northern province
of Massachusetts. The Senate decided to link Maine’s request for separate
statehood with Missouri’s and voted to admit Maine as a free state and Mis-
souri as a slave state, thus maintaining the balance between free and slave
states in the Senate. A senator from Illinois, Jesse Thomas, further extended
the so-called Missouri Compromise by an amendment to exclude slavery
 Crises and Compromises • 423

B R I T I S H P O S S E S S I O N S
MAINE
1820
OREGON
COUNTRY
VT NH
Joint occupation Mis MA
si s MICHIGAN NY
by Britain and U.S. si
UNORGANIZED TERRITORY CT

pp
RI

iR.
TERRITORY PA NJ
OH DE
IN MD

R.
IL
Ohio
VA
MISSOURI KY
1821 NC
36˚30⬘ TN
SPANISH ARKANSAS SC
TERRITORY AT L A N T I C
PA C I F I C POSSESSIONS GA
AL OCEAN
OCEAN
MS
LA

FLORIDA
THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE, 1820 TERRITORY
Free states
GULF OF MEXICO BRITISH
Slave states
States and territories covered 0 150 300 Miles

by the compromise SPANIS

0 150 300 Kilometers H

What caused the sectional controversy over slavery in 1819? What were the terms of
the Missouri Compromise? What was Henry Clay’s solution to the Missouri consti-
tution’s ban on free blacks in that state?

from the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of 36°30′, Missouri’s southern
border. Slavery thus would continue in the Arkansas Territory and in the new
state of Missouri but would be excluded from the remainder of the area.
People at that time presumed that the vast area west of Missouri was the
Great American Desert, unlikely ever to be settled. Thus the arrangement
seemed to be a victory for the slave states. By a very close vote the Thomas
Amendment passed the House on March 2, 1820.
Then another problem arose. The pro-slavery faction that dominated
Missouri’s constitutional convention inserted in the proposed state constitu-
tion a proviso excluding free blacks and mulattoes from the state. This clearly
violated the requirement of Article IV, Section 2, of the federal Constitution:
“The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of
Citizens in the several States.” Free blacks were already citizens of many states,
including the slave states of North Carolina and Tennessee, where until the
mid-1830s they also enjoyed voting privileges.
424 • NATIONALISM AND S ECTIONALISM (CH. 10)

The renewed controversy threatened to

unravel the deal to admit Missouri as a
state until Henry Clay formulated a “sec-
ond” Missouri Compromise whereby
Missouri’s admission as a state would
depend upon assurance from the Mis-
souri legislature that it would never
deny free blacks their constitutional
rights. It was one of the more artless
dodges in American history, for it
required the legislature to affirm that
the state constitution did not mean what
it clearly said, yet the compromise
worked. The Missouri legislature duly
Henry Clay adopted the pledge while denying that
Clay entered the Senate at twenty-
the legislature had any power to bind the
eight, despite the requirement people of the state to it. On August 10,
that senators be at least thirty 1821, President Monroe proclaimed the
years old. admission of Missouri as the twenty-
fourth state. For the moment the con-
troversy had subsided. “But this momentous question,” Thomas Jefferson
wrote to a friend after the first compromise, “like a firebell in the night awak-
ened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the
Union.”

J U D I C I A L N AT I O N A L I S M

JOHN MARSHALL, CHIEF JUSTICE Meanwhile, the spirit of nation-

alism still flourished in the Supreme Court, where Chief Justice John
Marshall preserved Hamiltonian Federalism for yet another generation,
establishing the power of the Supreme Court by his force of mind and
crystalline logic. During Marshall’s early years on the Court (he served
thirty-four years altogether), he affirmed the principle of judicial review of
legislative actions. In Marbury v. Madison (1803) and Fletcher v. Peck (1810),
the Court struck down first a federal law and then a state law as unconstitu-
tional. In the cases of Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee (1816) and Cohens v. Virginia
(1821), the Court assumed the right to consider appeals from state courts on
the grounds that the Constitution, the laws, and the treaties of the United
States could be kept uniformly the supreme law of the land only if the Court
 Judicial Nationalism • 425

could review decisions of state courts.

In the first case, the Court overruled
Virginia’s confiscation of Loyalist prop-
erty after the Revolution because it vio-
lated treaties with Great Britain; in the
second, the Court upheld Virginia’s
right to forbid the sale of lottery tickets.
Justice Marshall viewed Thomas Jeffer-
son and his Republican followers in
Virginia as a dangerous threat to the
new nation. He resolved to sustain his
judicial offensive against the “powerful
and violent party in Virginia” whose John Marshall
goal was to “convert our government Chief justice and pillar of judicial
into a mere league of states.” nationalism.

P ROT E C T I N G C O N T R AC T R I G H TS In the fateful year of 1819, John

Marshall and the Supreme Court made two more major decisions that lim-
ited the powers of states and strengthened the power of the federal govern-
ment. One of them, Dartmouth College v. Woodward, involved an attempt by
the New Hampshire legislature to alter a provision in Dartmouth’s charter,
under which the college’s trustees became a self-perpetuating board. In 1816
the state’s Republican legislature, offended by this relic of monarchy and even
more by the Federalist majority on the board, placed Dartmouth under a new
board named by the governor. The original trustees sued and lost in the state
courts but, with Daniel Webster as counsel, won on appeal to the Supreme
Court. The college’s original charter, Marshall said, was a valid contract that
the legislature had impaired, an act forbidden by the Constitution. This
decision implied a new and enlarged definition of contract that seemed to
put private corporations beyond the reach of the states that chartered them.
Thereafter states commonly wrote into the charters incorporating businesses
and other organizations provisions making them subject to modification.
Such provisions were then part of the “contract.”

S T R E N G T H E N I N G T H E F E D E R A L G O V E R N M E N T The second
major Supreme Court case of 1819 was John Marshall’s single most impor-
tant interpretation of the constitutional system: McCulloch v. Maryland.
James McCulloch, a clerk in the Baltimore branch of the Bank of the United
States, had failed to affix state revenue stamps to banknotes as required by a
Maryland law taxing the notes. Indicted by the state, McCulloch, acting for
426 • NATIONALISM AND S ECTIONALISM (CH. 10)

the bank, appealed to the Supreme Court, which handed down a unanimous
judgment upholding the power of Congress to charter the bank and deny-
ing any right of the state to tax it. In a lengthy opinion, Marshall rejected
Maryland’s argument that the federal government was the creature of
sovereign states. Instead, he argued, it arose directly from the people act-
ing through the state conventions that had ratified the Constitution.
Whereas sovereignty was divided between the states and the national gov-
ernment, the latter, “though limited in its powers, is supreme within its
sphere of action.”
Marshall went on to endorse the doctrine of the federal government’s
having implied constitutional powers. The “necessary and proper” clause of
the Constitution, he argued, did not mean “absolutely indispensable.” The
test of constitutionality was, in his view, a practical one: “Let the end be
legitimate, let it be within the scope of the Constitution, and all means
which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not
prohibited, but consistent with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, are
constitutional.”
Maryland’s effort to tax the national bank conflicted with the supreme
law of the land. One great principle that “entirely pervades the Constitu-
tion,” Marshall wrote, is “that the Constitution and the laws made in pur-
suance thereof are supreme: . . . they control the Constitution and laws of
the respective states, and cannot be controlled by them.” The effort by a
state to tax a federal bank therefore was unconstitutional, for the “power to
tax involves the power to destroy”—which was precisely what the legisla-
tures of Maryland and several other states had in mind with respect to the
national bank.

R E G U L AT I N G I N T E R S TAT E C O M M E R C EJohn Marshall’s last great

decision, Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), established national supremacy in regulat-
ing interstate commerce. In 1808, Robert Fulton and Robert R. Livingston
(Jefferson’s minister to France in 1801), who pioneered commercial use of
the steamboat, won from the New York legislature the exclusive right to
operate steamboats on the state’s rivers and lakes. Fulton and Livingston
then gave Aaron Ogden the exclusive right to navigate the Hudson River
between New York and New Jersey. Thomas Gibbons, however, operated
ships under a federal license that competed with Ogden. On behalf of a
unanimous Court, Marshall ruled that the monopoly granted by the state to
Ogden conflicted with the federal Coasting Act, under which Gibbons oper-
ated. Congressional power to regulate commerce, the Court said, “like all
others vested in Congress, is complete in itself, may be exercised to its
 Judicial Nationalism • 427

Deck life on the Paragon (1811–1812)

The Paragon, “a whole floating town,” was the third steamboat operated on the
Hudson River by Robert Fulton and Robert R. Livingston.

utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations other than are prescribed in

the Constitution.”
The opinion stopped just short of designating an exclusive federal power
over commerce, and later cases would clarify the point that states had a con-
current jurisdiction so long as it did not come into conflict with federal
action. For many years there was in fact little federal regulation of com-
merce, so that in striking down the monopoly created by the state, Marshall
had opened the way to extensive development of steamboat navigation and,
soon afterward, railroads. Economic expansion often depended upon judi-
cial nationalism. An elderly Thomas Jefferson cringed at the judicial nation-
alism practiced by John Marshall. The Court’s ruling in the Gibbons case, the
eighty-two-year-old former president said, culminated the “rapid strides
with which the Federal branch of our Government is advancing towards the
usurpation of all the rights reserved to the States, and the consolidation in
itself of all powers, foreign and domestic.”
428 • NATIONALISM AND S ECTIONALISM (CH. 10)

N AT I O N A L I S T D I P L O M A C Y

THE N O RT H W E S T In foreign affairs, too, nationalism prevailed.

Within a few years of final approval of John Quincy Adams’s Transcontinen-
tal Treaty in 1819, the secretary of state drew another important transconti-
nental boundary line. Spain had abandoned its claim to the Oregon Country
above the 42nd parallel, but in 1821 the Russian czar claimed the Pacific
coast as far south as the 51st parallel, which in the American view lay within
the Oregon Country. In 1823, Secretary of State Adams contested “the right
of Russia to any territorial establishment on this continent.” The U.S. gov-
ernment, he informed the Russian minister, assumed “that the American
continents are no longer subjects for any new European colonial establish-
ments.” His protest resulted in a treaty signed in 1824, whereby Russia,
which had more pressing concerns in Europe, accepted the line of 54°40' as
the southern boundary of its claim. In 1825 a similar agreement between
Russia and Britain gave the Oregon Country clearly defined boundaries,
although it was still subject to joint occupation by the United States and
Great Britain under their agreement of 1818. In 1827 both countries agreed
to extend indefinitely the provision for joint occupation of the Oregon
region, subject to termination by either power.

THE MONROE DOCTRINE Secretary of State Adams’s disapproval of

further hemispheric colonization had clear implications for Latin America
as well. One consequence of the Napoleonic Wars raging across Europe and
the French occupation of Spain and Portugal was a series of wars of libera-
tion in colonial Latin America. Within little more than a decade after the flag
of rebellion was first raised in 1811, Spain had lost almost its entire empire
in the Americas. All that was left were the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico
and the colony of Santo Domingo on the island of Hispaniola.
In 1823, rumors emerged that France wanted to restore the Spanish king’s
power over Spain’s empire in the Americas. President James Monroe and
Secretary of War John C. Calhoun were alarmed at the possibility, although
Secretary of State John Quincy Adams took the more realistic view that any
such action was unlikely. The British foreign minister, George Canning, told
the U.S. minister to London that the two countries should jointly oppose any
incursions by France or Spain in the Western Hemisphere.
Monroe at first agreed, with the support of his advisers Jefferson and Madi-
son. Secretary of State Adams, however, urged Monroe and the cabinet to pro-
claim a unilateral policy against the restoration of Spain’s control over its
colonies. “It would be more candid,” Adams said, “as well as more dignified, to
 One-Party Politics • 429

avow our principles explicitly to Russia and France, than to come in as a cock-
boat in the wake of the British man-of-war.” Adams knew that the British navy
would stop any action by European powers in Latin America. The British,
moreover, wanted the United States to agree not to acquire any more Spanish
territory, including Cuba, Texas, and California, but Adams preferred to avoid
such a commitment.
President Monroe incorporated the substance of Adams’s views into his
annual message to Congress in 1823. The Monroe Doctrine, as it was later
called, comprised four major points: (1) that “the American continents . . .
are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any
European powers”; (2) that the political system of European powers was dif-
ferent from that of the United States, which would “consider any attempt on
their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as danger-
ous to our peace and safety”; (3) that the United States would not interfere
with existing European-controlled colonies; and (4) that the United States
would keep out of the internal affairs of European nations and their wars.
At the time the statement drew little attention, either in the United States
or abroad. The Monroe Doctrine, not even so called until 1852, became one
of the cherished principles of American foreign policy, but for the time being
it slipped into obscurity for want of any occasion to invoke it. In spite of
Adams’s affirmation, the United States came in as a cockboat in the wake of
the British man-of-war after all, for the effectiveness of the doctrine de-
pended upon British naval supremacy. The doctrine had no standing in
international law. It was merely a statement of intent sent by an American
president to Congress and did not even draw enough interest at the time for
European powers to acknowledge it.

O N E - PA R T Y P O L I T I C S

Almost from the start of James Monroe’s second term, in 1821, the
jockeying for the presidential succession began. Three members of Monroe’s
cabinet were active candidates: Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, Secretary
of the Treasury William H. Crawford, and Secretary of State John Quincy
Adams. Speaker of the House Henry Clay also hungered for the office. And on
the fringes of the Washington scene, a new force appeared in the person of
former general Andrew Jackson, the scourge of the British, Spanish, Creeks,
and Seminoles, the epitome of what every frontiersman admired, who
became a senator from Tennessee in 1823. All were Republicans, for again no
Federalist stood a chance, but they were competing in a new political world,
430 • NATIONALISM AND S ECTIONALISM (CH. 10)

one complicated by the crosscurrents of nationalism and sectionalism. With

only one party there was in effect no party, for there existed no generally
accepted method for choosing a “regular” candidate.

The tradition of selecting presiden-

P R E S I D E N T I A L N O M I N AT I O N S
tial candidates by congressional caucus, already under attack in 1816, had dis-
appeared in the wave of unanimity that reelected Monroe in 1820 without the
formality of a nomination. The friends of William Crawford sought in vain to
breathe life back into “King Caucus,” but only a minority of congressmen
appeared in answer to the call. In 1824 they duly named Crawford for presi-
dent, but the endorsement was so weak as to be more a handicap than an
advantage. Crawford was in fact the logical successor to the Virginia dynasty,
a native of the state though now a resident of Georgia. He had flirted with
nationalism but swung back to states’ rights and assumed leadership of the
Radicals, a faction that included Old Republicans and those who distrusted
the nationalism of John Quincy Adams and John C. Calhoun. Crawford’s
candidacy foundered from the beginning, for the candidate had been stricken
in 1823 by a disease that left him half-paralyzed and half-blind. His friends
protested that he would soon be well, but he never did fully recover.
Long before the Crawford caucus met in early 1824, indeed for two years
before, the country had broken out in a rash of presidential endorsements by
state legislatures and public meetings. In 1822 the Tennessee legislature
named Andrew Jackson as their choice to succeed Monroe. In 1824 a mass
meeting of Pennsylvanians added their endorsement. Jackson, who had pre-
viously kept silent, responded that while the presidency should not be
sought, it should not be declined. The same meeting in Pennsylvania named
Calhoun for vice president, and Calhoun accepted. The youngest of the can-
didates, he was content to take second place and bide his time. Meanwhile,
the Kentucky legislature had named its favorite son, Henry Clay, in 1822.
The Massachusetts legislature nominated John Quincy Adams in 1824.
Of the four candidates, only two had clearly defined platforms, and the
outcome was an early lesson in the danger of committing oneself on the
issues too soon. Crawford’s friends emphasized his devotion to states’ rights
and strict construction of the Constitution. Clay, on the other hand, cham-
pioned his vision of the “American System” of economic nationalism: a
national bank, a protective federal tariff designed to make imported
European goods so expensive so that Americans would buy relatively cheap
American-made goods, high prices for federal land sales, and a program of
federally funded internal improvements to bind the country together and
strengthen its economy. Adams was close to Clay, openly dedicated to the
 One-Party Politics • 431

national government providing internal improvements to stimulate eco-

nomic development but less strongly committed to the tariff. Jackson, where
issues were concerned, carefully avoided commitment so as to capitalize on
his popularity as the hero of the Battle of New Orleans at the end of the War
of 1812. Thomas Jefferson viewed Jackson’s candidacy with horror: “He is
one of the most unfit men I know.”

THE “C O R RU P T BARGAIN” The 1824 election featured squabbling

personalities and sectional partisanship more than substantive issues.
Adams, the only northern candidate, carried New England, the former bas-
tion of Federalism, and won most of New York’s electoral votes. Clay took
Kentucky, Ohio, and Missouri. Crawford carried Virginia, Georgia, and
Delaware. Jackson swept the South, along with Illinois and Indiana, and,
with Calhoun’s support, the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New
Jersey. All candidates got scattered votes elsewhere. In New York, where Clay
was strong, his supporters were outmaneuvered by the Adams forces in the
legislature, which at that time still chose the presidential electors.
The result of the 1824 election was inconclusive. In the Electoral College,
Jackson had 99 votes, Adams 84, Crawford 41, Clay 37. In the popular vote
the trend ran about the same: Jackson, 154,000; Adams, 109,000; Crawford,

The presidential “race” of 1824

John Quincy Adams, William Crawford, and Andrew Jackson stride to the finish
line (on the left) as Henry Clay lags behind (far right).
432 • NATIONALISM AND S ECTIONALISM (CH. 10)

47,000; and Clay, 47,000. Whatever else might have been said about the out-
come, one thing seemed apparent—it was a defeat for Clay’s American Sys-
tem promoting national economic development: New England and New
York opposed his call for the federal funding of internal improvements; the
South and the Southwest rejected his promotion of the protective tariff. Sec-
tionalism had defeated the national economic program.
Yet Clay, the dynamic advocate of economic nationalism and Speaker of
the House, now assumed the role of president maker, as the deadlocked
election was thrown into the House of Representatives, where the Speaker’s
influence was decisive. Clay disdained all three of the other candidates, but he
had little trouble choosing, since he regarded Jackson as a “military chieftain”
unfit for the office. “I cannot believe,” he muttered, “that killing 2,500 Eng-
lishmen at New Orleans qualifies for the various, difficult and complicated
duties of the Chief Magistracy.” He eventually threw his support to John
Quincy Adams. Clay disliked Adams, and vice versa, but Adams supported
the high tariffs, internal transportation improvements, and strong national
bank that comprised Clay’s American System. Clay also expected Adams to
name him secretary of state. Whatever the reasons, Clay’s decision to support
Adams backfired on the Kentuckian’s own aspirations for the White House.
The final vote in the House, which was by state, carried Adams to victory with
13 votes to Jackson’s 7 and Crawford’s 4.
It was a costly victory, for the result united Adams’s foes and crippled his
administration before it got under way. Andrew Jackson dismissed Henry
Clay as “the Judas of the West,” who thereafter would be burdened by the
charge that he had entered into a selfishly “corrupt bargain” whereby
Adams gained the presidency and then named Clay his secretary of state, an
office from which three successive presidents had risen. Adams’s Puritan
conscience could never quite overcome a sense of guilt at the maneuverings
that were necessary to gain his election. Likewise, Clay would never live
down Jackson’s claim that he had sold his vote to make Adams president.
Jackson supporters launched a campaign to elect him president in 1828
almost immediately after the 1824 decision. The Crawford people, including
Martin Van Buren, “the Little Magician” of New York politics, soon moved
into the Jackson camp. So, too, did the new vice president, John C. Calhoun,
of South Carolina, who had run on the ticket with both Adams and Jackson
but favored the general from Tennessee.

J O H N Q U I N C Y A DA M S Short, plump, peppery John Quincy Adams was

one of the ablest men, hardest workers, and finest intellects ever to enter the
White House. Yet he also was one of the most ineffective presidents. Like his
 One-Party Politics • 433

father, the aristocratic Adams lacked the

common touch and the politician’s gift
for compromise. A stubborn, snobbish
man who saw two brothers and two
sons die from alcoholism, he suffered from
chronic bouts of depression that rein-
forced his grim self-righteousness and
self-pity, qualities that did not endear him
to fellow politicians. He described himself
as “a man of reserved, cold, austere, and
forbidding manners.” He acknowledged
the “defects” in his character, but admit-
ted that he could not change his ways.
His idealism also irritated the party John Quincy Adams
faithful. He refused to play the game of Adams was a brilliant man but an
patronage, arguing that it would be dis- ineffective leader.
honorable to dismiss “able and faithful
political opponents to provide [government jobs] for my own partisans.” In
four years he removed only twelve officeholders. His first message to Congress
included a grandiose blueprint for national development, set forth in such a
blunt way that it became a disaster of political ineptitude.
In the boldness and magnitude of its conception, Adams’s vision of an
expanded federal government outdid the plans of both Alexander Hamilton,
James Monroe, and Henry Clay. The federal government, the new president
stressed, should promote internal improvements (roads, canals, harbors, and
bridges), create a national university, finance scientific explorations, build
astronomical observatories, and create a department of the interior to manage
the vast federal lands. To refrain from using broad federal powers, Adams
insisted, “would be treachery to the most sacred of trusts.”
The merits of Adams’s bold message to Congress were obscured by an
unhappy choice of language. For the son of John Adams to praise the example
“of the nations of Europe and of their rulers” was downright suicidal. With one
fell swoop, he had revived all the Republican suspicions of the Adamses as closet
monarchists and provoked the emergence of a new party system. The minority
who cast their lot with the economic nationalism of Adams and Clay were turn-
ing into National Republicans; the opposition, the growing party of those sup-
porting Andrew Jackson, now called themselves the Democratic Republicans;
they would eventually drop the name Republican and become Democrats.
Adams’s headstrong plunge into nationalism and his refusal to play the
game of backroom politics condemned his administration to utter frustration.
434 • NATIONALISM AND S ECTIONALISM (CH. 10)

Congress ignored his ambitious domestic proposals, and in foreign affairs the
triumphs that he had scored as secretary of state had no sequels. The climactic
effort of Adams’s opponents to discredit him centered on the tariff issue. The
panic of 1819 had elicited calls in 1820 for a higher tariff, but the effort failed
by one vote in the Senate. In 1824 the tariff advocates renewed the effort, with
greater success. The Tariff of 1824 favored the middle Atlantic and New
England manufacturers by raising duties on imported woolens, cotton, iron,
and other finished goods. Clay’s Kentucky won a tariff on hemp, and a tariff
on raw wool brought the wool-growing interests to the support of the mea-
sure. Additional revenues were raised with duties on sugar, molasses, coffee,
and salt.
At this point, Jackson’s supporters saw a chance to advance their candi-
date through an awkward scheme hatched by John C. Calhoun. The plan was
to present an alternative tariff bill with such outrageously high duties on raw
materials that the manufacturers of the East would join the commercial
interests there and, with the votes of the agricultural South and Southwest,
defeat the measure. In the process, Jackson supporters in the Northeast
could take credit for supporting the tariff, and wherever it fit their interests,
other Jacksonians elsewhere could take credit for opposing it—while Jackson
himself remained in the background. John Randolph of Roanoke saw
through the ruse. The bill, he asserted, “referred to manufactures of no sort
or kind, but the manufacture of a President of the United States.”
The complicated scheme helped elect Jackson, but in the process Cal-
houn became a victim of his own machinations. Instead of being defeated,
the high tariffs ended up becoming law. Calhoun had calculated upon nei-
ther the defection of Van Buren, who supported a crucial amendment to
satisfy the woolens manufacturers, nor the growing strength of manufac-
turing interests in New England. Daniel Webster, now a senator from
Massachusetts, explained that he was ready to deny all he had said against
the tariff because New England had built up its manufactures on the under-
standing that high tariffs would continue to protect them from foreign
competition.
When the tariff bill passed, in May 1828, it was Calhoun’s turn to explain
his newfound opposition to the gospel of tariff protection, and nothing so
well illustrates the flexibility of constitutional principles as the switch in
positions by Webster and Calhoun. Back in South Carolina, Calhoun pre-
pared the South Carolina Exposition and Protest (1828), which was issued
anonymously along with a series of resolutions by the South Carolina legis-
lature. In that document, Calhoun declared that a state could nullify an act
of Congress that it found unconstitutional.
 One-Party Politics • 435

T H E E L E C T I O N O F A N D R EW JAC K S O N Thus the stage was set

for the contentious election of 1828, which might more truly than that of
1800 be called a revolution. But if the issues of the day had anything to do
with the election, they were hardly visible in the campaign, in which parti-
sans on both sides reached depths of viciousness that had not been
plumbed since 1800. Those campaigning for a second term for Adams
denounced Jackson as a hot-tempered, ignorant barbarian, a participant in
repeated duels and frontier brawls, a man whose fame rested upon his repu-
tation as a killer. In addition, his enemies dredged up the story that Jackson
had lived in adultery with his wife, Rachel, before they were legally mar-
ried; in fact they had lived together for two years in the mistaken belief
that her divorce from her former husband was final. As soon as the official
divorce had come through, Andrew and Rachel had remarried. A furious
Jackson blamed Henry Clay for the campaign slurs against his wife’s
chastity. He bitterly dismissed his longtime enemy as “the basest, meanest
scoundrel that ever disgraced the image of his god.”
The Jacksonians, however, got in their licks against Adams, condemning
him as a man who had lived his adult life on the public treasury, who had
been corrupted by foreigners in the courts of Europe, and who had allegedly
delivered up an American girl to serve the lust of Czar Alexander I while serv-
ing as minister to Russia. They
called Adams a gambler and a
spendthrift for having bought a
billiard table and a chess set for
the White House and a puritan-
ical hypocrite for despising the
common people and warning
Congress to ignore the will of
its constituents. He had gained
the presidency in 1824, the Jack-
sonians claimed, by a “corrupt
bargain” with Henry Clay.
In the campaign of 1828, Jack-
son held most of the advantages.
As a military victor, he projected
patriotism. As a fabled Indian
fighter, he was a hero in the fron-
tier states. As a planter, lawyer, “The Man of the People!”
and slaveholder, he had the trust This 1828 handbill identifies Jackson with
of southern planters. Debtors the democratic impulse of the time.
 436 • NATIONALISM AND S ECTIONALISM (CH. 10)

and local bankers who hated the national bank also embraced Jackson. In
addition, his vagueness on the issues protected him from attack by interest
groups. Not least of all, Jackson benefited from a growing spirit of democracy
in which the common folk were no longer satisfied to look to their betters for
leadership, as they had done in the eighteenth century. It had become politi-
cally fatal to be labeled an aristocrat.
Since the Revolution and especially since 1800, more and more white men
were gaining the right to vote. The traditional story is that a surge of Jack-
sonian democracy came out of the West like a great wave, supported mainly
by small farmers, leading the way for the East. But in the older seaboard
states there were other forces enabling more men to vote: the Revolutionary
doctrine of equality and the feeling on the part of the workers, artisans, and

NH 8 ME
OREGON NR 8
VT 7 DR 1
COUNTRY NY
MICHIGAN
TERRITORY DR 20 MA 15
UNORGANIZED
NR 16
TERRITORY RI 4
PA CT 8
OH 28 NJ 8
IL IN 16
3 5 DE 3
VA MD NR 6
MO 24
3 KY 14 DR 5
NC
AR TN 11 15
TERR. SC
MS AL GA 11
3 5 9
LA
5
FLORIDA
TERRITORY

THE ELECTION OF 1828 Electoral Vote Popular Vote

Andrew Jackson 178 647,000
(Democratic Republican)
John Quincy Adams 83 509,000
(National Republican)

How did the two presidential candidates, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson,
portray each other? Why did Jackson seem to have the advantage in the election of
1828? How did the broadening of suffrage affect the presidential campaign?
 One-Party Politics • 437

small merchants of the towns, as well as small farmers and landed gentry,
that broader voting rights provided a means to combat the traditional power
exercised by the economic and social elites. From the beginning, Pennsylva-
nia had opened the ballot box to all adult males who paid taxes; by 1790,
Georgia and New Hampshire had similar arrangements. Vermont, in 1791,
became the first state with universal manhood suffrage, having first adopted
it in 1777. Kentucky, admitted to the Union in 1792, became the second.
Tennessee, admitted in 1796, had only a modest taxpaying qualification.
New Jersey in 1807 and Maryland and South Carolina in 1810 abolished
property and taxpaying requirements for voting, and after 1815 the new
states of the West came in with either white manhood suffrage or a low tax-
paying requirement. Connecticut in 1818, Massachusetts in 1821, and New
York in 1821 abolished their property requirements for voting.
Along with the broadening of white male suffrage went a liberalization of
other features of government. Representation was reapportioned more nearly
in line with the population. An increasing number of officials, even judges,
were chosen by popular vote rather than appointment. Final disestablish-
ment of the Congregational Church in New England as the official state
church came in Vermont in 1807, in New Hampshire in 1817, in Connecticut
in 1818, in Maine in 1820, and in Massachusetts in 1834. In 1824 six state leg-
islatures still chose presidential electors. By 1828 the popular vote prevailed
in all but South Carolina and Delaware and by 1832 in all but South Carolina.
The extension of voting rights to the poorest people brought a new type
of politician to the fore: the man who had special appeal to the masses or
knew how to organize the people for political purposes and who became a
vocal advocate of the people’s right to rule. Andrew Jackson fit perfectly the
ideal of this more democratic political world, a rustic leader sprung from the
people rather than a member of the aristocracy, a frontiersman of humble
origin who had scrambled up the political ladder by will and tenacity. “Adams
can write,” went one of the campaign slogans, “but Jackson can fight.” He
could write, too, but he once said that he had no respect for a man who could
think of only one way to spell a word.
When the 1828 election returns came in, Jackson had won by a comfortable
margin. The electoral vote was 178 to 83, and the popular vote was about
647,000 to 509,000 (the figures vary). Adams had won New Jersey, Delaware,
all of New England (except 1 of Maine’s 9 electoral votes), 16 of the 36 from
New York, and 6 of the 11 from Maryland. All the rest belonged to Jackson.
The new president, still seething with resentment at the way his opponents
had besmirched the reputation of his deceased wife, was eager to launch a
new era in American political development.
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Economic Policies The Tariff of 1816 protected American manufacturing,

and the second Bank of the United States provided a stronger currency, thus
strengthening the national economy. Henry Clay’s American System anticipated
an active economic role for the federal government with its vision of a national
bank, a protective tariff, and federally funded internal improvements, such as
roads and canals.
• Era of Good Feelings James Monroe’s term in office was initially dubbed the
Era of Good Feelings because it began with peace and prosperity. The demise of
the Federalists ended the first party system in America, leaving the Republicans
as the only political party in the nation. The seeming unity of the Republicans
was shattered by the election of 1824, which Andrew Jackson lost as a result of
what he believed was a “corrupt bargain” between John Quincy Adams and
Henry Clay.
• Sectionalism The growth of the cotton culture transformed life in the South,
in part by encouraging the expansion of slavery. As settlers streamed west, the
extension of slavery into the new territories became the predominant concern of
southern politicians. The Missouri Compromise, a short-term solution, exposed
the emotions and turmoil that the problem generated. During this time, the
North changed as well, as an urban middle class emerged.
• Strengthening the Federal Government Led by John Marshall, the Supreme
Court used the “necessary and proper” clause to endorse the exercise of implied
constitutional powers of the federal government. In striking down a federal law
and a state law, the Court confirmed the primacy of the national judiciary. Fur-
ther decisions of the Marshall court protected contract rights against state action
and established the federal government’s supremacy over interstate commerce.
• The Monroe Doctrine The main diplomatic achievements of the period
between the end of the War of 1812 and the coming civil war concerned
America’s boundaries and the resumption of trade with its old enemy, Great
Britain. The Monroe Doctrine expressed the idea that the Americas were
no longer open to colonization and proclaimed American neutrality in
European affairs.
 CHRONOLOGY

1810
1815
1816
Supreme Court issues Fletcher v. Peck decision
Construction of the National Road begins
Second Bank of the United States is established
First protective tariff goes into effect
1819 Supreme Court issues McCulloch v. Maryland decision
United States and Spain agree to the Transcontinental (Adams-
Onís) Treaty
Tallmadge Amendment
1821 Florida becomes a territory
Missouri becomes a state
1823 President Monroe enunciates the principles of the Monroe Doctrine
1824 Supreme Court issues Gibbons v. Ogden decision
John Quincy Adams wins the presidential election by what some
critics claim is a “corrupt bargain” with Henry Clay
1828 John C. Calhoun publishes the South Carolina Exposition and Protest
Andrew Jackson wins presidential election

KEY TERMS & NAMES

second Bank of the United American System p. 415 36º30′ p. 423
States p. 412
James Monroe p. 416 Monroe Doctrine p. 429
John C. Calhoun p. 412
Oregon Country p. 417 “corrupt bargain” p. 432
Henry Clay p. 412
panic of 1819 p. 421 John Quincy Adams
Daniel Webster p. 412 p. 432
Missouri Compromise
Tariff of 1816 p. 413 p. 422

11
THE JACKSONIAN ERA

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• To what extent did Andrew Jackson’s election initiate a new era in

American politics?
• What was Jackson’s attitude toward federal involvement in the
economy?
• How did Jackson respond to the nullification controversy?
• What happened to the Indians living east of the Mississippi River
by 1840?
• Why did a new party system of Democrats and Whigs emerge?

I n his extraordinary novel Moby-Dick (1851), Herman Melville

celebrated the “democratic dignity” of ordinary men. After all,
he wrote, it was the “great democratic God” who picked “up
Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a warhorse;
who didst thunder him higher than a throne!” Jackson did indeed take the
nation by storm. Although small in stature (he was over six feet tall but
weighed only 140 pounds) he was a larger-than-life figure. His distinctive
personality and invincible popularity initiated a new era in American poli-
tics and social development. No political figure was so widely loved nor
more deeply hated.
As a self-made soldier, politician, and slave-owning land speculator from
the backcountry, Jackson symbolized the changing social scene and the
emergence of the “common man” in political life. The nation he prepared to
govern was vastly different from that led by George Washington and Thomas
Jefferson. In 1828 the United States boasted twenty-four states and nearly
13 million people, many of them recent arrivals from Germany and Ireland.
The national population was growing at a phenomenal rate, doubling every
 The Jacksonian Era • 441

twenty-three years. An extraordinary surge in foreign demand for cotton and

other goods, along with British investment in American enterprises, helped
fuel an economic boom and a transportation revolution. That President-elect
Jackson rode to his inauguration in a horse-drawn carriage and left Wash-
ington eight years later on a train symbolized the dramatic changes occurring
in the pace and tone of American life.
Perhaps the most sweeping change during the first half of the nineteenth
century was the maturation of American capitalism: an agrarian economy
that earlier had produced crops and goods for household use or local
exchange expanded into a market-oriented capitalist economy engaged in
national and international commerce. New canals and roads opened up
eastern markets to western farmers in the Ohio Valley. The new “market
economy” brought with it greater regional specialization. The South grew
more dependent upon cotton, while the Northeast witnessed the first stages
of industrialization. As more land was put into cultivation and commercial
farmers came to rely upon banks for credit to buy land, seed, and tools,
farmers were subject to greater risks and the volatility of the commodities
markets. In the midst of periodic financial panics and sharp business
depressions, farmers unable to pay their debts lost their farms to “corrupt”
banks, which they believed had engaged in reckless speculative ventures and
benefited from government favoritism.
For many people, the transition from household farming to market-based
commercial agriculture and capitalist manufacturing was painful and unset-
tling. A traditional “Jeffersonian” economy of artisans and craftsmen and
subsistence farmers was giving way to a modern system of centralized work-
shops, mills, and factories dependent upon large numbers of wage laborers.
Chartered corporations and commercial banks began to dominate local
economies. With the onset of the factory system and urban commerce, rural
people migrated from farms and shops to towns and factories and in the pro-
cess became dependent upon others for their food, clothing, and livelihood.
This transformation called into question the traditional assumption of
Thomas Jefferson and others that a republic could survive only if most of its
citizens were independent, self-reliant property owners, neither too rich to
dominate other people nor too poor to become dependent and subservient.
Amid these profound economic and social changes was a widespread
effort to democratize the political process. The Jacksonians sought to
expand economic opportunity and political participation. Yet to call the
Jacksonian era the “age of the common man,” as many historians have, is
misleading. While political participation increased during the Jacksonian
era, most of the common folk remained common folk. The period never
442 • THE JACKSONIAN ERA (CH. 11)

produced true economic and social equality. Power and privilege, for the
most part, remained in the hands of an “uncommon” elite of powerful men.
Jacksonians in power often proved to be as opportunistic and manipulative
as the patricians they displaced. And they never embraced the principle of
economic equality. “Distinctions in society will always exist under every just
government,” Andrew Jackson observed. “Equality of talents, or education,
or of wealth cannot be produced by human institutions.” He and other Jack-
sonians wanted every American to have an equal chance to compete in the
marketplace and in the political arena, but they never sanctioned equality of
results. “True republicanism,” one commentator declared, “requires that
every man shall have an equal chance—that every man shall be free to
become as unequal as he can.” But in the afterglow of Jackson’s electoral vic-
tory, few observers troubled with such distinctions. It was time to celebrate
the “commoner’s” ascension to the presidency.

SETTING THE S TA G E

Born in 1767 along the border between the two Carolinas, Jackson was
the first president not from a prominent colonial family. His parents typified
the poor, land-hungry Scots-Irish immigrants who streamed into the
Carolinas in the second half of the eighteenth century. Jackson’s father was
killed in a farm accident just before Andrew was born, and his widowed
mother scratched out a meager living as a housekeeper. The extended
Jackson clan engaged in guerrilla warfare against the British during the Rev-
olution. One of Andrew’s brothers was killed in the fighting, and Andrew,
along with his other brother, were captured and abused. Andrew was gashed
and scarred by a British officer’s saber. Thereafter, Jackson carried with him
an enduring rage against the British and an aggressive masculinity punctu-
ated by a hair-trigger temper and brawling personality. After the Revolution
Jackson learned enough about the law to become an attorney in backwoods
Tennessee. He dabbled in farming and land speculation while delighting in
fighting Indians as a militia officer, and he became famous for his ferocity. In
young adulthood, he developed the conviction that it was not enough for a
man to be right; he had to be tough—even ferocious—as well, qualities that
inspired his soldiers to nickname him “Old Hickory.”
Jackson could not have been more different from the aloof aristocrat and
former Harvard professor John Quincy Adams. “I was born for a storm,” the
fearless Jackson boasted; “a calm does not suit me.” Tall and lean, the rough-
hewn Jackson looked gaunt and domineering. His ashen skin, chiseled features,
 Setting the Stage • 443

penetrating eyes, jutting chin, and iron-gray hair accentuated his steely person-
ality. A British visitor said he had a “gamecock look.” The pugnacious Jackson
engaged in numerous personal quarrels, several of which culminated in duels.
During a duel with a man reputed to be the best shot in Tennessee, Jackson nev-
ertheless let his opponent fire first. For his gallantry, the future president
received a bullet wedged next to his heart. He nevertheless straightened himself,
patiently took aim, and killed his foe. “I should have hit him,” Jackson claimed,
“if he had shot me through the brain.” He assaulted another opponent with a
cane, another with his fists. Two bullets remained lodged in his body most of
his life.
As a victorious, wildly popular general, Jackson often behaved as a
tyrant, and at times he ignored orders he did not like. He not only had
deserters and captives executed; he once had a teenager shot for refusing to
comply with an officer’s order. During and then after the Battle of New
Orleans, in 1815, he took control of the chaotic city, declared martial law,
and ruled with an iron fist for two months, imposing a nightly curfew,
censoring the newspaper, jailing city officials (including judges), and
threatening to execute dissenters. After retiring from the army, Jackson
became an attorney, a planter, a Tennessee legislator, and a U.S. senator.
Now, as the nation’s seventh president, he was determined to change the
structure and tone of the federal government. The charismatic new presi-
dent appealed to the hard-pressed farming and working people who were
ripe for political rebellion. Senator Daniel Webster scoffed at the huge,
unruly crowd attending Jackson’s inauguration: “Persons have come 500
miles to see Genl. Jackson; & they really seem to think that the Country is
rescued from some dreadful danger.” At the post-inaugural party at the
White House, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story noted that he had never
seen such “a mixture” of people. “The reign of KING MOB seemed tri-
umphant.” The partying crowd was finally lured out of the White House
when the liquor was carried out onto the lawn. “His passions are terrible,”
said Thomas Jefferson, who deemed the volatile Jackson “dangerous” and
“unfit” for the presidency.
Jackson did view himself as a savior of sorts, as a crusading president deter-
mined to protect “the poor and humble” folk from the “tyranny of wealth and
power.” He was willing to assault the “rich and the powerful” in an effort to
create the egalitarian republic envisioned by Thomas Jefferson. National poli-
tics, he had decided, had fallen under the sway of wealthy bankers and corrupt
public officials preoccupied with promoting their self-interest at the expense
of the public good. Jackson vowed to eliminate such corrupting elitism. Yet
ironies abounded as the audacious new president assumed leadership of a
444 • THE JACKSONIAN ERA (CH. 11)

All Creation Going to the White House

In this depiction of Jackson’s inauguration as president, satirist Robert Cruikshank
draws a visual parallel to Noah’s Ark, suggesting that people of all walks of life were
now welcome in the White House.

self-consciously democratic revival. An ardent Jeffersonian whom Jefferson

himself distrusted, the slave-owning Jackson championed equality (for white
men). He also wanted to lower taxes, reduce government spending, shrink the
federal bureaucracy, pay off the federal debt, destroy the national Bank of the
United States, and cleanse politics of what he viewed as the corrosive effects of
naked self-interest. His first presidential priority was to remove the “ill-fated
race” of Indians from all of the states so that white Americans could exploit
their lands. Yet he wanted to do all of those things while bolstering states’
rights and diminishing federal power. In pursuing these conflicting goals,
Jackson acted quickly—and decisively.

A P P O I N T M E N T S A N D R I VA L R I E S Jackson believed that politicians

should serve only one term in government before returning to the status of
private citizen, for officials who stayed in office too long grew corrupt. So he
vowed to replace federal officials with his own supporters. Opponents called
this wholesale removal of federal employees the “spoils system.” During his
 Setting the Stage • 445

first year in office, however, Jackson replaced only about 9 percent of the
appointed officials in the federal government, and during his entire term he
replaced fewer than 20 percent.
Jackson’s administration was from the outset divided between the parti-
sans of Secretary of State Martin Van Buren and those of Vice President
John C. Calhoun. Much of the political history of the next few years would
turn upon the rivalry of these two statesmen as each jockeyed for position as
Jackson’s successor. Van Buren held most of the advantages, foremost among
them his skill at timing and tactics. Jackson, new to political administration,
leaned heavily upon him for advice. Van Buren had perhaps more skill at
backroom politics than Calhoun and certainly more freedom to maneuver
because his home base of New York was more secure politically than Cal-
houn’s base in South Carolina. But Calhoun, a humorless man of towering
intellect and apostolic zeal, could not be taken lightly. As a visitor remarked
after a three-hour discussion with the bushy-browed Calhoun, “I hate a man
who makes me think so much . . . and I hate a man who makes me feel my
own inferiority.” As vice president, Calhoun was determined to defend
southern interests, especially the preservation of slavery, against the worri-
some advance of northern industrialism and abolitionism.

T H E E AT O N A F FA I R In his battle with Calhoun over political power,

Van Buren had luck on his side. Fate handed him a trump card: the succulent
scandal known as the Peggy Eaton affair. John Eaton was a close friend of Jack-
son who had managed his 1824 presidential campaign. Three months before he
became Jackson’s secretary of war, Eaton married his mistress, who was scarcely
a virtuous woman in the eyes of the proper ladies of Washington. The daughter
of an Irish tavern owner, Margaret (Peggy) O’Neale was a vivacious widow
whose husband had supposedly committed suicide upon learning of her affair
with the then-senator Eaton of Tennesee. Floride Calhoun, the vice president’s
wife, especially objected to Peggy Eaton’s lowly origins and unsavory past. She
pointedly snubbed her, and the cabinet wives followed suit.
Peggy’s plight reminded Jackson of the gossip that had pursued his own
wife, Rachel, and he pronounced Peggy Eaton “chaste as a virgin.” To a friend
he wrote, “I did not come here to make a Cabinet for the Ladies of this place,
but for the Nation.” His cabinet members, however, were unable to cure their
wives of what Van Buren dubbed “the Eaton Malaria.” Mrs. Eaton finally gave
in to the chill and in 1831 withdrew from the social scene in Washington. The
outraged Jackson linked his nemesis, John C. Calhoun, to what he called the
“wicked machinations” by Floride Calhoun against Peggy Eaton. The presi-
dent concluded that Calhoun was one of the “basest and most dangerous
446 • THE JACKSONIAN ERA (CH. 11)

Political scandal
This political cartoon depicts Jackson and his Cabinet welcoming a popular French
dancer and actress to the White House. This cartoon has long been associated with
the Eaton affair.

men living—a man, devoid of principle, and would sacrifice his friend, his
country, and forsake his god, for selfish personal ambition.”
Jackson decided that the only way to restore harmony in his cabinet was
to disband it and start over. On April 4, 1829 the president accepted John
Eaton’s resignation. Four days later he acknowledged the necessity of Van
Buren leaving as well. The rest left the cabinet in following weeks, enabling
Jackson to appoint a new group of advisers. “A revolution has taken place in
the Capitol of the United States,” announced the newspaper headlines. Crit-
ics claimed that Jackson did not have the skill to lead the nation. One news-
paper announced that the ship of state “is sinking and the rats are flying! The
hull is too leaky to mend, and the hero of two wars and a half has not the
skill to keep it afloat.”

I N T E R N A L I M P R OV E M E N T S While Washington social life weathered

the gossip-filled winter of 1829–1830, Van Buren delivered some additional
blows to Calhoun. It was easy to persuade Jackson to oppose federal financing
 Nullification • 447

of transportation improvements,
programs with which Calhoun
had long been identified. Jackson
did not oppose road building per
se, but he had the same constitu-
tional scruples as Madison and
Monroe about using federal funds
to pay for projects within a single
state. In 1830 the Maysville Road
bill, passed by Congress, offered
Jackson a chance for a dual thrust
at rivals John C. Calhoun and
Henry Clay. The bill authorized
the government to buy stock in a
road running from Maysville,
Kentucky, to Clay’s hometown of
Lexington. The proposed road, to
be constructed by the Maysville
Turnpike Road Company, lay
entirely within the state of Ken-
tucky. On that ground, Jackson
vetoed the bill, calling it unconsti- King Andrew the First
tutional, and his decisive action Opponents considered Jackson’s veto of the
garnered widespread acclaim. Maysville Road bill an abuse of power. This
cartoon shows “King Andrew” trampling
Jackson’s opposition to the
on the Constitution, internal improve-
Maysville Road set an important ments, and the Bank of the United States.
precedent, on the eve of the rail-
road age, for limiting federal support of transportation improvements. The
early railroads would be built by state and private capital until at least 1850.

N U L L I F I C AT I O N

C A L H O U N ’ S T H E O RY There is a fine irony to Vice President John C.

Calhoun’s plight in the Jackson administration, for the South Carolinian was
now midway between his early phase as a war-hawk nationalist and his later
phase as a states’ rights sectionalist. Conditions in his home state caused his
political evolution. Throughout the 1820s, South Carolina suffered from
prolonged agricultural depression. The state lost almost seventy thousand
residents to emigration during the 1820s; it would lose nearly twice that
448 • THE JACKSONIAN ERA (CH. 11)

number in the 1830s, with many of them moving to Texas. Most South Car-
olinians blamed the high federal tariff for raising the price of manufactured
goods imported from Europe. Not only were tariff rates increasing, but so
too was the number of products subject to tariffs: new tariffs were placed on
woolens, iron, glass, hemp, and salt. Insofar as tariffs discouraged the sale of
foreign goods in the United States, they reduced the ability of British and
French traders to buy southern cotton because of the loss of export income.
This situation worsened already existing problems of low cotton prices and
thousands of acres of farmland exhausted from perennial planting. Com-
pounding the South Carolinians’ malaise was growing anger over the
North’s moral criticism of slavery. Hardly had the nation emerged from the
Missouri controversy of 1819–1820 when Charleston, South Carolina, was
thrown into panic by the Denmark Vesey slave insurrection of 1822, though
the uprising was quickly—and brutally—put down.
The unexpected passage of the Tariff of 1828, called the “tariff of abomi-
nations” by its critics because it pushed rates up to almost 50 percent of the
value of imported goods, left Calhoun no choice but to join those in opposi-
tion or give up his base of political support in his home state. Calhoun’s
South Carolina Exposition and Protest, written in opposition to the new tar-
iff, had actually been an effort to check the most extreme states’ rights advo-
cates with finespun theory, in which nullification stopped short of secession
from the Union. The unsigned statement accompanied resolutions of the
South Carolina legislature protesting the tariff and urging its repeal. In
essence, Calhoun wanted to preserve
the Union by protecting the minority
rights that the agricultural and slave-
holding South claimed. The fine bal-
ance he struck between states’ rights
and federal authority was actually not
as far removed from Jackson’s own
philosophy as it might have seemed,
but growing tensions between the two
men would complicate the issue. The
flinty Jackson, in addition, was deter-
mined to draw the line at any state
defiance of federal law.
John C. Calhoun
Nor would Calhoun’s theory per-
During the Civil War, the Confederate
government printed, but never issued,
mit any state to take up such defiance
a one-cent postage stamp bearing this lightly. His concept of nullification, or
likeness of Calhoun. interposition, whereby a state could in
 Nullification • 449

effect repeal a federal law, followed that by which the original thirteen states
had ratified the Constitution. He proposed that a special state convention
could declare a federal law null and void within the state’s borders because it
violated the Constitution. One of two outcomes would then be possible: the
federal government would have to abandon the law, or it would have to pro-
pose a constitutional amendment removing all doubt as to its validity. The
immediate issue was the constitutionality of a tariff designed mainly to pro-
tect northern manufacturers from foreign competition.

T H E W E B S T E R - H AY N E D E B AT E South Carolina’s leaders hated the

tariff because it helped northern manufacturers and forced South Carolina
planters to pay higher prices for imported goods. They had hoped that the
election of 1828, in which anti-tariff Calhoun was the Jacksonian candidate
for vice president, would bring about a reduction in the tariff. Yet after Jack-
son assumed the presidency in early 1829, neither he nor Congress saw fit to
reduce the tariff duties. There the issue stood until 1830, when the great
Webster-Hayne debate sharpened the lines between states’ rights and the
Union and provoked a national crisis.
The immediate occasion for the intense sectional debate was the federal gov-
ernment’s ownership of immense tracts of unsettled land, and the question of
what to do with them. Late in 1829, Senator Samuel A. Foot of Connecticut
proposed that the federal government restrict land sales in the West. When the
Foot Resolution came before the Senate in January 1830, Thomas Hart Benton
of Missouri denounced it as a northern effort to slow the settlement of the West
so that the East might maintain its supply of cheap factory labor and its politi-
cal leverage. Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina took Benton’s side.
Hayne saw in the issue a chance to strengthen the political alliance of South and
West reflected in the vote for Jackson. Perhaps by promoting the sale of federal
land in the West, southerners could gain western support for lower tariffs. The
government, said Hayne, endangered the Union by imposing any policy that
would cause a hardship on one section of the nation to the benefit of another.
Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts then rose to defend the East.
Blessed with a thunderous voice and a theatrical flair, Webster was the
nation’s foremost orator and lawyer. “His power,” said a legislator, “is majes-
tic, irresistible.” With the gallery hushed, Webster denied that the East had
ever shown a restrictive policy toward the West. Webster then lured Hayne
into defending states’ rights and upholding the doctrine of nullification
instead of pursuing a coalition with the West.
Hayne took the bait. He defended John C. Calhoun’s South Carolina Expo-
sition, appealing to the example of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of
450 • THE JACKSONIAN ERA (CH. 11)

Daniel Webster
The eloquent Massachusetts senator stands to rebut the argument for nullification
in the Webster-Hayne debate.

1798. He also called attention to the Hartford Convention of 1814, in which

New Englanders had taken much the same position against federal measures
as South Carolina now did. The Union constituted a compact of the states,
Hayne argued, and the federal government, which was their “agent,” could
not be the judge of its own powers, else its powers would be unlimited.
Rather, the states must judge when their agent—the federal government—
had overstepped the bounds of its constitutional authority. The right of state
interposition was “as full and complete as it was before the Constitution was
formed.”
Rebutting the idea that a state could thwart a federal law, “the God-like”
Webster responded by defining a nationalistic view of the Constitution.
From the beginning, he asserted, the American Revolution had been fought
by a united nation rather than by separate colonies. True sovereignty resided
in the people as a whole, for whom both federal and state governments acted
as agents in their respective spheres. If a single state could nullify a law of the
national government, Webster insisted, then the Union would be a “rope of
sand,” a practical absurdity. A state could neither nullify a federal law nor
secede from the Union. The practical outcome of nullification, Webster pre-
dicted, would be a confrontation leading to civil war.
 Nullification • 451

The spectators in the Senate galleries and much of the country at large
thrilled to Webster’s eloquence. The speech made Webster a hero among
National Republicans and a household name throughout the United States.
Webster’s closing statement became an American classic, reprinted in text-
books and committed to memory by young orators: “Liberty and Union, now
and forever, one and inseparable.” In the practical world of coalition politics,
Webster had the better argument, for the Union and majority rule meant
more to westerners, including President Jackson, than did the abstractions of
state sovereignty and nullification. As for the sale of public land, the Foot
Resolution was soon defeated anyway. And whatever one might argue about
the origins of the Union, its evolution would validate Webster’s position: the
states could not act separately from the national government.

T H E R I F T W I T H C A L H O U N As yet, however, Jackson had not spoken

out on the issue. Like John C. Calhoun he was a slaveholder, and he might
have been expected to sympathize with South Carolina, his native state, on
the issue of nullification. Soon all doubt was removed. On April 13, 1830, the
Democratic party hosted the annual Jefferson Day dinner in Washington to
honor the birthday of the former president. President Jackson and Secretary
of State Van Buren agreed that Jackson should present a toast at the banquet
proclaiming his opposition to nullification. When his turn came, after
twenty-four other toasts, many of them extolling states’ rights, Jackson raised
his glass, glared at Vice President Calhoun, and announced, “Our Union—It
must be preserved!” Calhoun, who followed, tried to parry Jackson’s criticism
with a toast to “the Union, next to our liberty most dear! May we all remem-
ber that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States and dis-
tributing equally the benefit and the burden of the Union!” But Jackson had
set off a bombshell that exploded the plans of the states’ righters.
Nearly a month afterward a final nail was driven into the coffin of Cal-
houn’s presidential ambitions. On May 12, 1830, Jackson saw for the first
time a letter confirming reports of Calhoun’s stand in 1818, when as secre-
tary of war in the Monroe administration he had proposed disciplining
General Jackson for his unauthorized invasion of Spanish-held Florida.
A tense correspondence between Jackson and Calhoun followed, ending
with a curt note from Jackson cutting it off. “Understanding you now,” Jack-
son wrote two weeks later, “no further communication with you on this
subject is necessary.”
The acidic rift between the two proud men prompted Jackson to take a
dramatic step: he removed all Calhoun partisans from the cabinet. Before
the end of the summer of 1831, the president had a new cabinet, one entirely
452 • THE JACKSONIAN ERA (CH. 11)

loyal to him. He named Martin

Van Buren, who had resigned
from his post as secretary of
state, minister (ambassador) to
England, and Van Buren departed
for London. Van Buren’s friends
now urged Jackson to repudiate
his previous intention of serv-
ing only one term. They
believed it might be hard to win
the 1832 nomination for the
New Yorker, who had been
charged with intrigues against
Calhoun, and the still-popular
Carolinian might yet gain the
presidency.
Jackson relented and in the
fall of 1831 announced his readi-
ness for one more term, with
the idea of bringing Van Buren
The Rats Leaving a Falling House back from London in time to
During his first term, Jackson was beset by win the presidency in 1836. But
dissension within his administration. Here in 1832, when the Senate recon-
“public confidence in the stability of this vened, Van Buren’s enemies
administration” is toppling.
opposed his London appoint-
ment and gave Calhoun, as vice president, a chance to reject the nomination
with a tie-breaking vote. “It will kill him, sir, kill him dead,” Calhoun told
Senator Thomas Hart Benton. Benton disagreed: “You have broken a minis-
ter, and elected a Vice-President.” So, it turned out, he had. Calhoun’s peev-
ish vote against Van Buren evoked popular sympathy for the New Yorker, who
returned from London and would soon be nominated to succeed Calhoun as
vice president.
Now that his presidential hopes were blasted, Calhoun openly opposed
Jackson by assuming public leadership of the South Carolina nullification-
ists. Jackson sought to defuse the crisis by asking Congress in 1829 to reduce
tariffs on goods “which cannot come in competition with our own prod-
ucts.” Late in the spring of 1830, Congress complied, lowering tariff duties
on consumer products—tea, coffee, salt, and molasses—produced outside
the United States. The lower tariff and the Maysville veto, coming at about
the same time, mollified a few South Carolinians, but nullifiers dismissed
 Nullification • 453

Jackson’s actions as “nothing but sugar plums to pacify children.” By the end
of 1831, Jackson was calling for further tariff reductions to take the wind out
of the nullificationists’ sails. The Tariff of 1832, pushed through by John
Quincy Adams (back in Washington as a congressman), reduced duties on
many items, but tariffs on cloth and iron remained high.

THE SOUTH CAROLINA ORDINANCE South Carolina, a state

dominated by slaveholding planters and consumed by “Carolina fever,” as an
observer called the mania for nullification, seethed with resentment toward
Jackson—and the federal government. One hotheaded South Carolina con-
gressman called the Union a “foul monster.” He and other white South
Carolinians, living in the only state where slaves were a majority of the pop-
ulation, feared that the same federal authority used to impose tariffs might
eventually be used to end slavery. If Congress could create tariffs to benefit
northern industries, the governor of South Carolina claimed, it could also
outlaw slavery. John C. Calhoun declared that the “peculiar domestic institu-
tions of the southern states [slavery]” were at stake.
In November 1832 a South Carolina state convention overwhelmingly
adopted an ordinance of nullification that repudiated the federal tariff acts
of 1828 and 1832 (declaring them “null, void, and no law”) and forbade fed-
eral agents in Charleston to collect the federal tariff duties after February 1,
1833. The reassembled state legislature then provided that any citizen whose
property was seized by federal authorities for failure to pay the duty could
get a state court order to recover twice its value. The legislature chose Robert
Hayne as governor and elected Calhoun to succeed him as senator. Calhoun
promptly resigned as vice president in order to defend nullification on the

South Carolina Ordinance of Nullification

The 1832 ordinance repudiated two federal tariffs designed to protect northern
industries. Though armed conflict was avoided, the same tensions that led to
nullification would later lead to South Carolina’s secession.
454 • THE JACKSONIAN ERA (CH. 11)

Senate floor. New governor Hayne called for a volunteer state militia force of
ten thousand men to protect the state from federal intervention.

JAC K S O N ’ S F I R M R E S P O N S E In the nullification crisis, South Car-

olina found itself standing alone: other southern states expressed sympathy,
but none endorsed nullification. Georgians refused to support nullification
because they were seeking Jackson’s support in removing the Cherokee
Indians from the state. Former president James Madison, now in his eight-
ies, dismissed nullification as “heresy.” Another former president, John
Quincy Adams, exclaimed that nullification would lead to “organized
civil war.”
President Jackson’s response to South Carolina was measured but not
rash—at least not in public. He viewed nullification as an act of treason. In
private he threatened to hang Calhoun and all other traitors—and later
expressed regret that he had failed to hang at least Calhoun, whom he
detested. In his annual message, on December 4, 1832, Jackson announced his
firm intention to enforce the tariff but once again urged Congress to lower
the rates. On December 10 he followed up with a proclamation that charac-
terized the doctrine of nullification as an “impractical absurdity.” He
appealed to the people of his native state not to follow false leaders: “The laws
of the United States must be executed. . . . Those who told you that you might
peaceably prevent their execution, deceived you. . . . Their object is disunion.
But be not deceived by names. Disunion by armed force is treason.”

C L AY ’ S C O M P R O M I S E Jackson then sent federal soldiers to South

Carolina, where the nullifiers mobilized the state militia. In 1833 the presi-
dent requested from Congress a “force bill” authorizing him to use the army
to compel compliance with federal law in South Carolina. Under existing
legislation he already had such authority, but this affirmation would
strengthen his hand. At the same time, he supported a bill in Congress that
would have lowered tariff duties substantially within two years.
The nullifiers postponed enforcement of their ordinances in anticipation
of a compromise. Passage of the compromise bill depended upon the sup-
port of the shrewd Kentucky senator Henry Clay, who finally yielded to
those urging him to save the day. On February 12, 1833, he circulated a plan
to reduce the tariff gradually until 1842. It was less than South Carolina pre-
ferred, but it got the nullifiers out of the dilemma they had created.
On March 1, 1833, Congress passed the compromise tariff and the force
bill, and the next day Jackson signed both. The South Carolina convention
then met and rescinded its nullification of the tariff acts. In a face-saving
 Jackson’s Indian Policy • 455

gesture, it nullified the force bill, for which Jackson no longer had any need.
Both sides were able to claim victory. Jackson had upheld the supremacy of
the Union, and South Carolina had secured a reduction of the federal tariff.
A sulking Calhoun, worn out by the controversy, returned to his plantation.
“The struggle, so far from being over,” he ominously wrote, “is not more
than fairly commenced.”

JAC K S O N ’ S I N D I A N P O L I C Y

If Jackson’s firm stance against nullification constituted his finest hour,

his effort to displace Indians from their ancestral lands in the South was one
of his lowest moments. During the 1820s and 1830s, the United States was
fast becoming a multicultural nation, home to people from many countries.
Most whites, however, were openly racist in their treatment of African Ameri-
cans and Indians. As economic growth reinforced the institution of slavery and
accelerated westward expansion, policy makers struggled to preserve white
racial homogeneity and control. “Next to the case of the black race within our
bosom,” declared former president James Madison, “that of the red [race] on
our borders is the problem most baffling to the policy of our country.”
Yet Andrew Jackson saw nothing baffling about Indian policy. He hated
Indians, viewing them as barbarians who were better off out of the way.
Jackson believed that a “just, humane, liberal policy toward Indians” dic-
tated moving all of them onto territory west of the Mississippi River, to the
Great American Desert, which white settlers would never covet since it was
believed to be fit mainly for lizards and rattlesnakes. State laws in Alabama,
Georgia, and Mississippi had already abolished tribal units and stripped
them of their powers, rejected ancestral Indian land claims, and denied Indi-
ans the right to vote or bring suit or testify in court.

I N D I A N R E M O VA L In response to a request by Jackson, Congress in

1830 narrowly approved the Indian Removal Act. It authorized the president
to give Indians federal land west of the Mississippi River in exchange for the
land they occupied in the East and the South. By 1835 some forty-six thou-
sand Native Americans were relocated at government expense. The policy
was enacted with remarkable speed, but even that was too slow for state
authorities in the South and Southwest. Unlike in the Ohio Valley and the
Great Lakes region, where the flow of white settlement had constantly
pushed Indians westward before it, settlement in the Old Southwest moved
across Kentucky and Tennessee and down the Mississippi, surrounding the
 456 • THE JACKSONIAN ERA (CH. 11)

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INDIAN REMOVAL, 1820–1840 SEMINOLE

Ceded by Indians
MEXICO Ceded to Indians
Battle site

Why did Congress exile the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, Seminoles, and Chero-
kees to territory west of Arkansas and Missouri? How far did the tribes have to
travel, and what were the conditions on the journey? Why were the Indians not
forced to move before the 1830s?

Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles, and Cherokees. These “civilized

tribes” had over the years taken on many of the features of white society. The
Cherokees, for example, had developed a constitution and a written lan-
guage and owned African American slaves.
Most of the northern tribes were too weak to resist the offers of federal
commissioners who, if necessary, used bribery and alcohol to woo the
 Jackson’s Indian Policy • 457

chiefs. On the whole, there was remarkably little resistance. But in Illi-
nois and the Wisconsin Territory, an armed clash erupted in 1832, which
came to be known as the Black Hawk War. Under Chief Black Hawk, the
Sauk and Fox sought to reoccupy land they had abandoned the previous
year. Facing famine and hostile Sioux west of the Mississippi, they were sim-
ply seeking a place to raise a crop of corn. The Illinois militia mobilized
to expel them, chased them into the Wisconsin Territory, and massacred
women and children as they tried to escape across the Mississippi. The Black
Hawk War came to be remembered, however, less because of the atrocities
inflicted on the Indians than because among the participants were two
native Kentuckians later pitted against each other: Lieutenant Jefferson
Davis of the regular army and Captain Abraham Lincoln of the Illinois
volunteers.
In the South, two Indian nations, the Seminoles and the Cherokees, put
up a stubborn resistance to the federal removal policy. The Seminoles of
Florida fought a protracted guerrilla war in the Everglades from 1835 to
1842. But their resistance waned after 1837, when their leader, Osceola, was
seized by treachery under a flag of truce, imprisoned, and left to die at Fort
Moultrie near Charleston Harbor. After 1842 only a few hundred Seminoles
remained, hiding out in the swamps.
Most of the rest had been banished to
the West.

T H E T R A I L O F T E A R S The
Cherokees had, by the end of the eigh-
teenth century, fallen back into the
mountains of northern Georgia and
western North Carolina, settling on
land guaranteed to them in 1791 by a
treaty with the U.S. government. But
when Georgia ceded its western lands
to the federal government in 1802, it
did so on the ambiguous condition
that the United States extinguish all
Indian titles within the state “as early
The Trail of Tears
as the same can be obtained on rea-
Elias Boudinot (Gallegina Watie), edi-
sonable terms.” In 1827 the Chero- tor of the Cherokee Phoenix, signed the
kees, relying upon their established Indian removal treaty in 1835 and was
treaty rights, adopted a constitution subsequently murdered.
458 • THE JACKSONIAN ERA (CH. 11)

in which they declared pointedly that they were not subject to the laws or
control of any other state or nation. In 1828, shortly after Jackson’s election,
Georgia declared that after June 1, 1830, the authority of state law would
extend to the Cherokees living within the boundaries of the state.
The discovery of gold in north Georgia in 1829 whetted the whites’ appetite
for Cherokee land and brought bands of prospectors into the country.
The Cherokees sought relief in the Supreme Court, but in Cherokee Nation v.
Georgia (1831) Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the Court lacked juris-
diction because the Cherokees were a “domestic dependent nation” rather
than a foreign state in the meaning of the Constitution. Marshall added, how-
ever, that the Cherokees had “an unquestionable right” to their lands “until
title should be extinguished by voluntary cession to the United States.” In
1830 a Georgia law had required whites in the Cherokee territory to obtain
licenses authorizing their residence there and to take an oath of allegiance
to the state. Two New England missionaries among the Indians refused to
abide by the law and were sentenced to four years at hard labor. On appeal,
their case reached the Supreme Court as Worcester v. Georgia (1832). The

The Trail of Tears

Thousands of Cherokee Indians died on a nightmarish march from Georgia to
Oklahoma after being forced from their native lands.
 The Bank Controversy • 459

Marshall court held that the Cherokee Nation was “a distinct political commu-
nity” within which Georgia law had no force. The Georgia law was therefore
unconstitutional.
Six years earlier, Georgia had faced down President John Quincy Adams
when he tried to protect the rights of the Creeks. Now Georgia faced down
the Supreme Court with the tacit consent of another president. Andrew
Jackson did nothing to enforce the Court’s decision, claiming that he had no
authority to intervene in Georgia. In fact, Jackson regarded any treaties with
Indians as “an absurdity.” Under the circumstances, there was nothing for
the Cherokees to do but give in and sign a treaty, which they did in 1835.
They gave up their land in the Southeast (about 100 million acres) in
exchange for tracts in the Indian Territory west of Arkansas, $5 million from
the federal government, and expenses for transportation.
By 1838, seventeen thousand Cherokees had departed westward on the
“Trail of Tears,” following other tribes on an eight-hundred-mile journey
marked by the cruelty and neglect of soldiers and private contractors and
scorn and pilferage by whites along the way. Four thousand of the refugees
died on the Trail of Tears. A few held out in the mountains and acquired title
to federal land in North Carolina; thenceforth they were the “Eastern Band”
of Cherokees. A few of the others, especially mixed-blood Creeks who could
pass for white, remained scattered in the Southeast. Only eight thousand of
the exiles survived the forced march to Oklahoma.

T H E BA N K C O N T ROV E R S Y

THE BANK’S OPPONENTS Andrew Jackson’s stance against the national

bank was as unrelenting as his prejudice against Indians. The overriding
national issue in the presidential campaign of 1832 was neither Jackson’s
Indian policy nor South Carolina’s obsession with the tariff. Rather, it was
the question of renewing the charter of the Bank of the United States
(B.U.S.). The charter of the first B.U.S. expired in 1811 and was renewed in
1816 as the Second Bank of the United States.
As the government’s revenues soared during the first half of the nine-
teenth due to the growth of the American economy, the bank became the
most powerful lending institution in the country, a central bank, in effect,
whose huge size enabled it to determine the amount of credit available for
the nation.
Although extremely beneficial to the infant American economy, the
national bank was controversial from the start. Local banks and state
460 • THE JACKSONIAN ERA (CH. 11)

governments—especially in the South and West—feared the scope and

power of the “monopolistic” central bank. Southerners and westerners
tended to prefer gold and silver coins over paper money, which the B.U.S
regularly issued and exchanged for hard currency. Depositors were also con-
cerned that federal government funds might be intermingled with their
money in the same banks. Furthermore, they feared that the small group of
national bank directors manipulated the nation’s financial system to the
advantage of the North and themselves.
Andrew Jackson had absorbed the western attitude of hostility toward the
bank after the panic of 1819. “Every one that knows me,” he told a friend,
knows “that I have always been opposed to the U. States Bank, nay all banks.”
He believed that “hard” money—gold and silver coins—was the only legiti-
mate medium of exchange. He remained skeptical of all forms of paper cur-
rency (hence the irony of his picture now being on twenty-dollar bills), and
he was convinced that the central bank was unconstitutional—no matter
what Chief Justice John Marshall had said in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819).
Under the astute management of haughty Nicholas Biddle, the Second
Bank of the United States had prospered and grown. With twenty-nine
branches and a third of the nation’s total bank deposits, it had facilitated busi-
ness expansion and supplied a stable currency by forcing the 464 state banks to
keep enough gold or silver in their vaults to back their paper currency. Arrayed
against the bank were powerful enemies with conflicting interests: some of
the state and local banks that had been forced to reduce their volume of paper
money, groups of debtors who suffered from the reduction (deflation) in the
money supply, and businessmen and speculators on the make, who wanted
more money in circulation to facilitate their entrepreneurial ventures.
Like Jackson, many westerners and workingmen believed that the bank was,
in Thomas Hart Benton’s word, a “Monster,” a financial monopoly controlled
by a wealthy few. “I think it right to be perfectly frank with you,” Jackson told
Biddle in 1829. “I do not dislike your Bank any more than [I dislike] all banks.”
Jackson characterized bankers as “vipers and thieves.” He was perhaps right in
his instinct that the national bank lodged too much power in private hands,
but he was mistaken in his understanding of the bank’s policies. By issuing
paper money of its own, the bank provided a stable, uniform currency for the
expanding economy as well as a mechanism to control the pace of growth.
In 1829, in his first annual message, the president questioned the national
bank’s constitutionality and asserted (whatever the evidence to the contrary)
that it had failed to maintain a sound, uniform currency. Jackson talked of a
compromise, perhaps a bank completely owned by the government with its
operations confined chiefly to government deposits, its profits payable to the
 The Bank Controversy • 461

Rechartering the Bank

President Andrew Jackson battling the “Hydra-headed” Bank of the United States.

government, and its authority to set up branches in any state dependent upon
the state’s wishes. But Jackson never revealed the precise terms of compro-
mise. The defense of the bank was left up to Biddle.

T H E R E C H A RT E R E F F O RT The Second Bank of the United States’

twenty-year charter would run through 1836, but Nicholas Biddle could not
afford the uncertainty of waiting until then for a renewal. He wrestled with
whether to force the issue of recharter before the election of 1832 or after.
On this point, leaders of the National Republicans, especially Henry Clay
and Daniel Webster (who was legal counsel to the bank as well as a senator),
argued that the time to move was before the election. Clay, already the presi-
dential candidate of the National Republicans, proposed making the renewal
of the bank charter the central election issue. Friends of the bank held a
majority in Congress, and Jackson would risk loss of support in the election
if he vetoed its renewal. But Biddle and his allies failed to grasp the depth of
public suspicion of the bank and succeeded mainly in handing Jackson a
popular issue on the eve of the election. “The Bank,” Jackson told Martin
Van Buren in May 1832, “is trying to kill me. But I will kill it.”
462 • THE JACKSONIAN ERA (CH. 11)

Early in the summer of 1832, both houses of Congress passed the bank
recharter by a comfortable margin. On July 10, 1832, Jackson vetoed the bill,
sending it back to Congress with a ringing denunciation of the bank’s
monopoly and the financial elite that benefited from the B.U.S. Jackson
argued that the bank was unconstitutional no matter what the Court and
Congress had said: “The opinion of the judges has no more authority over
Congress than the opinion of Congress had over the judges, and on that
point the President is independent of both.” Besides, there were substantive
objections apart from the question of constitutionality. Foreign stockhold-
ers in the bank had an undue influence. The bank, Jackson added, had
shown favors to members of Congress and exercised an improper power
over state banks. He called the B.U.S. a “hydra-headed monster of corrup-
tion” that was “dangerous to our liberties.” An effort to overrule Jackson’s
veto failed in the Senate, thus setting the stage for a nationwide financial cri-
sis and a dramatic presidential campaign.

CONTENTIOUS POLITICS

During Andrew Jackson’s two presidential terms, the nature of Ameri-

can political life was transformed. Jackson boldly asserted executive author-
ity at the expense of the Congress and the judiciary. In the process, he
excited public participation in the political process. Jackson was the first
president to view himself as a representative of “the people” warring against
entrenched special interests. His heroic stature and feisty personality
attracted huge crowds and garnered enthusiastic supporters. His crusade
against the national bank helped revive efforts to organize workingmen into
trade unions and to mobilize their voting strength in elections. Jackson also
was an explicitly partisan president. He actively lobbied Congress and bene-
fited from a Democratic party “machine” lubricated by his trusted lieutenant
Martin Van Buren.
But Jackson’s principled political stances also aroused intense opposition.
Some Congressional opponents talked of impeaching him. Partisan civility
disappeared, so much so that Jackson at one point thought his opponents
were trying to kill him. In January 1835 Andrew Jackson was the target of the
nation’s first attempt to assassinate a president. After attending the funeral
service for a member of Congress, the president was leaving the Capitol
when an unemployed house painter named Richard Lawrence emerged from
the shadows and pointed a pistol at the president’s heart—only a few feet
away. When he pulled the trigger, however, it misfired. Jackson lifted his
 Contentious Politics • 463

walking stick and charged at the assailant, who pulled out another pistol, but
it, too, miraculously misfired. While a navy officer wrestled the attacker to
the ground, the president climbed into a carriage that took him to the White
House. For days after the incident, the president was convinced that his
political foes had planned the attack. He even speculated that a Mississippi
senator, George Poindexter, had “hired” the assassin. As it turned out, how-
ever, Richard Lawrence was deranged rather than partisan; he claimed to be
the king of England and had tried to kill his sister. A jury found him not
guilty of attempted murder by reason of insanity and ordered him confined
in an asylum. Still, Jackson and his supporters insisted that the “violent
denunciations fulminated against the President” by his political enemies in
Congress had inspired the attempted assassination. Partisan passions were
indeed superheated during the 1830s. Jackson was both beloved and hated,
and his opponents tried various means to unseat him.

C A M PA I G N I N N O VAT I O N S In 1832, for the first time in a presiden-

tial election, a third party entered the field. The Anti-Masonic party grew

The Verdict of the People

George Caleb Bingham’s painting depicts a socially diverse electorate, suggesting
the increasingly democratic politics of the mid–nineteenth century.
464 • THE JACKSONIAN ERA (CH. 11)

out of popular hostility toward the Masonic fraternal order, a private social
organization that originated in Great Britain early in the eighteenth century.
By the start of the American Revolution, there were a hundred Masonic
“lodges” scattered across the United States with about a thousand members,
including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. By 1830 the number
had grown to two thousand lodges and one hundred thousand Masons,
including Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay.
The Masonic movement generated little opposition until one of its mem-
bers from western New York, fifty-two-year-old William Morgan, disap-
peared in 1826. Morgan had provocatively announced plans to publish a
pamphlet revealing the secret rituals of the Masonic order. Masons, some of
them local officials, had burned down Morgan’s shop and arrested him.
Soon thereafter, someone paid for his release and spirited Morgan away. His
body was never found. Between 1826 and 1831 the state of New York
launched over twenty investigations into Morgan’s disappearance (and pre-
sumed murder) and conducted a dozen trials but never gained a conviction.
Each legal effort aroused more public indignation because most of the
judges, lawyers, and jurors were Masons.
Fears and suspicions of the Masonic order as a tyrannical secret organiza-
tion intent on subverting democracy gave rise to the grassroots political
movement known as the Anti-Masonic party. More than a hundred Anti-
Masonic newspapers emerged across the nation. Their common purpose
was to stamp out an organization that was contaminating the “heart of the
republic.” Former president John Quincy Adams said that disbanding the
“Masonic institution” was the most important issue facing “us and our pos-
terity.” Opposition to a fraternal organization was hardly the foundation
upon which to build a lasting political party, but the Anti-Masonic party had
three important firsts to its credit: in addition to being the first third party, it
was the first party to hold a national nominating convention and the first to
announce a platform, both of which it accomplished in 1831 when 116 dele-
gates from thirteen states gathered in Baltimore to nominate William Wirt
of Maryland for president. The former attorney general in President Mon-
roe’s administration, Wirt was one of the nation’s leading lawyers. He had
decided that Masonry was undermining the “fundamental principles” of
American democracy.
The major parties followed its example by holding national conventions
of their own. In December 1831 the delegates of the National Republican
party assembled in Baltimore to nominate Henry Clay, the charming, yet
imperious legislative genius from Kentucky whose arrogance was matched
only by his burning ambition to be president. Jackson endorsed the idea of a
 Contentious Politics • 465

nominating convention for the Democratic party (the name Republican was
now formally dropped) to demonstrate popular support for its candidates.
To that purpose, the convention, also meeting at Baltimore, first adopted the
two-thirds rule for nomination (which prevailed until 1936, when it became
a simple majority) and then named Martin Van Buren as Jackson’s running
mate. The Democrats, unlike the other two parties, adopted no formal plat-
form at their first convention and relied to a substantial degree upon hoopla
and the popularity of the president to carry their cause.
The outcome was an overwhelming endorsement of Jackson in the Elec-
toral College, with 219 votes to 49 for Clay, and a less overwhelming but
solid victory in the popular vote, 688,000 to 530,000. William Wirt carried
only Vermont, winning seven electoral votes. Wayward South Carolina,
preparing for nullification and unable to stomach either Jackson or Clay,
delivered its 11 votes to Governor John Floyd of Virginia.

T H E R E M O VA L O F G O V E R N M E N T D E P O S I T S Andrew Jackson
interpreted his lopsided reelection as a mandate to further weaken the B.U.S.
He asked Congress to investigate the safety of government deposits in the
bank. After a committee had checked on the bank’s operations, the Calhoun
and Clay forces in the House of Representatives passed a resolution affirm-
ing that government deposits were safe and could be continued. The resolu-
tion passed on March 2, 1833, by chance the same day that Jackson signed
the compromise tariff and the force bill. With the nullification issue out of
the way, Jackson was free to wage war on the bank. He now resolved to
remove all government deposits from the national bank.
When Secretary of the Treasury Louis McLane balked, Jackson fired
him. In the reshuffling, Attorney General Roger B. Taney moved to the
Treasury Department, where he gladly complied with the presidential
wishes, which corresponded to his own views. Taney continued to draw on
government accounts with Biddle’s bank but deposited all new federal
receipts in state banks. By the end of 1833, twenty-three state banks—“pet
banks,” as they came to be called—had the benefit of federal deposits.
Transferring the government’s deposits was a highly questionable action
under the law, and the Senate voted to censure Jackson for it. Biddle
refused to surrender. “This worthy President,” he declared, “thinks that
because he has scalped Indians and imprisoned Judges he is to have his way
with the Bank. He is mistaken.” Biddle ordered that the B.U.S. curtail loans
throughout the nation and demand the redemption of state banknotes in
gold or silver as quickly as possible. He sought to bring the economy to a
466 • THE JACKSONIAN ERA (CH. 11)

halt, create a sharp depression, and reveal to the nation the importance of
maintaining the bank.
Biddle’s contraction policy, however, unwittingly unleashed a speculative
binge encouraged by the deposit of government funds in the pet banks. With
the restraint of Biddle’s bank removed, the state banks unleashed their wild-
cat tendencies. New banks mushroomed, printing banknotes with abandon
for the purpose of lending money to speculators. Sales of public lands rose
from 4 million acres in 1834 to 15 million in 1835 and 20 million in 1836. At
the same time, the states plunged heavily into debt to finance the building of
roads and canals, inspired by the success of New York’s Erie Canal. By 1837
total state indebtedness had soared to $170 million. The supreme irony of
Jackson’s war on the bank was that it sparked the speculative mania that he
most feared.

FISCAL MEASURES The surge of cheap paper money reached its peak in
1836, when events combined suddenly to deflate it. Most important among
these were the Distribution Act and the Specie Circular. Distribution of the
government’s surplus funds to the states had long been a pet project of Henry
Clay’s. One of its purposes was to eliminate the federal surplus, thus removing
one argument for cutting the tariff. Much of the federal surplus, however,
resulted from the “land-office business” in western property sales and was
therefore in the form of banknotes that had been issued to speculators. Many
westerners thought that the solution to the surplus was simply to lower the
price of land; southerners preferred to lower the tariff—but such action would
now upset the delicate compromise achieved with the Tariff of 1833. For a
time the annual surpluses could be applied to paying off the government debt,
but the debt, reduced to $7 million by 1832, was entirely paid off by 1835.
Still, the federal surplus continued to mount. Clay again proposed distrib-
uting the funds to the states, but Jackson had constitutional scruples about
the process. Finally a compromise was worked out whereby the government
would distribute most of the surplus as loans to the states. To satisfy Jackson’s
concerns, the funds were technically loans, but in reality the government
never asked to be repaid. Distribution of the surplus was to be in proportion
to each state’s representation in the two houses of Congress and was to be
paid out in quarterly installments beginning in 1837.
The Specie Circular, issued by the secretary of the Treasury at Jackson’s
order, applied the president’s hard-money conviction to the sale of public
lands. According to his order, the government would accept only gold or sil-
ver coins in payment for land. The purposes declared in the circular were to
“repress frauds,” to withhold support “from the monopoly of the public
 Contentious Politics • 467

lands in the hands of speculators and capitalists,” and to discourage the

“ruinous extension” of banknotes and credit.
Irony dogged Jackson to the end on this matter. Since few settlers had gold
or silver coins, they were now left all the more at the mercy of speculators for
land purchases. Both the Distribution Act and the Specie Circular put many
state banks in a plight. The distribution of the surplus to the state govern-
ments resulted in federal funds’ being withdrawn from the state banks. In
turn the state banks had to require many borrowers to pay back their loans
immediately in order to be able to transfer the federal funds to the state gov-
ernments. This situation caused greater disarray in the already chaotic state
banking community. At the same time, the new requirement that only hard
money be accepted for federal land purchases put an added strain on the
supplies of gold and silver.

BOOM AND BUST But the boom-and-bust cycle of the 1830s had
causes larger even than Andrew Jackson, causes that were beyond his con-
trol. The soaring inflation of the mid-1830s was rooted not so much in a
feverish expansion of banknotes, as it seemed at the time, but in an increase
of gold and silver payments from England, France, and especially Mexico for
investment and for the purchase of American cotton and other products. At
the same time, British credits enabled Americans to buy British goods with-
out having to export gold or silver. Meanwhile, the flow of hard coins to
China, where silver had been much prized, decreased. Now the Chinese took
in payment for their goods British credits, which they could in turn use to
cover rapidly increasing imports of opium from British India.
Contrary to appearances, therefore, the reserves of gold and silver in U.S.
banks kept pace with the increase of banknotes despite reckless behavior on
the part of some banks. But by 1836 a tighter British economy had caused a
decline in both British investments and British demand for American cotton
just when the new western lands were creating a rapid increase in the cotton
supply. Fortunately for Jackson, the financial panic of 1837 did not erupt until
he was out of the White House. His successor would serve as the scapegoat.
In May 1837, New York banks suspended gold and silver payments on their
banknotes, and fears of bankruptcy set off runs on banks around the country,
many of which were soon overextended. A brief recovery followed in 1838,
stimulated in part by a bad wheat harvest in England, which forced the British
to buy American wheat. But by 1839 that stimulus had passed. A bumper cot-
ton crop overloaded the market, and a collapse of cotton prices set off a
depression from which the economy did not fully recover until the mid-1840s.
468 • THE JACKSONIAN ERA (CH. 11)

VA N B U R E N AND THE N E W PA R T Y S Y S T E M

T H E W H I G C OA L I T I O N Before the depression set in, however, the

Jacksonian Democrats reaped a political bonanza. Jackson had slain the dual
monsters of nullification and the bank, and the people loved him for it. The
hard times following the contraction of the economy turned Americans
against Biddle and the B.U.S. but not against Jackson, the professed friend of
“the people” and foe of the “selfish” interests of financiers and speculators.
But in 1834, Jackson’s opponents began to pull together a new coalition of
diverse elements, united chiefly by their hostility to his authoritarian style.
The imperious demeanor of the feisty champion of democracy had given rise
to the nickname “King Andrew I.” Jackson’s followers therefore were deemed
Tories, supporters of the “tyrannical” king, and his opponents became
Whigs, a name that linked them to the Patriots of the American Revolution.
The diverse coalition making up the Whigs clustered around the National
Republican party of John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster.
Into the combination came remnants of the Anti-Masonic and Democratic
parties, who for one reason or another were alienated by Jackson’s stand on
the national bank or states’ rights. Of the forty-one Democrats in Congress
who had voted to recharter the bank, twenty-eight had joined the Whigs by
1836, including Congressman David Crockett from Tennessee, the mythical
hunter and gregarious storyteller. Crockett was a national folk hero who
during an 1835 speech in Philadelphia lamented the terrible economic
calamity resulting from the policies of Jackson, his former commander dur-
ing the War of 1812. Crockett called Jackson “a superannuated old man . . .
whose popularity, like the lightning from heaven, blasts and withers all that
comes within its influence.” For the next twenty years, the Whigs and the
Democrats would be the two major political parties.
Whiggery always had about it an atmosphere of social conservatism and
superiority. The core Whigs were the supporters of Henry Clay and his
economic nationalism. They favored federal support for constructing inter-
nal improvements—roads, bridges, canals—to foster economic growth. And
they supported a national bank and high tariffs. In the South the Whigs
enjoyed the support of the urban banking and commercial interests, as well
as their planter associates, owners of most of the slaves in the region. In the
West, farmers who valued government-funded internal improvements
joined the Whig ranks. Most states’ rights supporters eventually dropped
away, and by the early 1840s the Whigs were becoming more clearly the
party of Henry Clay’s economic nationalism, even in the South. Unlike the
Democrats, who attracted Catholics from Germany and Ireland, Whigs
 Van Buren and the New Party System • 469

tended to be native-born or British-American evangelical Protestants—

Presbyterians, Baptists, and Congregationalists—who were active in pro-
moting social reforms such as abolition and temperance.

T H E E L E C T I O N O F 1 8 3 6 By the presidential election of 1836, a two-

party system was emerging from the Jackson and anti-Jackson forces, a sys-
tem that would remain in even balance for twenty years. In 1835, eighteen
months before the election, the Democrats held their second national con-
vention, nominating Jackson’s handpicked successor, Vice President Martin
Van Buren. The Whig coalition, united chiefly in its opposition to Jackson,
held no convention but adopted a strategy of multiple candidacies, hoping
to throw the election into the House of Representatives.
The result was a free-for-all reminiscent of 1824, except that this time
one candidate stood apart from the rest: it was Van Buren against the field.
The Whigs put up three favorite sons: Daniel Webster, named by the
Massachusetts legislature; Hugh Lawson White, chosen by anti-Jackson
Democrats in the Tennessee legislature; and William Henry Harrison of Indi-
ana, nominated by a predominantly Anti-Masonic convention in Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania. In the South the Whigs made heavy inroads on the Democra-
tic vote by arguing that Van Buren would be soft on anti-slavery advocates
and that the South could trust only a southerner—that is, Hugh White—as
president. In the popular vote, Van Buren outdistanced the entire Whig field,
with 765,000 votes to 740,000 for the Whigs, most of which were cast for
Harrison. Van Buren won 170 electoral votes; Harrison, 73; White, 26; and
Webster, 14.
Martin Van Buren, the eighth presi-
dent, was the first of Dutch ancestry.
The son of a tavern keeper in Kinder-
hook, New York, he had attended a
local academy, studied law, and
entered politics. Although he kept up
a limited legal practice, he had been
for most of his adult life a professional
politician, so skilled in the arts of
organization and manipulation that
he came to be known as the Little
Magician. In 1824 he supported Craw-
ford, then switched his allegiance to Martin Van Buren
Jackson in 1828 but continued to look Van Buren earned the nickname
to the Old Republicans of Virginia as the “Little Magician.”
470 • THE JACKSONIAN ERA (CH. 11)

the southern anchor of his support. Elected governor of New York, he

quickly resigned to join Jackson’s cabinet and because of the president’s
favor became vice president.

T H E PA N I C O F 1 8 3 7 Van Buren inherited a terrifying financial panic.

An already precarious economy was tipped over by a depression in England,
which resulted in a drop in the price of American cotton and caused English
banks and investors to cut back their American commitments and refuse
extensions of loans. This was a particularly hard blow because much of
America’s economic expansion depended upon European—and mainly
English—investment capital. On top of everything else, in 1836 there had
been a failure of the wheat crop, the export of which in good years helped off-
set the drain of payments abroad. As creditors hastened to foreclose, the infla-
tionary spiral went into reverse. States curtailed ambitious plans for roads
and canals and in many cases felt impelled to repudiate their debts. In the
crunch, 40 percent of the wildcat state banks succumbed. In April 1837, some
250 businesses failed in New York City alone.
The working class, as always, was particularly hard hit during the eco-
nomic slump and largely had to fend for itself. By the fall of 1837, a third of

Jacksonian Treasury note

A parody of the often-worthless fractional notes issued by local banks and
businesses in lieu of coins. These notes proliferated during the panic of 1837,
with the emergency suspension of gold and silver payments. In the main scene,
Martin Van Buren, a monster on a wagon driven by John C. Calhoun, is about to
pass through an arch labeled “Wall Street” and “Safety Fund Banks.”
 Van Buren and the New Party System • 471

the workforce was jobless, and those still fortunate enough to have jobs saw
their wages cut by 30 to 50 percent within two years. At the same time, prices
for food and clothing soared. As the winter of 1837 approached, a journalist
reported that in New York City two hundred thousand people were “in utter
and hopeless distress with no means of surviving the winter but those pro-
vided by charity.” There was no government aid; churches and charitable
societies were the major sources of support for the indigent.
Van Buren’s advisers and supporters blamed the depression on reckless
speculators and bankers, at the same time expecting the evildoers to get
what they deserved in a healthy shakeout that would restabilize the econ-
omy. Van Buren did not believe that he or the government had any respon-
sibility to rescue hard-pressed farmers or businessmen or to provide relief
for the jobless and homeless. He did feel obliged to keep the government
itself in a healthy financial situation, however. To that end he called a spe-
cial session of Congress in 1837, which quickly voted to postpone indefi-
nitely the distribution of the surplus because of a probable upcoming
deficit and approved an issue of Treasury notes (currency) to cover imme-
diate expenses.

A N I N D E PE N D E N T T R E A S U RY Van Buren believed that the govern-

ment should cease risking its deposits in shaky state banks and set up an
independent Treasury. Under this plan, the government would keep its
funds in its own vaults and do business entirely in hard money. The Inde-
pendent Treasury Act elicited opposition from a combination of Whigs and
conservative Democrats who feared deflation, and it took Van Buren several
years of maneuvering to get what he wanted. Calhoun signaled a return to
the Democratic fold, after several years of flirting with the Whigs, when he
came out for the Treasury act. Van Buren gained western support by backing
a more liberal policy regarding federal land sales. Congress finally passed the
Independent Treasury Act on July 4, 1840. Although it lasted little more than
a year (the Whigs repealed it in 1841), it would be restored in 1846.
The drawn-out struggle over the Treasury was only one of several squab-
bles that preoccupied politicians during the Van Buren years. A flood of
petitions for Congress to abolish slavery and the slave trade in the District of
Columbia brought on tumultuous debate, especially in the House of Repre-
sentatives. Border incidents growing out of a Canadian insurrection in 1837
and a dispute over the Maine boundary kept British-American animosity at
a simmer, but General Winfield Scott, the president’s ace troubleshooter,
managed to keep the hotheads in check along the border. The spreading
malaise was rooted in the depressed condition of the economy, which lasted
 472 • THE JACKSONIAN ERA (CH. 11)

OREGON NH 7
ME
VT 7 10
COUNTRY
WI NY MA 14
IOWA TERR. MI
UNORGANIZED TERR. 3 42
RI 4
TERRITORY PA CT 8
OH 30 NJ 8
IL IN 21
5 9 DE 3
VA MD 10
MO 23
4 KY 15
NC
TN 15 15
Disputed AR SC
area 3
MS AL GA 11
REPUBLIC 4 7 11
OF LA
TEXAS 5
FLORIDA
TERRITORY

THE ELECTION OF 1840 Electoral vote Popular vote

William Henry Harrison 234 1,275,000
(Whig)
Martin Van Buren 60 1,128,000
(Democrat)

Why did Van Buren carry several western states but few others? How did the Whigs
achieve a decisive electoral victory over the Democrats? How was their strategy in
1840 different from their campaign in 1836?

through Van Buren’s term. Fairly or not, the administration became the tar-
get of growing discontent. The president won renomination easily enough
but could not get the Democratic convention to agree on his vice-presidential
choice, which was left up to the Democratic electors.

THE “ LO G C A B I N A N D H A R D C I D E R ” C A M PA I G N
Because of
the scope and depth of the economic depression, the Whigs fully expected to
win the 1840 presidential election. They got an early start on their campaign
when they met at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on December 4, 1839, to choose a
candidate. Henry Clay, the Kentucky legislator who had been the presidential
nominee in 1832 and then the most consistent foe of Andrew Jackson during
the 1830s, expected 1840 to be his year. But several party leaders thought
 Van Buren and the New Party System • 473

Uncle Sam’s Pet Pups!

A woodcut showing William Henry Harrison luring “Mother Bank,” Andrew
Jackson, and Martin Van Buren into a barrel of hard cider. While Jackson and Van
Buren sought to destroy the Bank of the United States, Harrison promised to
reestablish it, hence his providing “Mother Bank” a refuge in this scene.

otherwise. Although Clay led on the first ballot, the convention sought a
Whiggish Jackson, as it were, a military hero who could enter the race with few
known political convictions or enemies. The delegates finally turned to the
colorless William Henry Harrison, an Ohio soldier and politician from a
prominent Virginia family. Harrison’s credentials were impressive: victor at
the Battle of Tippecanoe against the Shawnees in 1811, former governor of the
Indiana Territory, briefly congressman and senator from Ohio, more briefly
minister to Colombia. Another advantage of Harrison’s was that the Anti-
Masons liked him. To rally their states’ rights wing, the Whigs chose for vice
president John Tyler of Virginia.
The Whigs had no platform. Taking a stand on issues would have risked
dividing a coalition united chiefly by opposition to the Democrats. But they
fastened on a catchy campaign slogan, “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.” And they
soon had a rousing campaign theme, which a Democratic newspaper unwit-
tingly supplied when the Baltimore Republican declared that General
474 • THE JACKSONIAN ERA (CH. 11)

Harrison—at sixty-seven, the oldest man yet to seek the presidency—was

the kind of man who would spend his retirement “days in a log cabin [sip-
ping apple cider] on the banks of the Ohio [River].” The Whigs seized upon
the cider and log cabin symbols to depict Harrison as a simple man sprung
from the people in contrast to Martin Van Buren’s wealthy, aristocratic
lifestyle (actually, Harrison sprang from one of the first families of Virginia
and lived in a large farmhouse).
The Whig “Log Cabin and Hard Cider” campaign featured portable log
cabins rolling through the streets along with barrels of cider. All the devices
of hoopla were mobilized: placards, emblems, campaign buttons, floats, effi-
gies, great rallies, and a campaign newspaper, the Log Cabin. The Whig party
had not only learned its lessons well, but it had also improved upon its
teachers in the art of campaigning. “Van! Van! Is a Used-Up Man!” went one
campaign refrain, and down went Van Buren by the thumping margin of
234 votes to 60 in the Electoral College. In the popular vote it was closer:
1,275,000 for Harrison; 1,128,000 for Van Buren. The Whigs had successfully
distracted Americans from the major issues facing the United States by
focusing on the personal qualities of Harrison and promising a vague return
to prosperity. There was no consensus about how such prosperity was to be
generated. It was simply time for a change.

ASSESSING THE JAC K S O N Y E A R S

The Whigs may have won in 1840, but the Jacksonian Democrats had
permanently altered American politics during the 1830s. People had become
much more involved in the political process. By 1840 both national political
parties were organized down to the precinct level, and the proportion of
white men who voted in the presidential election had tripled, from 27 per-
cent in 1824 to nearly 80 percent in 1840. That much is beyond dispute, but
the phenomenon of Andrew Jackson, the heroic symbol for an age, contin-
ues to spark historical debate.
The earliest historians of the Jackson era belonged largely to an eastern
elite nurtured in a “Whiggish” culture, men who could never quite forgive
Jackson for instituting the “spoils system,” which in their view excluded the
fittest from office. A later school of “progressive” historians depicted Jackson
as the leader of a vast democratic movement that welled up in the West and
mobilized a farmer-labor alliance to sweep the “Monster” national bank into
the dustbin of history. Some historians have recently focused on local power
struggles, in which the great national debates of the time often seemed
 Assessing the Jackson Years • 475

empty rhetoric or at most snares to catch the voters. One view of Jackson
makes him out to be essentially a frontier opportunist for whom democracy
“was good talk with which to win the favor of the people.”
Most recently, scholars have highlighted the fact that Jacksonian “democ-
racy” was for white males only; it did not apply to African Americans, Indians,
or women. These revisionist historians have also stressed that greater partici-
pation in politics was much more a northern development than a southern
development. As late as 1857, for example, North Carolina’s fifty-acre property
requirement for voting disenfranchised almost half the state’s voters.
Yet there seems little question that whatever else Jackson and his support-
ers had in mind, they followed an ideal of republican virtue, of returning to
the Jeffersonian vision that the federal government would play as limited a
role as possible. In the Jacksonian view, the alliance of government and busi-
ness was always an invitation to special favors and an eternal source of cor-
ruption. The national bank was the epitome of such evil. The right policy for
government, at the national level in particular, was to refrain from granting
special privileges and to let free competition in the marketplace regulate the
economy.
In the bustling world of the nineteenth century, however, the idea of a
return to agrarian simplicity was a futile exercise in nostalgia. Instead, free-
enterprise policies opened the way for a host of aspiring entrepreneurs eager
to replace the established economic elite with a new order of free-enterprise
capitalism. And in fact there was no great conflict in the Jacksonian mentality
between the farmer or planter who delved into the soil and the independent
speculator and entrepreneur who grew wealthy by other means. Jackson him-
self was both. What the Jacksonians did not foresee was the degree to which,
in a growing country, unrestrained enterprise could lead to new centers of
economic power largely independent of government regulation. But history
is forever marked by unintended consequences. Here the ultimate irony
would be that the laissez-faire rationale for republican simplicity eventually
became the justification for the growth of unregulated corporate powers far
greater than any ever wielded by Biddle’s bank.
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Jacksonian Democracy Andrew Jackson’s America was very different from the
America of 1776. Most white men had gained the vote when states removed
property qualifications for voting. The Jacksonians sought to democratize
economic opportunity; thus politics changed with the advent of national
conventions, at which party leaders chose their party’s candidates and
platforms. Powerful elites remained in charge of society and politics, however.
• Jacksonian Policies Jackson wanted to lower taxes and reduce government
spending. He vetoed bills to use federal funds for internal improvements, and
his belief that banks were run by corrupt businessmen for their own ends led
him to veto a bill for the rechartering of the Second Bank of the United States.
• Nullification Controversy When a South Carolina convention nullified the
Tariffs of 1828 and 1832, Jackson requested that Congress pass a “force bill”
authorizing the army to compel compliance with the tariffs. After South Car-
olina accepted a compromise tariff put forth by Henry Clay, the state convention
nullified the force bill. Nullification, an extreme states’ rights ideology, had been
put into action. The crisis was over, but both sides claimed victory.
• Indian Removal Act of 1830 The Indian Removal Act of 1830 authorized the
relocation of eastern Indians to federal lands west of the Mississippi River. The
Cherokees used the federal court system to try to block this relocation, but
despite the Supreme Court’s decision in their favor, federal troops forced them
to move; the event and the route they took came to be known as in the Trail of
Tears. By 1840 only a few Seminoles and Cherokees remained, hiding in remote
areas of the Southeast.
• Democrats and Whigs Jackson’s arrogant behavior, especially his use of the
veto, led many to regard him as “King Andrew.” Groups who opposed him
coalesced into a new party, known as the Whigs, thus forming the country’s
second party system. The panic of 1837, during Martin Van Buren’s administra-
tion, ensured Whig victory in the election of 1840 despite the party’s lack of a
coherent political program.
 CHRONOLOGY

1828
1830
“Tariff of Abominations” goes into effect
Congress passes the Indian Removal Act
Andrew Jackson vetoes the Maysville Road Bill
1831 Supreme Court issues Cherokee Nation v. Georgia decision
1832 Supreme Court issues Worcester v. Georgia decision
South Carolina issues ordinance of nullification
Andrew Jackson vetoes the Bank Recharter Bill
1833 Congress passes Henry Clay’s compromise tariff
1836 Martin Van Buren is elected president
1837 Financial panic follows a drop in the price of cotton
1837–1838 Eastern Indians are forced west on the Trail of Tears
1840 William Henry Harrison, a Whig, is elected president

KEY TERMS & NAMES

spoils system p. 444 Tariff of 1832 p. 453 Anti-Masonic party
p. 464
Martin Van Buren p. 445 force bill p. 454
“pet banks” p. 465
Peggy Eaton affair Osceola p. 457
p. 445 Whig party p. 468
Trail of Tears p. 459
Webster-Hayne debate
p. 449 Nicholas Biddle p. 460

12
THE OLD SOUTH

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• How diverse was the Old South’s economy, and what was its
unifying feature?
• How did dependence on agriculture and slavery shape the
distinctive culture of the Old South? Why did southern whites
who did not hold slaves defend the “peculiar institution”?
• How did enslaved people respond to their bondage during the
antebellum period? How did free persons of color fit into southern
society?
• How did expansion into the Southwest influence slavery and its
defense?

O f all the regions of the United States during the first half of
the nineteenth century, the South was the most distinctive.
Southern society remained rural and agricultural long after
the rest of the nation had embraced urban-industrial development. Likewise,
the southern elite’s tenacious efforts to expand and preserve slavery stifled
reform impulses in the South and ignited a prolonged political controversy
that would end in civil war. The rapid settlement of the western territories set
in motion a ferocious competition between North and South for political
influence in the burgeoning West. Would the new western states be “slave” or
“free”? The volatile issue of allowing slavery into the new territories involved
more than humanitarian concern for the plight of enslaved blacks. By the
1840s, the North and South had developed quite different economic interests
and political tactics. The North wanted high tariffs on imported manufac-
tures to “protect” its new industries from foreign competition. Southerners,
on the other hand, favored free trade because they wanted to import British
goods in exchange for the profitable cotton they provided British textile mills.
 The Old South • 479

The South’s increasing defensive-

ness about slavery during the first
half of the nineteenth century
reflected the region’s proud sense of
its own distinctiveness. Southerners,
a North Carolina editor once wrote,
are “a mythological people, created
half out of dream and half out of
slander, who live in a still legendary
land.” Most Americans, including
southerners themselves, have long
harbored a cluster of myths and
stereotypes about the South. Perhaps
the most enduring myths come from
the classic movie Gone with the Wind
(1939). The Old South portrayed in Uncle Tom’s Cabin
such romanticized Hollywood pro- An 1859 poster advertising Harriet
ductions is a stable agrarian society Beecher Stowe’s bestselling novel Uncle
led by paternalistic white planters Tom’s Cabin, a book which angered
many Southern whites by portraying
and their families, who live in white- slavery in all its barbarism.
columned mansions and represent a
“natural” aristocracy of virtue and talent within their communities. In Gone
with the Wind and similar accounts, southerners are kind to their slaves
and devoted to the rural values of independence and chivalric honor, values
celebrated by Thomas Jefferson.
By contrast, a much darker myth about the Old South emerged from
pamphlets promoting the abolition of slavery and from Harriet Beecher
Stowe’s best-selling novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). Those exposés of the
dark side of southern culture portrayed the planters as arrogant aristocrats
who raped enslaved women, brutalized enslaved workers, and lorded over
their local communities with haughty disdain. They treated slaves like cattle,
broke up slave families, and sold slaves “down the river” to incessant toil in
the Louisiana sugar mills and rice plantations. “I’d rather be dead,” said one
white overseer, “than a nigger in one of those big plantations.”
Such contrasting myths are both rooted in reality. Nonetheless, efforts to
pinpoint what set the Old South apart from the rest of the nation generally
pivot on two lines of thought: the impact of the environment (climate and
geography) and the effects of human decisions and actions. The South’s
warm, humid climate was ideal for the cultivation of profitable crops such as
tobacco, cotton, rice, indigo, and sugarcane. The growth of those lucrative
480 • THE OLD SOUTH (CH. 12)

cash crops helped foster the plantation system and its dependence upon
enslaved labor. The lust for profits led southerners to ignore concerns over
the morality of slavery. By the 1850s, most southern leaders could not imag-
ine a future for their region without slavery. In the end, the profitability of
slavery and the racist attitudes it engendered brought about the sectional
conflict over the extension of slavery that ignited the Civil War.

THE DISTINCTIVENESS OF THE OLD SOUTH

While geography was and is a key determinant of the South’s economy

and culture, what made the South most distinctive was the expanding institu-
tion of slavery. Most southern whites did not own slaves, but they nevertheless
supported the continuation of the “peculiar institution.” The profitability
and convenience of owning slaves—as well as the psychological appeal of the-
ories of racial superiority—created a sense of racial unity that bridged class
divisions among most whites. Yet the biracial character of the region’s popula-
tion exercised an even greater influence over southern culture. In shaping pat-
terns of speech and folklore, music, religion, literature, and recreation, black
southerners immeasurably influenced and enriched the region’s development.
The South differed from other sections of the country, too, in the high
proportion of native-born Americans in its population, both whites and
blacks. Despite the considerable ethnic diversity in the colonial population,
the South drew few overseas immigrants after the Revolution. One reason
was that the main shipping lines went from Europe to northern ports such
as Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia; another, that the prospect of
competing with slave labor deterred immigrants. The South’s determination
to expand slavery in the face of growing criticism in the North and around
the world further isolated and defined the region. A prickly defensiveness
increasingly shaped southern attitudes and actions.
The South also differed from the rest of the nation in its architecture; its
penchant for fighting, guns, horsemanship, and the military; and its attach-
ment to an agrarian ideal and a cult of masculine “honor.” The preponderance
of farming remained a distinctive regional characteristic, whether pictured as
the Jeffersonian yeoman living by the sweat of his brow or the lordly planter
overseeing his slave gangs. But in the end what made the South distinctive was its
people’s belief—and other people’s belief—that the region was so distinctive.

DIVERGENT SOUTHS For all of the common threads tying the Old
South together, it in fact included three distinct subregions with quite different
 The Distinctiveness of the Old South • 481

economic interests and diverging degrees of commitment to slavery. The

seven states making up the Lower South (South Carolina, Georgia, Florida,
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas) grew increasingly dependent
upon labor-intensive cotton production and slave labor. By 1860, slaves rep-
resented nearly half the population of the Lower South. The states of the
Middle South (Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas) had
more diversified agricultural economies and included large areas without
slavery. In the Upper or Border South (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and
Missouri), slavery was beginning to decline by 1860.
The shifting differences among these three southern regions help explain
the varied intensity of feelings about both the fate of slavery and ultimately
the decision to secede. About all that the three subregions shared in com-
mon was an opposition to the immediate abolition of slavery. Many white
slave owners in the upper South, who held far fewer slaves than their coun-
terparts in the lower South, were so morally ambivalent about slavery that
they adopted an attitude of paternalism toward slaves (which was rarely
paternalistic in practice) by incorporating them into their households. A few
actually worked to end slavery by prohibiting the importation of more
slaves. Others supported “colonization” efforts to ship slaves and freed
blacks to Africa or encouraged owners upon their deaths to free their slaves,
as did George Washington.
Slave owners in the lower South scoffed at such efforts to end slavery,
however. With a disproportionately large investment in slavery, planters in
the states of the lower South viewed the forced labor system as an asset and a
blessing rather than a moral burden. Whites in the Lower South were also
much more concerned about the possibility of an organized slave revolt as
had occurred in French-controlled Haiti. Whites increasingly believed that
only constant vigilance, supervision, terror, intimidation, and punishment
would keep enslaved workers under control. At the same time, as the dollar
value of a slave soared, white planters from the lower southern states led
efforts to transplant slavery into the new western territories.

R E L I G I O N I N T H E O L D S O U T H The growing defensiveness of the

South with respect to slavery was especially evident in the region’s religious
life. The South was overwhelmingly Protestant. Although there were pockets
of Catholicism and Judaism in the large coastal cities—Baltimore, Richmond,
Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans—the vast majority of southerners
were Baptist or Methodist. In the eighteenth century, the first generation of
Baptists and Methodists condemned slavery, welcomed blacks to their con-
gregations, and accorded women important roles in their churches. By the
 482 • THE OLD SOUTH (CH. 12)

early nineteenth century, however, having grown concerned about the dimin-
ishing participation of white men in their churches, the two denominations
had changed their stance. Ministers began to mute their opposition to slavery.
In 1785, the Methodists formally abandoned their policy of denying church
membership to slaveholders. By the 1830s, most Protestant preachers in
the South had switched from attacking slavery to defending it as a divinely
ordained social system sanctioned by in the Bible. Most of the ministers who
refused to promote slavery left the region.

S TA P L E C R O P S During the first half of the nineteenth century, cotton

became the most profitable cash crop in the South—by far. But other crops
remained viable. Tobacco, the region’s first staple crop, had been the mainstay

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TERRITORY
GULF OF MEXICO

COTTON PRODUCTION, 1821

Each dot represents 1,000 bales of cotton.
0 100 200 Miles

0 100 200 Kilometers

Why was cotton an appealing staple crop? What regions produced the most cot-
ton in 1821? Keeping in mind what you read about cotton in Chapter 12, what
innovations would you suppose allowed farmers to move inland and produce
cotton more efficiently?
 The Distinctiveness of the Old South • 483

of Virginia and Maryland during the colonial era and was also common
in North Carolina. After the Revolution, the tobacco economy spread into
Kentucky and as far west as Missouri. Indigo, an important crop in colonial
South Carolina, vanished with the loss of British bounties for this source of a
valuable blue dye used in the making of clothing. Since rice production
required substantial capital for floodgates, irrigation ditches, and machinery,
it was limited to the relatively few large plantations that could afford it, and
those were in the lowcountry of North and South Carolina and Georgia,
where fields could easily be flooded and drained by tidal rivers flowing into
the ocean. Sugar, like rice, required a heavy capital investment to purchase
machinery to grind the cane. Since sugar needed the prop of a protective tariff
to enable its farmers to compete with foreign suppliers, it produced the

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TERRITORY GA
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Charleston
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TEXAS
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LA OCEAN
New Orleans
FLORIDA
GULF OF MEXICO

POPULATION GROWTH AND COTTON

PRODUCTION, 1821–1859
Percentage increase in population, 1821–1859
Under 200% 500%–1,000%
0 100 200 Miles
200%–499% Over 1,000%
0 100 200 Kilometers
Each dot represents 1,000 bales of cotton.

What was the relationship between westward migration and the spread of cotton
plantations? Why did cotton plantations cluster in certain regions of the South?
What were the environmental and economic consequences of the South’s emphasis
on cotton?
484 • THE OLD SOUTH (CH. 12)

anomaly in southern politics of pro-tariff congressmen from Louisiana,

where sugar was king.
Cotton, however, eventually outpaced all the others put together. At the
end of the War of 1812, annual cotton production was less than 150,000 bales
(a bale is a compressed bundle of cotton weighing between 400 and 500
pounds); in 1860 production was 4 million bales. Three factors accounted for
the dramatic growth: (1) the introduction of cotton gins exponentially
increased the amount of cotton that could be cultivated; (2) the demand for
southern cotton among British and French textile manufacturers soared as
the industry grew in size and technological sophistication; and (3) the aggres-
sive cultivation of farmlands in the newer states of Alabama, Mississippi,
Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas as well as the frontier areas of Tennessee, Ken-
tucky, and Florida (a region then called the Old Southwest).
The Old Southwest’s low land prices and suitability for cotton cultivation
(as well as sugarcane in Louisiana) served as a powerful magnet when the
seaboard economy faltered during the 1820s and 1830s, luring hundreds of
thousands of settlers from Virginia and the Carolinas to more fertile, inex-
pensive cotton lands farther west and south. Between 1810 and 1840 the
population of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi increased from about
300,000 (252,000 of whom were in Georgia) to 1,657,799. Over 40 percent of
the residents were enslaved blacks, many of whom had been moved in
chained gangs (called “coffles”) from plantations and slave markets in the
Carolinas, Virginia, and New Orleans. The migrating southerners carved out
farms, built churches, established towns, and eventually brought culture and
order to a raw frontier.
By 1860, the center of the cotton belt stretched from eastern North Car-
olina, South Carolina, and Georgia through the fertile Alabama-Mississippi
black belt (so called for the color of the soil), through Louisiana, on to Texas,
and up the Mississippi River valley as far as southern Illinois. As cotton pro-
duction soared, vast acreages shifted from other crops, in part because cot-
ton could be cultivated on small farms, unlike sugar and rice. The rapid
expansion of the cotton belt throughout the South ensured that the region
became more, rather than less, dependent on enslaved black workers. More
than half of the slaves worked in cotton production.
During the antebellum era, slavery became such a powerful, profitable
engine of economic development that its mushrooming significance defied
domestic and international criticism. By 1860, after the addition of Texas
and the rise of plantation slavery there, the dollar value of enslaved blacks
outstripped the value of all banks, railroads, and factories combined. The
southern economy led the nation in exports. The result was staggering
 The Distinctiveness of the Old South • 485

Slave family in a Georgia cotton field

The invention of the cotton gin sent cotton production soaring, deepening the
South’s dependence on slavery.

wealth among the large planters and their brokers. The twelve richest coun-
ties in the United States by 1860 were all in the South.
The focus on cotton and the other cash crops has obscured the degree to
which the antebellum South fed itself from its own fields. Southern farms
also grew enormous amounts of corn, wheat, and potatoes and raised plenty
of cattle and hogs. Yet the story of the southern economy was hardly one of
unbroken prosperity. The South’s cash crops, planted year after year, quickly
exhausted the soil. In low-country South Carolina, Senator Robert Y. Hayne
lamented all of the “fields abandoned; and hospitable mansions of our
fathers deserted.” The older farmlands had trouble competing with the
newer soil farther west. But lands in the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico
also began to show wear and tear. By 1855, an Alabama senator had noted,
“Our small planters, after taking the cream off their lands . . . are going fur-
ther west and south in search of other virgin lands which they may and will
despoil and impoverish in like manner.”
486 • THE OLD SOUTH (CH. 12)

M A N U FA C T U R I N G AND TRADE By 1840, some southerners

decided that the farm-centered region desperately needed to develop its
own manufacturing and trade because of its dependence upon northern
industry and commerce: cotton and tobacco were exported mainly in
northern vessels. Southerners also relied upon northern merchants for
imported goods—economically the South had become a kind of colonial
dependency of the North.
Southerners offered two major explanations for the region’s lag in indus-
trial development. First, blacks were presumed unsuited to factory work.
Second, the ruling planter-commercial elite of the Old South had developed
a lordly disdain for industrial production. As Thomas Jefferson had demon-
strated, a certain aristocratic prestige derived from owning land and holding
slaves. But any argument that African American labor was incompatible
with industrial work simply flew in the face of the evidence, since southern
factory owners bought or hired enslaved blacks to operate just about every
kind of mechanical equipment. In the 1850s, between one hundred fifty
thousand and two hundred thousand slaves—about 5 percent of the total
number—worked at industrial jobs in the South.
The notion that aristocratic planters were not sufficiently motivated by
profits to promote industrial development is also a myth. While the prof-
itability of slavery has been a long-standing subject of controversy, in recent
years economic historians have demonstrated that large planters were intensely
entrepreneurial; they were capitalists preoccupied with profits. By a strictly

Iron manufacturing
By 1873, the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, Virginia, employed 1,200 workers.
 White Society in the South • 487

economic calculation, slaves and land on which cotton could be grown were
the most profitable investments available in the antebellum South. The
largest slaveholders, particularly in the newer cotton lands of the Old South-
west, were so incredibly rich that they saw little need for promoting indus-
trial development.

WHITE SOCIETY IN THE SOUTH

If an understanding of the Old South requires understanding the

power of social myths, it involves acknowledging the tragic dimension of
the region’s history. Since colonial days, white southerners had won short-
term economic gains that over time ravaged the soil and aroused the moral
indignation of much of the world. The concentration on agriculture and
the growing dependence on slaves at the expense of urban development and
immigration deprived the South of the most dynamic sources of innova-
tion. The slaveholding South hitched its wagon not to a star but to the
(largely British and French) demand for cotton. By 1860 Britain was import-
ing more than 80 percent of its cotton from the South, and the growing of

King Cotton Captured

This engraving shows cotton being trafficked in Louisiana.
488 • THE OLD SOUTH (CH. 12)

cotton was directly linked to the use of enslaved labor. As the economist Karl
Marx, co-author of The Communist Manifesto, noted from Britain in 1846,
“Without cotton you have no modern industry . . . without slavery, you
have no cotton.”
During the late 1850s, cotton production became so profitable that it fos-
tered some tragic misperceptions. The South, “safely entrenched behind her
cotton bags . . . can defy the world—for the civilized world depends on the
cotton of the South,” said a Mississippi newspaper in 1860. The soaring prof-
itability of cotton made some southerners cocky and even belligerent. In a
famous speech to the Senate in 1858, South Carolina’s James H. Hammond
warned the North: “You dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth
dares make war upon it. Cotton is King.” What such aggressive southern
boosters could not perceive was what they could least afford: the imminent
slackening of the world demand for cotton. The heyday of expansion in
British textiles had ended by 1860, but by then the Deep South was locked
into large-scale cotton production for generations to come.

WHITE PLANTERS Although there were only a few giant plantations in

each southern state, their owners exercised disproportionately powerful influ-
ence in economic, political, and social life. As a western Virginian observed in
the mid-1830s, “the old slaveholding families exerted a great deal of control . . .
and they affected the manner and prejudices of the slaveholding part of the
state.” What distinguished a plantation from a neighboring farm, in addition
to its size, was the use of a large enslaved labor force, under separate control
and supervision, to grow primarily staple crops (cotton, rice, tobacco, and sugar-
cane). A clear-cut distinction between management and labor set the planter
apart from the small slaveholder, who often worked side by side with slaves at
the same tasks.
If, to be called a planter, one had to own twenty slaves, only one out of every
thirty whites in the South in 1860 was a planter. The 1860 census listed eleven
planters with five hundred slaves and one with as many as a thousand. Yet this
privileged elite exercised disproportionate social and political influence. The
planter group, making up less than 4 percent of the white men in the South,
held more than half the slaves and produced most of the cotton, tobacco, and
hemp and all of the sugar and rice. The number of slaveholders was only
383,637 out of a total white population of 8 million. But assuming that each
family numbered five people, then whites with some proprietary interest in
slavery constituted 1.9 million, or roughly a fourth of the South’s white popula-
tion. While the preponderance of southern whites belonged to the small-
farmer class, they tended to defer to the large planters and to share their
 White Society in the South • 489

white supremacist views. After all,

many small farmers aspired to become
slave-owning planters themselves.

T H E P L A N TAT I O N M I S T R E S S
The mistress of the plantation, like
the master, seldom led a life of idle
leisure. She supervised the domestic
household in the same way the
planter took care of the business,
overseeing the supply and prepara-
tion of food and linens, the house-
cleaning and care of the sick, and a
hundred other details. Mary Boykin
Chesnut of South Carolina com-
plained that “there is no slave like a
wife.” The wives of all but the most
wealthy planters supervised daily the Mary Chestnut
domestic activities of the household Mary Chestnut’s diary describing the
and managed the slaves. The son of a Civil War was republished in 1981 and
Tennessee slaveholder remembered won the Pulitzer Prize.
that his mother and grandmother
were “the busiest women I ever saw.”
White women living in a slaveholding culture confronted a double stan-
dard in terms of moral and sexual behavior. While they were expected to
behave as exemplars of Christian piety and sexual purity, their husbands,
brothers, and sons often followed an unwritten rule of self-indulgent hedo-
nism. “God forgive us,” Mary Chesnut wrote in her diary,

but ours is a monstrous system. Like the patriarchs of old, our men live all
in one house with their wives and their [enslaved] concubines; and the
mulattoes one sees in every family partly resemble the white children. Any
lady is ready to tell you who is the father of all the mulatto children in
everybody’s household but her own. Those, she seems to think, drop from
the clouds.

Such a double standard both illustrated and reinforced the arrogant

authoritarianism displayed by many male planters. Yet for all their private
complaints and daily burdens, few plantation mistresses engaged in public
criticism of the prevailing social order and racist climate.
490 • THE OLD SOUTH (CH. 12)

THE WHITE MIDDLE CLASS Overseers on the largest plantations gen-

erally came from the middle class of small farmers or skilled workers or were
younger sons of planters. Most aspired to become slaveholders themselves.
They moved often, seeking better wages. A Mississippi planter described white
overseers as “a worthless set of vagabonds.” There were few black overseers; the
highest management position to which a slave could aspire was usually that of
“driver,” placed in charge of a small group (“gang”) of slaves with the duty of
getting them to work without creating dissension.
The most numerous white southerners were the small farmers (yeomen),
those who lived with their families in simple two-room cabins rather than
columned mansions. They raised a few hogs and chickens, grew some corn
and cotton, and traded with neighbors more than they bought from stores.
Women on such small farms worked in the fields during harvest time but
spent most of their days attending to domestic chores. Many of these “mid-
dling” farmers owned a handful of slaves, but most had none. In the back-
country and mountainous regions of the South, yeoman farmers dominated
the social structure; there were few plantations in western North Carolina
and Virginia, upcountry South Carolina, eastern Tennessee, and northern
Georgia and Alabama.
Southern farmers were typically mobile folk, ever willing to pull up
stakes and move west or southwest in pursuit of better land. They tended to
be fiercely independent and suspicious of government authority, and they
overwhelmingly identified with the Democratic party of Andrew Jackson
and the spiritual fervor of evangelical Protestantism. Though only a minor-
ity of the middle-class farmers held slaves, most of them supported the
slave system. They feared that the slaves, if freed, would compete with
them for land, and they enjoyed the privileged status that racially based
slavery afforded them. As a white farmer told a northern traveler, “Now
suppose they was free. You see they’d all think themselves as good as we.”
Such racist sentiments pervaded the Deep South—and much of the rest of
the nation.

“POOR W H I T E S ” Visitors to the Old South often had trouble telling

yeomen apart from the “poor whites,” a degraded class of rural poor people
who owned no land or were relegated to the least desirable land, living on
the fringes of “polite” society. Poor whites often had seasonal employment as
laborers on yeoman farms or other unskilled work. The “poor whites,” given
over to hunting and fishing, to hound dogs and moonshine whiskey, often
displayed what others viewed as laziness. Speculation had it that they were
descended from indentured servants or convicts transported to the colonies
 White Society in the South • 491

from Britain or that they were the weakest of the frontier population, forced
to take refuge in the sand land, the pine barrens, and the swamps after hav-
ing been pushed aside by the more enterprising and the more successful.
But the problem was less heredity than environment, the consequence of
infections and dietary deficiencies that gave rise to a trilogy of “lazy dis-
eases”: hookworm, malaria, and pellagra, all of which produced an enervat-
ing lethargy. Around 1900, researchers discovered the cures for these dis-
eases. By 1930 they had practically disappeared, taking with them many of
the stereotypes.

HONOR AND VIOLENCE From colonial times, most southern white

men prided themselves on adhering to a moral code centered on a prickly
sense of honor. Such a preoccupation with masculine honor was common
among Germanic and Celtic peoples (the Scottish, Irish, Scots-Irish, Cor-
nish, and Welsh), from whom most white southerners were descended. It
flourished in hierarchical rural societies, where face-to-face relations gov-
erned social manners. The dominant ethical code for the southern white
elite included a combative sensitivity to slights; loyalty to family, locality,
state, and region; deference to elders and social “betters”; and an almost
theatrical hospitality. Southern men displayed a fierce defense of female
purity and a propensity to magnify personal insults to the point of capital
offenses.
The preoccupation of southern white men with a sense of honor steeped in
violence found outlets in several popular rituals. Like their Celtic and English
ancestors, white southerners hunted, rode horses, and gambled—over cards,
dice, horse racing, and cockfighting. All those activities provided arenas for
masculine camaraderie as well as competition.
Southern men of all social classes often promoted a reckless manliness.
During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, duels were the ultimate
expression of personal honor and manly courage. The prevailing code of the
“gentleman” presumed that a man’s honor was more sacred to him than life
itself. Although not confined to the South, dueling was much more common
there than in the rest of the young nation, a fact that gave rise to the observa-
tion that southerners would be polite until they were angry enough to kill
you. Dueling was outlawed in the northern states after Aaron Burr killed
Alexander Hamilton in 1804, and several southern states banned the practice
as well—but the prohibition was rarely enforced. Amid the fiery antebellum
political debates over nullification, abolition, and the fate of slavery in the
territories, clashing opinions often ended in duels. “Three-fourths of the
duels which have been fought in the United States were produced by political
492 • THE OLD SOUTH (CH. 12)

disputes,” said a South Carolinian in 1805. Such mortal confrontations were

inevitable, he explained, as long as “party violence is carried to abominable
excess.” Many of the most prominent southern leaders—congressmen, sena-
tors, governors, editors, and planters—engaged in duels. The roster of partic-
ipants included Andrew Jackson (a participant in over a dozen duels), Henry
Clay, Sam Houston, and Jefferson Davis.

B L AC K S O C I E T Y IN THE SOUTH

Although degrading, dangerous, and unstable, slavery was one of the

fastest growing elements of national life during the first half of the nine-
teenth century. In 1790 there were fewer than 700,000 enslaved blacks in the
United States. By 1830 there were more than 2 million, and by 1860 there
were almost 4 million.
In rural areas, the lives of whites and blacks were interwoven in innumer-
able and often intimate ways. As the enslaved population grew, slave owners
felt the need to develop much more explicit rules, regulations, and restrictions
governing slaves and limiting their rights. Throughout the seventeenth and
well into the eighteenth century, slav-
ery had largely been an uncodified
system of forced labor practiced in
most of the European colonies in the
Western Hemisphere. Enslaved work-
ers were initially treated like indentured
servants. After the American Revolu-
tion, however, slavery became a highly
regulated institution centered in the
South. Enslaved people were subject to
the arbitrary authority—and everyday
whims—of their masters and owners.
They could be moved or sold as their
Yarrow Mamout master saw fit. They could not legally
Mamout, an African Muslim who marry. They suffered tight restrictions
had been sold into slavery, purchased on their movements and were sub-
his freedom, acquired property, and jected to harsh, violent punishments.
settled in Georgetown (now part of
Washington, D.C.). Charles Willson The food and clothing supplied to
Peale executed this portrait in 1819, slaves were inadequate. A Kentuckian
when Mamout was over 100 years old. in 1806 said that the “insufficiency of
 Black Society in the South • 493

clothing, and . . . scanty and improper aliment [food]” made slaves susceptible
to illnesses and contagious diseases. Yet despite such restrictions, slaves found
ways to forge networks of community that enabled them to sustain their folk
heritage.

“ F R E E P E R S O N S O F C O L O R ” In the Old South, free persons of

color occupied an uncertain status between slavery and freedom, subject to
racist legal restrictions not imposed upon whites. Free blacks attained their
status in a number of ways. Over the years some slaves were able to purchase
their freedom, and others were freed (“manumitted”) by their owners. By
1860 there were some 260,000 free blacks in the slave states, most of them
very poor. Some of the men were tailors or shoemakers or carpenters; others
worked as painters, bricklayers, butchers, or barbers. Still others worked on
the docks or on board boats and ships. Women worked as seamstresses, ven-
dors, washerwomen, or house servants.
Among them were a large number of mulattoes, people of mixed racial
ancestry. The census of 1860 reported 412,000 people of mixed parentage in
the United States, or about 10 percent of the black population, probably a
drastic undercount. In cities such as Charleston and especially New Orleans,
“colored” society became virtually a third caste, a new people who occupied
a status somewhere between that
of blacks and that of whites. Some
mulattoes built substantial for-
tunes and even became slavehold-
ers. They often operated inns serv-
ing a white clientele. Jehu Jones,
for instance, was the “colored”
proprietor of one of Charleston’s
best hotels. In Louisiana a mulatto,
Cyprien Ricard, paid $250,000 for
an estate that had ninety-one slaves.
In Natchez, Mississippi, William
Johnson, son of a white father and
a mulatto mother, operated three
barbershops, owned 1,500 acres of
Free blacks
land, and held several slaves.
This badge, issued in Charleston, South
Black slaveholders were few in Carolina, was worn by a free black so that
number, however. The 1830 cen- he would not be mistaken for someone’s
sus revealed that 3,775 free blacks, “property.”
 494 • THE OLD SOUTH (CH. 12)

ATLANTIC
OCEAN

GULF OF MEXICO

THE SLAVE POPULATION, 1820

0 150 300 Miles
Each dot represents 200 slaves.
0 150 300 Kilometers

Consider where the largest populations of slaves were clustered in the South in
1820. Why were most slaves clustered in these regions and not in others? How was
the experience of plantation slavery different for men and women?

about 2 percent of the total free black population, owned 12,760 slaves.
Some blacks held slaves for humanitarian purposes. One minister, for
instance, bought slaves and then enabled them to purchase their free-
dom from him on easy terms. Most often, black slaveholders were free
blacks who bought their own family members with the express purpose of
freeing them.

T H E T R A D E I N S L AV E S The rise in the slave population mainly

occurred naturally, especially after Congress outlawed American involvement
with the African slave trade in 1808. But banning the import of slaves from
Africa had the effect of increasing the cash value of slaves in the United States.
This in turn convinced some owners to treat their slaves better. As one planter
 Black Society in the South • 495

ATLANTIC
OCEAN

GULF OF MEXICO

THE SLAVE POPULATION, 1860

0 150 300 Miles
Each dot represents 200 slaves.
0 150 300 Kilometers

Why did slavery spread west? Compare this map with the map of cotton production
on page 484. What patterns do you see? Why would slaves have resisted migrating
west?

remarked in 1849, “The time has been that the farmer would kill up and wear
out one Negro to buy another, but it is not so now.” The dramatic rise in the
monetary value of enslaved workers brought better treatment for many.
“Massa was purty good,” one ex-slave recalled. “He treated us jus’ ’bout like
you would a good mule.” Another said his master “fed us reg’lar on good,
’stantial food, jus’ like you’d tend to you hoss, if you had a real good one.”
Some slaveholders hired wage laborers, often Irish immigrants, for ditching
and other dangerous work rather than risk the lives of the more valuable
slaves. And with the rising cash value of slaves, more and more owners sought
to ensure that enslaved women bore children—as many as possible. A South
Carolina planter named William Johnson explained in 1815 that the “interest
of the owner is to obtain from his slaves labor and increase.”
496 • THE OLD SOUTH (CH. 12)

The end of the African slave trade increased the importance of the domestic
slave-trading network, with slaves moving mainly from the worn-out lands of
the Southeast into the booming new country of the Old Southwest. Many
slaves were taken south and west with the planters who owned them, but sell-
ing slaves became big business. Slave markets and auction houses sprang up
like mushrooms to meet the demand, and communities constructed slave
“jails” to house the shackled men, women, and children who were waiting to
be sold to the highest bidder. The worst aspect of the domestic slave trade was
the separation of children from parents and husbands from wives. Only
Louisiana and Alabama (from 1852) forbade separating a child younger than
ten from his or her mother, and no state forbade the separation of husband
from wife.

R U R A L A N D U R B A N S L AV E R Y Most slaves in the lower South

labored on large plantations possessing twenty or more slaves. Rice, for
example, dominated the economy of the coastal areas of South Carolina and
Georgia. Like cotton, rice was a labor-intensive crop that spawned a system
of large plantations that in turn helped foster the rise of Charleston and
Savannah as urban trade centers. Over 80 percent of the slaves in South Car-
olina at the start of the nineteenth century lived on rice plantations. The
preferred jobs were household servant and skilled worker, including black-
smith and carpenter, or a special assignment, such as boatman or cook. Such
privileged roles, however, had disadvantages too. Enslaved household ser-
vants were always on call and rarely on their own; they could not avoid being
in the presence of whites.
The vast majority of slaves across the South were field hands who were
organized into work gangs, usually supervised by a black “driver” or white
overseer. Plantation slaves were usually housed in one- or two-room wooden
shacks with dirt floors. The wealthiest planters built slave cabins out of
brick. A set of clothes was distributed twice a year, but shoes were generally
provided only in winter. Most slaves went barefoot. About half of all slave
babies died in the first year of life, a mortality rate more than twice that of
whites.
Field hands worked long hours, from dawn to dusk. Although owners
and slaves often developed close and even affectionate relationships, the
“peculiar institution” was enforced by a system rooted in brutal force that
defined people primarily as property. The difference between a good owner
and a bad one, according to one ex-slave, was the difference between one
“who did not whip you too much” and one who “whipped you till he’d
bloodied you and blistered you.” Four hundred lashes was considered “but
 Black Society in the South • 497

slite punishment” compared to some

owners who severed a hand or foot of
a disobedient slave. Over fifty thou-
sand slaves a year escaped. Those not
caught often headed for Mexico, the
northern states, or Canada. Geogra-
phy often determined the success of
runaways. Those in the Upper South
had a much better chance of reaching
a northern “free” state than those in
the Lower South.
Slaves living in southern cities
had a much different experience than
those on farms and plantations. City
life meant that enslaved blacks inter-
Jack, photographed by Joseph T.
acted not only with their white owners Zealy
but also the extended interracial com-
Daguerreotype of a man identified
munity—shopkeepers and police, only as Jack, a driver from Guinea,
neighbors and strangers. Most visible on the plantation of B. F. Taylor of
in southern cities were African Ameri- Columbia, South Carolina, 1850.
can street vendors selling produce or
handicrafts. Some slaves in cities were “hired out” on the condition that that
they paid a percentage of their earned wages to their owners. Generally speak-
ing, slaves in cities enjoyed greater mobility and freedom than their counterparts
in rural areas.

S L AV E WO M E N Although enslaved men and women often performed

similar labors, they did not experience slavery in the same way. Once slave-
holders realized how profitable a fertile female slave could be over time, giv-
ing birth every two and a half years to a child who eventually could be sold,
they encouraged reproduction through a variety of incentives. Pregnant
slaves were given less work to do and more food. Some plantation owners
rewarded new mothers with dresses and silver dollars.
But if motherhood endowed enslaved women with stature and benefits, it
also entailed exhausting demands. Within days after childbirth, the mother
was put to work spinning, weaving, or sewing. A few weeks thereafter, moth-
ers were sent back to the fields; breast-feeding mothers were often forced to
take their babies to the fields with them. Enslaved women were expected
to do “man’s work” outside: cut trees, haul logs, plow fields with mules,
dig ditches, spread fertilizer, slaughter animals, hoe corn, and pick cotton.
498 • THE OLD SOUTH (CH. 12)

As an escaped slave reported, “Women who do outdoor work are used as bad
as men.”
Once women passed their childbearing years, around the age of forty, their
workload was increased. Slaveholders put middle-aged women to work full-
time in the fields or performing other outdoor labor. On larger plantations
elderly women, called grannies, kept the children during the day while their
mothers worked outside. Women worked as cooks and seamstresses, mid-
wives and nurses, healers and folk doctors. Enslaved women of all ages usu-
ally worked in sex-segregated gangs, which enabled them to form close bonds
with one another. To enslaved African Americans, developing a sense of com-
munity and camaraderie meant emotional and psychological survival. Older
women assumed primary responsibility for nurturing family and kinship
networks and anchoring slave communities.
Unlike enslaved men, enslaved girls and women faced the threat of sexual
abuse. Sometimes a white master or overseer would rape a woman in the
fields or cabins. Sometimes he would lock a woman in a cabin with a male
slave whose task was to impregnate her. Female slaves responded to the sex-
ual abuse in different ways. Some seduced their master away from his wife.
Others fiercely resisted the sexual advances—and were usually whipped or
even killed for their disobedience. Some women killed their babies rather
than see them grow up in slavery.

CELIA A single historical narrative helps illustrate the exploitation, depri-

vation, and vulnerability of enslaved people operating within an inequitable
web of laws and customs. Such is the case of an enslaved teen named Celia.
Her tragic story reveals complexity of slavery and the limited options avail-
able to the enslaved. As Celia discovered, slaves often could improve their
circumstances only by making extraordinarily difficult choices that carried
no guarantee of success.
In 1850, fourteen-year-old Celia was purchased by Robert Newsom, a
prosperous, respected Missouri farmer who told his daughters that he had
bought Celia to work as their domestic servant. In fact, however, the recently
widowed Newsom wanted a sexual slave. After purchasing Celia, he raped
the girl while taking her back to his farm. For the next five years, Newsom
treated Celia as his mistress, even building her a brick cabin fifty yards from
his house. During that time she gave birth to two children, presumably his
offspring. By 1855, Celia had fallen in love with another slave, George, who
demanded that she “quit the old man.” Desperate for relief from her tormen-
tor, Celia appealed to Newsom’s two grown daughters, but they either could
not or would not intervene.
 Black Society in the South • 499

The business of slavery

The offices of Price, Birch, and Company, dealers in slaves, Alexandria, Virginia.

Soon thereafter, on June 23, 1855, the sixty-five-year-old Newsom entered

Celia’s cabin, ignored her frantic appeals, and kept advancing until she struck
and killed him with a large stick. Celia was not allowed to testify at her mur-
der trial because she was a slave. Her attorneys, all of them slaveholders,
argued that the right of white women to defend themselves against sexual
assault should be extended to enslaved women. The prevailing public opinion
in the slave states, however, stressed that the rape of a slave by an owner was
not a crime. The judge and jury, all white men, pronounced Celia guilty. On
December 21, 1855, after two months of trials and futile appeals, Celia was
hanged.
The grim story of Celia’s brief life and abused condition highlights the
skewed power structure in southern society before the Civil War. Celia bore a
double burden, that of a slave and that of a woman living in a male-dominated
society rife with racism and sexism.

T H E S L AV E FA M I LY Slave marriages had no legal status, but many

slaveholders accepted marriage as a stabilizing influence on the plantation.
Sometimes they performed the marriages themselves or had a minister cele-
brate a formal wedding. Whatever the formalities, the norm for the slave
community, as for the white, was the nuclear family, with the father regarded
as head of the household. Most slave children were socialized by means of
500 • THE OLD SOUTH (CH. 12)

the nuclear family, which afforded some degree of independence from white
influence. Childhood was short for slaves. At five or six years of age, children
were put to work: they collected trash and firewood, picked cotton, scared
away crows from planted fields, weeded, and ran errands. By age ten they
were full-time field hands. Children were often sold to new masters. In Mis-
souri, one enslaved woman saw six of her seven children, aged one to eleven,
sold to six different owners.

F O R G I N G A S L AV E C O M M U N I T Y To generalize about slavery is to

miss its various incarnations from place to place and time to time. The
experience was as varied as people are. Enslaved African Americans were
victims of terrible injustice, abuse, and constraints, but to stop at so obvi-
ous a reality would be to miss important evidence of endurance, resilience,
and achievement. If ever there was an effective melting pot in American
history, it may have been that in which Africans with a variety of ethnic,

Plantation of J. J. Smith, Beaufort, South Carolina, 1862

Several generations of a family raised in slavery.
 Black Society in the South • 501

linguistic, and tribal origins formed new communities and new cultures as
African Americans. Amid the horrors of the slave system, the enslaved
managed to create a degree of cultural autonomy for themselves. Wherever
they could, African Americans forged their own coherent sense of commu-
nity, asserted their individuality, and devised ingenious ways to resist their
confinement. For example, although most slaves were prohibited from
marrying, the law did not prevent slaves from choosing partners and forg-
ing a family life for themselves within the constraints of the slave system.
Slaves also gathered secretly for religious worship and to engage in folk rit-
uals. They also used encoded songs (“spirituals”) to express their frustra-
tion at being kept in bondage. Slave culture incorporated many African ele-
ments, especially in areas with few whites. Among the Gullahs living along
the South Carolina and Georgia coast, for example, a researcher found as
late as the 1940s more than four thousand words still in use from the lan-
guages of twenty-one African tribes. Elements of African culture have thus
survived, adapted, and interacted with those of the other cultures with
which slaves came in contact.

AFRICAN AMERICAN RELIGION AND FOLKLORE Among the

most important elements of African American culture was its dynamic reli-
gion, a unique mixture of African, Caribbean, and Christian elements often
practiced in secret because many slaveholders feared the effects of shared
religion on enslaved workers. Throughout the South and border states,
slaves worshipped in biracial churches, independent black-only churches,
and praise houses. So-called brush arbors—crude outdoor shelters used for
religious gatherings—were also common. Usually erected near the farm
fields, arbors were made of saplings, branches, and brush so as to provide
shelter from the sun and rain.
Slaves found in religion both balm for the soul and release for their emo-
tions. Most Africans brought with them to the Americas a concept of a Cre-
ator, or Supreme God, whom they could recognize in the Christian Jehovah,
and lesser gods, whom they might identify with Christ, the Holy Ghost, and
the saints, thereby reconciling their African beliefs with Christianity. Along-
side the church they maintained beliefs in spirits (many of them benign),
magic, and conjuring. Enslaved Africans and their African American descen-
dants took for granted the existence of root doctors and sorcerers, witches
and wizards. Belief in magic is in fact a common human response to condi-
tions of danger or helplessness.
By 1860, about 20 percent of adult slaves had joined Christian denomina-
tions. Many others displayed aspects of the Christian faith in their forms of
502 • THE OLD SOUTH (CH. 12)

worship but were not deemed Christians. As a white minister observed of

slave worshippers, “Their notions of the Supreme Being; of the character
and offices of Christ and of the Holy Ghost; of a future state; and of what
constitutes the holiness of life are indefinite and confused.” Some slaves had
“heard of Jesus Christ, but who he is and what he has done for a ruined
world, they cannot tell.”
Slaves found the Bible inspiring in its tributes to the poor and oppressed,
and they embraced its promise of salvation through the sacrifice of Jesus.
Likewise, the lyrics of religious “spirituals” helped slaves endure the strain of
field labor and provided them with a musical code with which to express
their own desire for freedom on earth. The former slave Frederick Douglass
stressed that “slaves sing most when they are most unhappy,” and spirituals
offered them deliverance from their worldly woes. A slave preacher
explained that the “way in which we worshiped is almost indescribable. The
singing helped provoke a certain ecstasy of emotion, clapping of hands, toss-
ing of heads, which would continue without cessation about half an hour.
The old house partook of the ecstasy; it rang with their jubilant shouts, and
shook in all its joints.”

S L AV E R E B E L L I O N S Southern whites were paranoid about the possi-

bility of slave uprisings. Nothing worried them more. Any sign of resistance
or rebellion by slaves risked a brutal response. In 1811, for example, two of
Thomas Jefferson’s nephews, Lilburn and Isham Lewis, tied a seventeen-
year-old slave named George to the floor of their Kentucky cabin and killed
him with an axe in front of seven other slaves. They then handed the axe to
one of the slaves and forced him to dismember the body and put the pieces
in the fireplace. The ostensible reason for the murder was that George had
broken a valuable pitcher, but in fact the brothers murdered him because he
had frequently spoken out against slavery and had run away several times.
The Lewises, who had been drinking heavily, wanted “to set an example for
any other uppity slaves.”
The overwhelming authority and firepower of southern whites made
organized resistance by slaves very risky. The nineteenth-century South
witnessed only four major slave insurrections, two of which were betrayed
before they got under way. In 1800, a slave blacksmith named Gabriel on a
plantation near Richmond, Virginia, hatched a revolt involving perhaps a
thousand other slaves. They planned to seize key points in the city, capture
the governor, James Monroe, and overthrow the economic elite. Gabriel
expected that the “poor white people” would join their effort to overthrow
the merchant elite. But it rained on the day Gabriel launched his rebellion.
 Black Society in the South • 503

Most of the insurgent slaves could not reach the meeting point. Amid the
confusion someone alerted whites to the gathering. They captured Gabriel
and his fellow conspirators. Gabriel and twenty-six of his fellow “soldiers”
were hanged, and ten others were deported to the West Indies. A white Vir-
ginian who observed the public executions noted that the rebels on the
gallows displayed a “sense of their [natural] rights, [and] a contempt for
danger.”
In early 1811 the largest slave revolt in American history occurred just
north of New Orleans in the Louisiana Territory. Wealthy planters cultivat-
ing sugarcane in the region had acquired one of the densest populations of
slaves in North America; they greatly outnumbered the local whites. Late in
the evening on January 8, a group of slaves armed with axes, knives, and
machetes broke into their master’s sugar plantation house along the Missis-
sippi River. The planter was able to escape, but his son was hacked to death.
The leader of the assault was Charles Deslondes, a trusted mixed-race slave
overseer responsible for supervising the field hands. Deslondes and his fel-
low rebels seized weapons, horses, and militia uniforms from the plantation
and, bolstered by liquor and reinforced by more slaves, they headed toward
New Orleans, burning houses and killing whites along the way. Over the
next two days their ranks swelled to over two hundred. But their success
was short-lived. Angry whites—as well as several free blacks who were later
praised for their “tireless zeal & dauntless courage”—mobilized to suppress
the insurrection. U.S. Army units and militia joined the effort. They sur-
rounded and then assaulted the rebel slaves holed up at a plantation.
Dozens of slaves were killed or wounded; most of those who fled were cap-
tured over the next week. “We made considerable slaughter,” reported one
planter. Many of the imprisoned slaves were tortured and then executed.
Deslondes had his hands severed and thighs broken before he was shot and
his body burned. As many as a hundred slaves were killed and beheaded.
Their severed heads were placed on poles along the Mississippi River to
strike fear into enslaved workers. A month after the rebellion was put down,
a white resident noted, “all the negro difficulties have subsided and gentle
peace prevails.”
The Denmark Vesey plot in Charleston, discovered in 1822, involved a
similar effort to assault the white population. The rebels planned to seize
ships in the harbor, burn the city, and head for Santo Domingo (Haiti),
where slaves in the former French sugar colony had staged a successful revolt
in 1792. The Vesey plot, however, never got off the ground. Instead, thirty-
five supposed slave rebels were executed, and thirty-four were deported. The
city also responded by curtailing the liberties of free blacks.
504 • THE OLD SOUTH (CH. 12)

The Nat Turner insurrection of

August 1831, in a rural area of Vir-
ginia where the enslaved blacks
greatly outnumbered free whites,
panicked whites throughout the
South. Turner, a trusted black
overseer, was also a self-anointed
preacher who believed he had a
divine mission in leading a slave
rebellion. A solar eclipse in Febru-
ary 1831 convinced him that he
was called to lead a slave revolt.
The revolt began when a small
group of slaves joined Turner in
killing the adults, children, and
infant in his owner’s household.
They then set off down the road,
repeating the process at other farm-
houses, where other slaves joined
in. Before it ended, fifty-seven
The Confessions of Nat Turner whites had been killed, most of
Published account of Turner’s rebellion, them women and children. Federal
written by Turner’s lawyer, Thomas Gray. troops, Virginia militiamen, and
volunteers indiscriminately killed
many slaves in the process of putting down the rebels. A Virginia journal-
ist said the behavior of the white vigilantes was comparable in “barbarity
to the atrocities of the insurgents.” Seventeen slaves were hanged; several
were decapitated and their severed heads placed on poles along the highway.
Turner eluded capture for six weeks. Then he was tried, found guilty,
and hanged. More than any other event, Nat Turner’s Rebellion terrified
white southerners by making real the lurking fear that enslaved blacks
might revolt. The Virginia legislature responded by restricting the ability
of slaves to learn to read and write and to gather for religious meetings.
Throughout the South, states followed suit and tightened their policing of
slaves.
Slaves were willing to risk much for freedom—being hunted down, bru-
tally punished, or even killed. Most slaves, however, did not rebel or run away.
Instead, they more often retaliated against oppression by malingering, feign-
ing illness, engaging in sabotage, stealing or breaking tools, or destroying
crops or livestock. Yet there were constraints on such behavior, for laborers
 The Culture of the Southern Frontier • 505

would likely eat better on a prosperous plantation than on a struggling one.

And the shrewdest slaveholders knew that it was more profitable to offer
rewards than inflict pain.

T H E C U LT U R E OF THE SOUTHERN FRONTIER

There was substantial social and cultural diversity within the South
during the three decades before the Civil War. The region known as the Old
Southwest, for example, is perhaps the least well known. Largely unsettled by
whites until the 1820s, this Indian-inhabited region bridged the South and
the West, exhibiting characteristics of both areas. Its low land prices and
suitability for cotton cultivation (as well as sugarcane in Louisiana) served as
a powerful magnet, luring thousands of settlers from Virginia, Georgia, and
the Carolinas when the seaboard economy faltered during the 1820s and
1830s. Between 1810 and 1840, the cumulative population of Georgia,
Alabama, and Mississippi increased from about 300,000 (252,000 of whom
were in Georgia) to 1,657,799. Over 40 percent of the residents were
enslaved blacks, many of whom had been moved in chained gangs (called
“coffles”) from plantations and slave markets in the Carolinas, Virginia, and
New Orleans. The migrating southerners carved out farms, built churches,
established towns, and eventually brought culture and order to a raw fron-
tier. As they took up new lives and occupations, the southern pioneers trans-
planted many practices and institutions from the coastal states. In doing so,
however, they also fashioned a distinct new set of cultural values and social
customs.

T H E D E C I S I O N T O M I G R AT E By the late 1820s, the dwindling eco-

nomic opportunities in the Carolinas and Virginia due to falling crop prices
and soil exhaustion led many residents of those states to migrate to the Old
Southwest. Like their northern counterparts, restless southern sons of the
seaboard planter and professional elite wanted to make it on their own, to be
“self-made men,” economically self-reliant and socially independent.
Women—both white and black—were underrepresented among migrants
to the Old Southwest. Few were interested in relocating to a disease-ridden,
violent, and primitive territory. As a Carolina woman prepared to depart for
Alabama, she confided to a friend that “you cannot imagine the state of
despair that I am in.” Another said, “my heart bleeds within me” at the
thought of the “many tender cords [of kinship] that are now severed forever.”
Others feared that life on the frontier would produce a “dissipation” of
506 • THE OLD SOUTH (CH. 12)

morals. They heard vivid stories of lawlessness, drunkenness, gambling,

Indian attacks, and harsh working conditions.
Enslaved blacks had many of the same reservations about moving south-
ward. Almost a million captive African Americans were “sold south” and
taken to the Old Southwest during the antebellum era, most of them in the
1830s. A third of the transplanted slaves were moved with their owners. The
other two thirds were sold at slave auctions in New Orleans, Virginia, and
the Carolinas and taken west by slave traders. White owners—as well as
Indians who purchased enslaved blacks—worked the slaves especially hard
in the Old Southwest, clearing land and planting cotton. Slaves came to fear
the harsh working conditions amid heat and humidity of the new territory.
But they were especially despondent at the breakup of their family ties. A
white Virginian noted in 1807 that “there is a great aversion amongst our
Negroes to be carried to distant parts, & particularly to our new countries.”
Because the first task in the new region involved the clearing of land, enslaved
males were most in demand. Relatively few black women were taken to the
Old Southwest, thus making it difficult to reestablish kinship ties.

A M A S C U L I N E C U LT U R E The frontier environment in the Old

Southwest prompted important changes in gender roles, and relations
between men and women became even more inequitable. Young men
indulged themselves in activities that would have generated disapproval in
the more settled seaboard society. They drank, gambled, fought to excess,
and aggressively gratified their sexual desires. In 1834, a South Carolina
migrant urged his brother to move west and join him because “you can live
like a fighting cock with us.” Alcohol consumption hit new heights. Most
Old Southwest plantations had their own stills to manufacture whiskey, and
alcoholism ravaged frontier families. Violence was also commonplace. A Vir-
ginian who settled in Mississippi fought in fourteen duels, killing ten men in
the process. The frequency of fights, stabbings, shootings, and murders
shocked visitors. So, too, did the propensity of white men to take sexual
advantage of enslaved women. An Alabama woman married to a lawyer and
politician was outraged by the “beastly passions” of the white men who
fathered slave children and then sold them like livestock. She also recorded in
her diary instances of men regularly beating their wives. Women had little
choice but to endure the mistreatment because, as one woman wrote about a
friend whose husband abused her, she was “wholly dependent upon his care.”

T H E S O U T H — A R E G I O N A PA R T Although the Old South included

distinct sub-regions with striking differences from one another, what
 The Culture of the Southern Frontier • 507

increasingly set the southern tier of states apart from the rest of the nation
was a cash-crop agricultural economy (tobacco, cotton, sugar cane, and rice)
dependent on race-based slavery. The recurring theme of southern politics
and culture from the 1830s to the outbreak of civil war in 1861 was the
region’s determination to remain a society dominated by whites who in turn
exercised domination over people of color. Slavery was the paramount issue
controlling all else. A South Carolinian asserted that “slavery with us is no
abstraction—but a great and vital fact. Without it, our every comfort would
be taken from us.”
Protecting the right of southerners to own, transport, and sell slaves
became the overriding focus of southern political leaders during the 1830s
and after. As a Mississippi governor insisted in 1850, slavery “is entwined
with our political system and cannot be separated from it.” To southerners,
said a Georgian, slavery shaped everything about southern culture: “life and
property, safety and security.” It was race-based slavery that generated the
South’s prosperity as well as its growing sense of separateness from the rest
of the nation. As an Arkansas senator insisted, slavery “affects the personal
interest of every white man.” Throughout the 1830s, southern state legisla-
tures stood “one and indivisible” on the preservation of race-based slavery.
They shouted defiance against northern abolitionists who called for an end
to the immorality of slavery. Virginia’s General Assembly, for example,
declared that only the southern states had the right to control slavery and
that such control must be “maintained at all hazards.” The Georgia legisla-
ture agreed, announcing that “upon this point there can be no discussion—
no compromise—no doubt.” A U.S. Senator from Tennessee told Congress
that slavery had become “sacred” to the South’s future, and no interference
would be tolerated. The increasingly militant efforts of northerners to abol-
ish slavery helped reinforce the sense of southern unity while provoking an
emotional defensiveness that would culminate in secession and war.

CHRONOLOGY
KTHKEY TERMS & NAMES
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• The Southern Economy Cotton was not the only profitable crop in the South.
The Border South and Middle South became increasingly diversified, producing
tobacco and grains. Sugar and other crops were grown along with cotton in the
Lower South. Despite the belief that slaves were unsuited for factory work, some
manufacturing ventures in the South employed slaves. Slavery was the unifying
element in most southern enterprises.
• Southern Culture Throughout the antebellum era the South became increas-
ingly committed to a cotton economy, which in turn was dependent upon slave
labor. Despite efforts to diversify the economy, the wealth and status associated
with cotton prompted the westward expansion of the plantation culture.
• Southern Black Culture The enslaved responded to their oppression in a
variety of ways. Although many slaves attempted to run away, only a few openly
rebelled because the consequences were so harsh. Some survived by relying on
their own communities, family ties, and Christian faith. Most free blacks in the
South were mulattoes and some even owned slaves, often purchasing members
of their own family.
• Expansion into the Southwest Westward expansion resulted from soil exhaus-
tion and falling prices from Virginia to Georgia. Sons of Southern planters
wanted to take advantage of cheap land on the frontier to make their own for-
tunes and way of life. Slaves were worked harshly preparing the terrain for cot-
ton cultivation and experienced the breakup of family ties.
 CHRONOLOGY

1792
1800
1808
Slave revolt in Santo Domingo (Haiti)
Gabriel conspiracy in Richmond, VA
Participation in the international slave trade is outlawed
1811 Charles Deslondes Revolt in Louisiana
1816 American Colonization Society is founded
1822 Denmark Vesey conspiracy is discovered in Charleston, South
Carolina
1831 Nat Turner leads slave insurrection in Virginia
1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published

KEY TERMS & NAMES

“peculiar institution” colonization p. 481 “spirituals” p. 501
p. 480
yeomen p. 490 Nat Turner p. 504
paternalism p. 481
mulattoes p. 493

13
RELIGION, ROMANTICISM,
AND REFORM

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• What were the main changes in the practice of religion in America

during the early nineteenth century?
• What were the distinguishing characteristics of American
literature during the antebellum period?
• What were the goals of the social-reform movement?
• What was the status of women during this period?
• How and where did opposition to slavery emerge?

D uring the first half of the nineteenth century, the world’s

largest—and youngest—republic was a festival of contrasts.
Europeans traveling in America marveled at the nation’s
restless energy and buoyant optimism, its democratic idealism and entrepre-
neurial spirit. At the same time, however, visitors noticed that the dynamic
young republic was experiencing growing pains, sectional tensions, and
increasingly heated debates over the morality of slavery in a nation dedi-
cated to freedom and equality. Such tensions made for an increasingly parti-
san political environment whose conflicts were mirrored in the evolution of
American social and cultural life. Unlike nations of the Old World, which
had long been steeped in history and romance, the United States in the early
nineteenth century was an infant republic founded by religious seekers and
economic adventurers but weaned on the rational ideas of the Enlighten-
ment. Those “reasonable” ideas, most vividly set forth in Thomas Jefferson’s
Declaration of Independence, influenced religion, literature and the arts,
and various social reform movements during the first half of the nineteenth
 Rational Religion • 511

century. Politics was not the only contested battleground during the first
half of the nineteenth century; religious and cultural life also experienced
wrenching strains and new outlooks. Religious revivalism clashed with a
new rationalism that questioned many aspects of Christian belief. But both
revivalists and rationalists believed that people could improve the world by
improving people. Not everyone, however, wanted to be reformed—especially
by others.

R AT I O N A L R E L I G I O N

After the Revolution, many Americans were more interested in reli-

gious salvation than political engagement. Christian activists assumed that
the United States had a God-mandated mission to provide the world with a
shining example of republican virtue, much as Puritan New England had
once stood before sinful humanity as an example of an ideal Christian com-
munity. The concept of America’s having a special mission still carried
strong spiritual overtones, for the religious fervor that quickened in the
Great Awakening had reinforced the idea of the nation’s fulfilling a provi-
dential purpose. This idea contained an element of perfectionism—and an
element of impatience when reality fell short of expectations. The combina-
tion of widespread religious energy and fervent social idealism brought
major reforms and advances in human rights during the first half of the
nineteenth century. It also brought disappointments that at times triggered
cynicism and alienation.

DEISM The currents of the rational Enlightenment and the spiritual Great
Awakening, now mingling, now parting, flowed on into the nineteenth cen-
tury and in different ways eroded the remnants of Calvinist orthodoxy. As
time passed, the puritanical image of a stern God promising predestined hell-
fire and damnation gave way to a more optimistic religious outlook. Enlight-
enment rationalism stressed humankind’s inherent goodness rather than its
depravity and encouraged a belief in social progress and the promise of indi-
vidual perfectibility.
Many leaders of the Revolutionary War era, such as Thomas Jefferson and
Benjamin Franklin, were Deists. After the American Revolution, and especially
during the 1790s, when the French Revolution generated excited attention in
the United States, interest in Deism increased. In every major city “deistical
societies” emerged, and college students especially took delight in criticizing
conventional religion. By the use of reason, Deists believed, people might
512 • RELIGION, ROMANTICISM, AND REFORM (CH. 13)

grasp the natural laws governing the universe. Deists rejected the belief that
every statement in the Bible was literally true. They were skeptical of miracles
and questioned the divinity of Jesus. Deists also defended free speech and
opposed religious coercion of all sorts.

U N I TA R I A N I S M A N D U N I V E R S A L I S MOrthodox Christians, who

remained the preponderant majority in the United States, could hardly dis-
tinguish Deism from atheism, but Enlightenment rationalism soon began to
make deep inroads into American Protestantism. The old Puritan churches
around Boston proved most vulnerable to the appeal of religious liberalism.
Boston’s progress—or, some would say, its degeneration—from Puritanism
to prosperity had persuaded many affluent families that they were anything
but sinners in the hands of an angry God. By the end of the eighteenth cen-
tury, many well-educated New Englanders were embracing Unitarianism, a
belief that emphasizes the oneness and benevolence of a loving God, the
inherent goodness of humankind, and the primacy of reason and conscience
over religious creeds and organized churches. Unitarians believe that Jesus
was a saintly man but he was not divine. People are not inherently depraved,
Unitarians stressed; people are capable of doing tremendous good, and all
are eligible for salvation. Boston was the center of the Unitarian movement,
and it flourished chiefly within Congregational churches. During the early
nineteenth century, “liberal” churches adopted the name Unitarian.
William Ellery Channing of Boston’s Federal Street Congregational
Church emerged as the most inspiring Unitarian leader. “I am surer that my
rational nature is from God,” he said, “than that any book is an expression of
his will.” The American Unitarian Association in 1826 had 125 churches (all
but a handful of them in Massachusetts). That same year, when the Presby-
terian minister Lyman Beecher moved to Boston, he deplored the inroads
that had been made by the new rationalist faith: “All the literary men of
Massachusetts were Unitarian; all the trustees and professors of Harvard
College were Unitarian; all the elite of wealth and fashion crowded Unitarian
churches.”
A parallel anti-Calvinist movement, Universalism, attracted a different—
and much larger—social group: working-class people. In 1779, John Murray,
a British ex-Methodist clergyman, founded the first Universalist church, in
Gloucester, Massachusetts. Universalism stresses the salvation of all people,
not just a predestined few. God, it teaches, is too merciful to condemn any-
one to eternal punishment. “Thus, the Unitarians and Universalists were in
fundamental agreement,” wrote one historian of religion, “the Universalists
holding that God was too good to damn man; the Unitarians insisting that
 The Second Great Awakening • 513

man was too good to be damned.” Although both sects remained relatively
small, they exercised a powerful influence over intellectual life, especially in
New England.

T H E S E C O N D G R E AT AWA K E N I N G

By the end of the eighteenth century, Enlightenment secularism had

made deep inroads among the best-educated Americans, but most people
remained profoundly religious, as they have been ever since. There was, the per-
ceptive French visitor Alexis de Tocqueville observed, “no country in the world
where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men
than in America.”
After the American Revolution, religious life witnessed a profound trans-
formation. The established denominations gave way to newer, more demo-
cratic sects. Anglicanism was affected the most. It suffered the stigma of
being aligned with the Church of England, and it lost its status as the official
religion in most states. To diminish their pro-British image, Virginia Angli-
cans renamed themselves Episcopalians. But even the new name did not pre-
vent the denomination from losing its traditional leadership position in the
South.
At the same time that Episcopalianism was losing stature and support,
a new denomination—Methodism—was experiencing dramatic growth. In
1784, Methodists met in Baltimore
and announced that they were aban-
doning Anglicanism and forming a
distinct new denomination commit-
ted to the aggressive conversion of
all people: men, women, Indians,
and African Americans. The reform-
minded Methodists, inspired by their
founder, the English Anglican priest
John Wesley, abandoned the gloomy
predestination of Calvinism in favor of
a life of “cheerful activism.” Methodists
discarded the Anglican prayer book,
loved singing hymns, welcomed the
working poor and the oppressed, and John Wesley
emphasized the possibility of Christ- Wesley’s gravestone reads, “Lord let
ian perfection in their earthly lives. me not live to be useless.”
514 • RELIGION, ROMANTICISM, AND REFORM (CH. 13)

Around 1800, fears that secularism was taking root among well-
educated Americans sparked a counterattack in the form of an intense
series of revivals that grew into the Second Great Awakening. An early
revivalist leader, Timothy Dwight, became president of Yale College in
1795 and resolved to purify a campus that had turned into “a hotbed of
infidelity.” Like his grandfather Jonathan Edwards, Dwight helped launch a
series of revivals that captivated Yale students and spread to all of New
England. Over the next forty years, the flames of revivalism crisscrossed the
United States. By the time those flames died down, the landscape of reli-
gious life had been turned topsy-turvy. The once-dominant Congregational
and Anglican churches were displaced by newer sects, such as the Baptists
and the Methodists. By the mid–nineteenth century, there would be more
Methodist churches by far than those of any other denomination. The per-
centage of Americans who joined Protestant churches increased sixfold
between 1800 and 1860.
The Second Great Awakening involved two very different centers of
activity. One emerged among the elite New England colleges, especially
Yale, and then spread west across New York into Pennsylvania and Ohio,
Indiana, and Illinois. The other center of revivalism coalesced in the back-
woods of Tennessee and Kentucky and spread across rural America. What
both forms of Protestant revivalism shared was a simple message: salvation
is available not just to a select few but to anyone who repents and embraces
Christ.

F R O N T I E R R E V I VA L S In its frontier phase, the Second Great Awaken-

ing, like the first, generated great excitement and dramatic behavior. It gave
birth, moreover, to two religious phenomena—the backwoods circuit-riding
preacher and the camp meeting—that helped keep the fires of revivalism
burning in the backwoods. Evangelists found ready audiences among lonely
frontier folk hungry for spiritual intensity and a sense of community.
Revivals were often unifying events; they bridged many social, economic,
political, and even racial divisions. Women especially flocked to the rural
revivals and sustained religious life on the frontier. In small rural hamlets,
the traveling revival was as welcome an event as the traveling circus—and as
entertaining.
Among the established sects, Presbyterianism was entrenched among the
Scots-Irish, from Pennsylvania to Georgia. Presbyterians gained further
from the Plan of Union, worked out in 1801 with the Congregationalists of
Connecticut and later with Congregationalists of other states. Since the
 The Second Great Awakening • 515

Presbyterians and the Congregationalists agreed on theology and differed

mainly on the form of church government they adopted, they were able to
form unified congregations and call a minister from either church. The
result through much of the Old Northwest was that New Englanders became
Presbyterians by way of the “Presbygational” churches.
The Baptists, often unschooled, embraced a simplicity of doctrine and
organization that appealed especially to rural people. Their theology was
grounded in the infallibility of the Bible and the recognition of innate
human depravity. But they replaced the Calvinist notion of predestination
and selective salvation with the concepts of free will and universal redemp-
tion while highlighting the ritual of adult baptism. They also stressed the
equality of all before God, regardless of wealth, social standing, or educa-
tion. Each Baptist congregation was its own highest authority, so a frontier
church had no denominational hierarchy to report to.
The Methodists, who shared with Baptists the belief that everyone could
gain salvation by an act of free will, established a much more centralized
church structure. They also developed the most effective evangelical method
of all: the traveling minister on horseback, who sought out rural converts in
the most remote areas with the message of salvation as a gift free for the tak-
ing. The “circuit rider” system began with Francis Asbury, a tireless British-
born revivalist who scoured the trans-Appalachian frontier for lost souls,
traversing fifteen states and preaching thousands of sermons. Asbury estab-
lished a mobile evangelism perfectly suited to the frontier environment and
the new democratic age. After Asbury, Peter Cartwright emerged as the most
successful circuit rider and grew justly famous for his highly charged ser-
mons. Cartwright roamed across Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, and Indiana,
preaching a sermon a day for over twenty years. His message was simple: sal-
vation is free for all to embrace. By the 1840s, the Methodists had grown into
the largest Protestant church in the nation.
African Americans were especially attracted to the new Methodist and
Baptist churches. Richard Allen, who would later help found the African
Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, said in 1787 that “there was no reli-
gious sect or denomination that would suit the capacity of the colored peo-
ple as well as the Methodist.” He decided that the “plain and simple gospel
suits best for any people; for the unlearned can understand [it].” But even
more important, the Methodists actively recruited blacks. They were “the
first people,” Allen noted, “that brought glad tidings to the colored people.”
The Baptists did as well. Like the Methodists, they offered a gospel of salva-
tion open to all, regardless of wealth, social standing, gender, or race. As free
516 • RELIGION, ROMANTICISM, AND REFORM (CH. 13)

as well as enslaved African Americans joined white Baptist or Methodist

churches, they infused the congregations with exuberant energy and emo-
tional songs called spirituals.
During the early nineteenth century, the energies of the Great Revival, as
the Second Great Awakening was called, spread through the western states
and into more settled regions back East. Camp meetings were typically held
in late summer or fall, when farm work slackened. People came from far and
wide, camping in wagons, tents, or crude shacks. African Americans, whether
enslaved or free, were allowed to set up their own adjacent camp revivals.
The largest camp meetings tended to be ecumenical affairs, with Baptist,
Methodist, and Presbyterian ministers working as a team. The crowds often
numbered in the thousands, and the unrestrained atmosphere at times made
for chaos. If a particular hymn or sermon excited participants, they would
shout, dance, or repeat the phrase. Mass excitement swept up even the most
skeptical onlookers, and infusions of the spirit sparked strange behavior.
Some went into trances; others contracted the “jerks,” laughed “the holy
laugh,” babbled in unknown tongues, or got down on all fours and barked
like dogs to “tree the devil,” as a hound might tree a raccoon.
But dwelling on the bizarre aspects of the camp meetings distorts an
activity that offered a redemptive social outlet to isolated rural folk. This was
especially true for women, for whom the camp meetings provided an alter-
native to the rigors and loneliness of farm life. Women, in fact, played the
predominant role at camp meetings, as they had in earlier revivals. Evangeli-
cal ministers repeatedly applauded the spiritual energies of women and
affirmed their right to give public witness to their faith. Camp meetings pro-
vided opportunities for women to participate as equals in large public ritu-
als. In addition, the various organizational needs of large revivals offered
numerous opportunities for women to exercise leadership roles outside the
home, including service as traveling evangelists themselves. Phoebe Wor-
rall Palmer, for example, hosted revival meetings in her New York City
home, then traveled across the United States as a camp meeting evangelist.
Such opportunities to assume traditional male roles bolstered women’s self-
confidence and expanded their horizons beyond the domestic sphere. Their
religious enthusiasm often inspired them to work on behalf of various
social-reform efforts, including expanded educational opportunities for
women and the right to vote. So in many ways and on many levels, the ener-
gies of the revivals helped spread a more democratic faith among people
living on the frontier. The evangelical impulse also led to an array of interde-
nominational initiatives intended to ensure that new converts sustained
 The Second Great Awakening • 517

Religious revival
An aquatint of a backwoods Methodist camp meeting in 1819.

their faith. Various denominations, for example, joined forces to create the
American Bible Society and the American Sunday School Union. The Bible
Society gave free Bibles to new converts, and the Sunday School Union pro-
vided weekly educational instruction, including basic literacy, even in back-
woods communities.

C H A R L E S F I N N EY A N D T H E BU R N E D - OV E R D I S T R I C T Re-
gions swept by revival fevers were compared to forests devastated by fire.
Upstate New York, in fact, experienced such intense levels of evangelical
activity that it was labeled the burned-over district. The most successful
evangelist in the burned-over district was an energetic former lawyer named
Charles Grandison Finney (1792–1875). In the winter of 1830–1831, he
preached with “a clear, shrill voice” for six months in upstate New York, three
evenings a week and three times on Sunday, and generated one hundred
thousand conversions. Finney claimed that it was “the greatest revival of
religion . . . since the world began.” Where rural camp meeting revivals
attracted farm families and other working-class groups, Finney’s audiences
attracted more affluent seekers. “The Lord,” Finney declared, “was aiming at
the conversion of the highest classes of society.”
Finney wrestled with a question that had plagued Protestantism for cen-
turies: what role can the individual play in earning salvation? Orthodox
Calvinists had long argued that people could neither earn nor choose
518 • RELIGION, ROMANTICISM, AND REFORM (CH. 13)

salvation of their own accord. Grace was a gift of God to a select few, a
predetermined decision by God incapable of human understanding or
control. In contrast, Finney insisted that the only thing preventing conver-
sion was the individual. The sinner must simply choose salvation by
embracing the promise of Jesus. What most often discouraged the individ-
ual from choosing to be “saved” was the terrifying loneliness of the deci-
sion. Finney and other “free will” evangelists wanted to democratize the
process of salvation, just as Jacksonians sought to democratize the political
process. So Finney transformed revivals into well-organized popular spec-
tacles: collective conversion experiences in which spectacular public events
displaced the private workship experience. At his marathon revivals, often
lasting for hours, Finney would call people up front to the “anxious
bench,” a pew where they struggled to confess their sins and seek conver-
sion and forgiveness, assisted by friends and neighbors helping to “pray
them through” the intense experience.
Finney compared his theatrical methods with those of campaigning politi-
cians who used advertising and showmanship to attract attention. He carried
the methods of the frontier revival to the cities and factories of the East and
as far as Great Britain. His gospel combined faith and good works: revival led
to efforts at social reform. By embracing Christ, a convert could thereafter be
free of sin, but Christians also had an obligation to improve the larger society.
Finney therefore helped found an array of groups designed to reform various
social ills: alcoholism, prostitution, profanity, war, and slavery. The revivals
thus provided one of the most powerful motives for the sweeping reform
impulse that characterized the age. Lyman Beecher, one of the towering cham-
pions of revivalism, stressed that the Second Great Awakening was not focused
simply on promoting individual conversions; it was also intended to “reform
human society.”
In 1835, Finney accepted the professorship of theology at the newly estab-
lished Oberlin College, founded by pious New Englanders in northern Ohio’s
Western Reserve. Later he served as its president. From the start, Oberlin College
radiated a spirit of reform predicated on faith; it was the first college in America
to admit women and blacks, and it was a hotbed of anti-slavery agitation.
Finney and other evangelists stirring the Second Great Awakening had a
profound impact upon the contours of religious and social life. By 1830, the
percentage of Americans who were church members had doubled over that
of 1800. Moreover, more people engaged in religious activities than political
activities. Among the most intensely committed religious believers were those
embracing a new denomination, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, or the Mormons.
 The Second Great Awakening • 519

THE MORMONS The Second Great Awakening not only generated a

“revival” of spiritual intensity among traditional denominations; it also
helped to spawn new religious groups. The burned-over district in western
New York crackled with spiritual fervor and gave rise to several new religious
movements, the most important of which was Mormonism. Its founder,
Joseph Smith, was the barely literate child of wandering Vermont farmers
who finally settled in the village of Palmyra in western New York. In 1820
young Smith reported to his vision-prone parents that he had seen God and
Christ, both of whom had forgiven his sins and told him that all religious
denominations were false. Three and a half years later, in 1823, Smith, who
had become an avid seeker of buried treasure and an ardent believer in folk
magic and the occult, reported that an angel named Moroni had visited him.
Moroni, he explained, was the son of the prophet Mormon and the last sur-
vivor of the Nephites, descendants of ancient Hebrews who had traveled to
America thousands of years before and had been visited by Jesus after his
crucifixion and resurrection. According to Smith, Moroni led him to a hill-
side near his father’s farm, where he unearthed golden tablets on which was
etched the Book of Mormon, supposedly a lost “gospel” of the Bible buried
some 1,400 years earlier.
On the same September day for each of the next three years, Smith went
back to the hill and talked with the angel, who let him view the thin golden
plates each time, but it was not until 1827 that Moroni allowed Smith to take
them home. There, over the course of a year, Smith used supernatural “seer”
stones to decipher the strange hieroglyphic language etched into the plates.
(Smith said that Moroni thereafter retrieved the plates, and they have never
been seen again.) The resulting 588-page Book of Mormon, published in
1830, includes large portions of the King James Bible but claims that a new
prophet will visit the Americas to herald the millennium, during which the
human race will be redeemed and the Native American “Lamanites,” whose
dark skin betrayed their sinfulness, will be rendered “white and delight-
some” people again.
With the remarkable Book of Mormon as his gospel, the charismatic Smith
set about forming his own church. He dismissed all Christian denominations
as frauds, denied that there was a hell, opposed slavery, and promised that the
Second Coming was imminent. Within a few years, Smith, whom the Mor-
mons simply called Joseph, had gathered thousands of devout converts, most
of them poor New England farmers who, like Smith’s family, had migrated to
western New York. These religious seekers, many of them cut off from orga-
nized communities and traditional social relationships, found in Mormonism
the promise of a pure kingdom of Christ in America. Mormons rejected the
520 • RELIGION, ROMANTICISM, AND REFORM (CH. 13)

notion of original sin staining the human race in favor of an optimistic creed
stressing human goodness.
From the outset the Mormon “saints” upset their “gentile” neighbors as
well as the political authorities. Mormons stood out with their close-knit
sense of community, their secret rituals, their assurance of righteousness,
and their refusal to abide by local laws and conventions. Joseph Smith
denied the legitimacy of civil governments and the federal Constitution. As a
result, no community wanted to host him and his “peculiar people.” In their
search for a refuge from persecution and for the “promised land,” the ever-
growing contingent of Mormons moved from western New York to Ohio,
then to Missouri, and finally, in 1839, to the half-built town of Commerce,
Illinois, on the west bank of the Mississippi River, which they renamed Nau-
voo (a Hebrew word meaning “beautiful land”). Within a few years, Nauvoo
had become a bustling, well-planned community of twelve thousand cen-
tered on an impressive neo-classical temple overlooking the river. In the
process of developing Nauvoo, Joseph Smith, “the Prophet,” became the
community’s leading planner, entrepreneur, and political czar: he owned
the hotel and general store, served as mayor and commander of the city’s
militia (the Nauvoo Legion), and
was the trustee of the church.
Smith’s lust for power grew as
well. He began excommunicating
dissidents and in 1844 announced
his intention to become president
of the United States, proclaiming
that the United States should
peacefully acquire not only Texas
and Oregon but all of Mexico and
Canada.
Smith also excited outrage by
practicing “plural marriage,”
whereby he accumulated two
dozen wives and encouraged
other Mormon leaders to do the
same. In 1844, a crisis arose
when Mormon dissidents, includ-
ing Smith’s first wife, Emma,
A new Christianity denounced his polygamy. The
The Mormon temple in Nauvoo, upshot was not only a schism in
Illinois, ca. 1840. the church but also an attack on
 The Second Great Awakening • 521

Nauvoo by non-Mormons from the

neighboring counties. When Smith
ordered Mormons to destroy an oppo-
sition newspaper, he and his brother
Hyrum were arrested and charged
with treason. On June 27, 1844, an
anti-Mormon lynch mob of masked
men stormed the feebly defended jail
in the nearby town of Carthage and
killed Joseph and Hyrum Smith.
In Brigham Young (1801–1877),
the remarkable successor to Joseph
Smith, the Mormons found a stern
new leader who was strong-minded,
intelligent, and authoritarian (as well
Brigham Young
as husband eventually to twenty-seven
wives who bore fifty-six children). A Young was the president of the
Mormons for thirty years.
Vermont carpenter and an early con-
vert to Mormonism, Young succeeded
Smith and promised Illinois officials that the Mormons would leave the state.
Their new destination was 1,300 miles away, in the isolated, barren valley near
the Great Salt Lake in Utah, a vast, sparsely populated area owned by Mexico.
In early 1846, in wagons and on foot, twelve thousand Mormon migrants
started their grueling trek to the “promised land” of Utah. On a good day they
traversed only about ten miles. The first to arrive at Salt Lake, in July 1847,
found only “a broad and barren plain hemmed in by the mountains . . . the
paradise of the lizard, the cricket and the rattlesnake.” But Brigham Young
declared that “this is the place” for the Mormons to settle.
By the end of 1848, the Mormons had developed an efficient irrigation
system, and over the next decade they brought about a spectacular greening
of the desert. At first they organized their own state, named Deseret (mean-
ing “Land of the Honeybee,” according to Young), but their independence
was short-lived. In 1848, Mexico, having been defeated by U.S. armies,
signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ceding to the United States what is
now California, Nevada, Utah, Texas, and parts of Arizona, New Mexico,
Colorado, and Wyoming. Two years later, Congress incorporated the Utah
Territory, including the Mormons’ Salt Lake settlement, into the United
States. Nevertheless, when Brigham Young was named the territorial gover-
nor, the new arrangement afforded the Mormons virtual independence. For
over twenty years, Young successfully defied federal authority. By 1869,
 522 • RELIGION, ROMANTICISM, AND REFORM (CH. 13)

CANADA

OREGON

R O
Missour
i

I N
NY

Ri
MINNESOTA

C K
TERRITORY

ver
D I
TERRITORY Mi
ss
Palmyra

Y
WI 1830
MI

iss
A

ippi
PA

N
IA R
Kirtland NJ

ive
Great Salt Lake Ogden Winter quarters 1831–1837

r
Virginia City 1846–1847 MD
Nauvoo IN OH
Carson UTAH Pla
tte River 1839–1845

S
MT
City Salt Lake City
M T

1847

C
VA

er
TERRITORY IL Ri
v

O
Independence

N
KY
S

IA
CALIFORNIA Cedar City 1831–1839 Ohio

H
MO

AC
Las Vegas NC

L
r

T
ve

PA
TN
Ri

San Bernardino Colorado Y

AP
NEW MEXICO
1851 SC
Los Angeles TERRITORY AR
Phoenix
San Diego GA
AL
MS

TEXAS LA
FLORIDA
THE MORMON TREK, 1830–1851
Mormon settlements
The Mormon Trail, 1830–1851 0 150 300 Miles
MEXICO
Proposed state of Deseret
0 150 300 Kilometers

Where were Mormon settlements established between 1830 and 1851? Why did
Joseph Smith initially lead his congregation west? Why was the Utah Territory an
ideal place for the Mormons to settle, at least initially?

some eighty thousand Mormons had settled in Utah, and they had devel-
oped an aggressive program to convert the twenty thousand Indians in the
territory.

ROMANTICISM IN AMERICA

The democratization of religious life and revivalism during the early

1800s represented a widespread tendency throughout the United States and
Europe to accentuate the stirrings of the spirit and the heart rather than
succumb to the dry logic of reason. Another great victory of heart over head
was the Romantic movement in thought, literature, and the arts. By the 1780s
a revolt was brewing in Europe against the well-ordered world of scientific
rationalism. Were there not, after all, more things in this world than reason
 Romanticism in America • 523

and logic could box up and explain: moods, impressions, and feelings; myste-
rious, unknown, and half-seen things? Americans also took readily to the
Romantics’ emphasis on individualism, idealizing the virtues of common
people, now the idea of original or creative genius in the artist, the author, or
the great personality.
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant gave the transatlantic Roman-
tic movement a summary definition in the title of his Critique of Pure Rea-
son (1781), an influential book that emphasized the limits of science and
reason in explaining the universe. People have innate conceptions of con-
science and beauty, the Romantics believed, and religious impulses too
strong to be dismissed as illusions. In areas in which science could neither
prove nor disprove concepts, the Romantics believed that people were justi-
fied in having faith. The impact of such ideas elevated intuitive feelings at
the expense of rational knowledge.

T R A N S C E N D E N TA L I S M The most intense proponents of such

Romantic ideals were the transcendentalists of New England, America’s first
cohesive group of public intellectuals. The transcendental movement was
another form of religious awakening stirring American thought during the
early nineteenth century. It drew its name from its emphasis on those things
that transcend (or rise above) the limits of reason. Transcendentalism, said
one of its apostles, meant an interest in areas “a little beyond” the scope of
reason. If transcendentalism drew much of its inspiration from Immanuel
Kant and the Romantic movement he inspired, it was also a reaction
against Calvinist orthodoxy and the “corpse-cold” rationalism of Unitari-
anism. The transcendentalists sought to embody the “truest” piety—a pure
form of personal spirituality, which in their view had been corrupted and
smothered by the bureaucratic priorities and creedal requirements of
organized religion. Transcendentalists wanted to “awaken” a new outlook
for a new democratic age. Their goal was to foster spirituality in harmony
with the perfectionism of both the divine and of divinity’s creation:
nature. All people, they believed, had the capacity to realize the divine
potential (“spark”) present in all of God’s creatures. Transcendentalism
during the 1830s became the most influential intellectual and spiritual
force in American culture.
In 1836, an informal discussion group known as the Transcendental Club
began to meet in Boston and nearby Concord, Massachusetts, to discuss phi-
losophy, literature, and religion. It was a loosely knit group of diverse individ-
ualists who rejected traditional norms and nurtured a relentless intellectual
curiosity. Some were focused on individual freedom while others stressed
524 • RELIGION, ROMANTICISM, AND REFORM (CH. 13)

Study for a Wild Scene, 1831

Thomas Cole’s painting captures the Romantic ideals that swept America in the
wake of the Enlightenment.

collective efforts to reform society. They were united by their differences. The
transcendentalists called themselves the “club of the like-minded,” quipped a
Boston preacher, “because no two . . . thought alike.” A woman who partici-
pated in the discussions more tartly noted that the transcendentalists “dove
into the infinite, soared into the illimitable, and never paid cash.” They
asserted the right of individuals to interpret life in their own way. The club
included liberal clergymen and militant reformers such as Theodore Parker,
George Ripley, and James Freeman Clarke; writers such as Henry David
Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Orestes Brownson; and
learned women such as Elizabeth Peabody and her sister Sophia (who mar-
ried Hawthorne in 1842) and Margaret Fuller. Fuller edited the group’s
quarterly review, the Dial (1840–1844), for two years before the duty fell to
Ralph Waldo Emerson, soon to become the acknowledged high priest of
transcendentalism.

R A L P H WA L D O E M E R S O N More than any other person, Ralph

Waldo Emerson embodied the transcendentalist gospel. Sprung from a line
of New England ministers, he set out to be a Unitarian parson but quit the
“cold and cheerless” denomination before he was thirty. Emerson thereafter
 Romanticism in America • 525

dismissed all religious denomina-

tions. “In the Bible,” he explained,
“you are not directed to be a Unitar-
ian or a Calvinist or an Episcopalian.”
After traveling in Europe, where he
met England’s greatest Romantic
writers, Emerson settled in Concord
to take up the life of an essayist, poet,
and popular speaker on the lecture
circuit, preaching the sacredness of
Nature and celebrating the virtues of
optimism, self-reliance, and the indi-
vidual’s unlimited potential. Hav-
ing found pure reason “cold as a
cucumber,” he was determined to
transcend the limitations of inherited Ralph Waldo Emerson
conventions and rationalism in order Emerson is most remembered for lead-
to penetrate the inner recesses of ing the transcendentalist movement.
the self.
The spirit of freedom in Emerson’s
lectures and writings, often stated in maddeningly vague language,
expressed the core of the transcendentalist worldview. His notable speech
titled “The American Scholar,” delivered at Harvard in 1837, urged young
Americans to put aside their awe of European culture and explore their own
new world. It was “our intellectual Declaration of Independence,” said one
observer.
Emerson’s essay on “Self-Reliance” (1841) has a timeless appeal to youth,
with its message of individualism and independence. Like most of Emer-
son’s writings, it is crammed with pungent quotations that express the dis-
tinctive transcendentalist outlook:

Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. . . . Nothing is at last

sacred but the integrity of your own mind. . . . It is easy in the world to live
after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the
great man is he who in the midst of a crowd keeps with perfect sweetness
the independence of solitude. . . . A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of
little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. . . .
Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what
tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you
said today. . . . To be great is to be misunderstood.
526 • RELIGION, ROMANTICISM, AND REFORM (CH. 13)

H E N R Y D AV I D T H O R E AU Emerson’s young friend and Concord

neighbor Henry David Thoreau practiced the reflective self-reliance that
Emerson preached. “I like people who can do things,” Emerson stressed, and
Thoreau, fourteen years his junior, could do many things well: carpentry,
masonry, painting, surveying, sailing, gardening. The philosophical son of a
man who was a pencil maker and a woman who was a domineering
reformer, steadfastly opposed to slavery, Thoreau displayed a sense of
uncompromising integrity, outdoor vigor, and prickly individuality that
Emerson found captivating. “If a man does not keep pace with his compan-
ions,” Thoreau wrote, “perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.”
Thoreau himself marched to a different drummer all his life. After Har-
vard, where he exhausted the resources of the library in gargantuan bouts of
reading, and after a brief stint as a teacher, during which he got in trouble for
refusing to cane his students, Thoreau settled down to eke out a living by
making pencils with his father. But he made frequent escapes to drink in the
beauties of nature. Thoreau revered Nature as a living Bible. He showed no
interest in the contemporary scramble for wealth, for it too often corrupted
the pursuit of happiness. “The mass of men,” he wrote, “lead lives of quiet
desperation.”
Thoreau was committed to lead what Emerson called a life of “plain liv-
ing and high thinking.” Thoreau rented a room at the Emersons’ home for
a time and then embarked upon an unusual experiment in self-reliance.
On July 4, 1845, he took to the woods
to live in a tiny, one-room cabin he
had built on Emerson’s land near
Walden Pond outside of Concord.
Thoreau wanted to free himself from
the complexities and hypocrisies of
conventional life so as to devote his
time to observation, reflection, and
writing. His purpose was not to lead a
hermit’s life. He frequently walked the
mile or so to Concord to dine with
his friends and often welcomed guests
at his cabin. “I went to the woods
because I wished to live deliberately,”
he wrote in Walden, or Life in the
Woods (1854), “. . . and not, when I
Henry David Thoreau came to die, discover that I had not
Thoreau was a lifelong abolitionist. lived.”
 The Flowering of American Literature • 527

While Thoreau was at Walden Pond, the Mexican War erupted. He quickly
concluded that it was an unjust war to advance the cause of slavery. He
refused to pay his poll tax as an anti-war gesture, for which he was put in jail
(for only one night; an aunt paid the tax). The incident was so trivial as to be
almost comic, but out of it grew Thoreau’s classic essay “Civil Disobedience”
(1849), which would later influence the passive-resistance movements of
Mahatma Gandhi in India and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the American
South. “If the law is of such a nature that it requires you to be an agent of
injustice to another,” Thoreau wrote, “then, I say, break the law.”
The broadening ripples of influence more than a century after Thoreau’s
death show the impact that a contemplative person can have on the world of
action. Thoreau and the other transcendentalists taught a powerful lesson:
people must follow their conscience. Transcendentalists portrayed the
movement as a profound expression of moral idealism; critics dismissed it as
an outrageous expression of egotism. Though the transcendentalists attracted
only a small following in their own time, they inspired reform movements and
were a quickening force for a generation of writers that produced the first
great age of American literature.

T H E F LOW E R I N G OF A M E R I C A N L I T E R AT U R E

The half decade of 1850 to 1855 witnessed an outpouring of extraordi-

nary literature in the United States, a nation that had long suffered an inferi-
ority complex about the quality of its arts. Those five years saw the writing of
Representative Men by Emerson, Walden by Thoreau, The Scarlet Letter and
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Moby-Dick by
Herman Melville, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, and hundreds of unpub-
lished poems by Emily Dickinson.

L I T E R A RY G I A N TS Nathaniel Hawthorne, the supreme writer of the

New England group, never shared the sunny optimism of his neighbors or
their perfectionist belief in reform. A sometime resident of Concord, Massa-
chusetts, but a native and longtime inhabitant of coastal Salem, he was
haunted by the knowledge of evil bequeathed to him by his Puritan forebears,
one of whom (John Hathorne) had been a judge at the Salem witchcraft trials.
After college he worked in obscurity in Salem, gradually began to sell a few
stories, and finally earned a degree of fame with his collection of Twice-Told
Tales (1837). In these, as in most of his later work, he presented powerful
moral allegories. His central themes examined sin and its consequences:
528 • RELIGION, ROMANTICISM, AND REFORM (CH. 13)

pride and selfishness, secret guilt, and

the impossibility of rooting sin out of
the human soul.
Emily Dickinson, the most strik-
ingly original and elusive of the New
England poets, remained a slim,
white-gowned recluse in her second-
story bedroom in Amherst, Massa-
chusetts. She found solace in writing
poetry that few people read during
her lifetime. As she once prophetically
wrote, “Success is counted sweetest /
By those who ne’er succeed.” Only a
Emily Dickinson few of her almost 1,800 poems were
Dickinson offered the world of New published (anonymously) before her
England literature a fresh female voice. death, in 1886. Born in Amherst in
1830, she received a first-rate sec-
ondary education and attended the new Mount Holyoke Female Seminary.
Neither she nor her sister married, and they lived out their lives in their par-
ents’ home. Like the transcendentalists, Dickinson cherished her individual-
ism. As she told a friend, “There is always one thing to be grateful for—that
one is one’s self & not somebody else.” Perhaps it was Dickinson’s severe eye
trouble during the 1860s that induced her solitary withdrawal from the
larger society; perhaps it was the aching despair generated by her unrequited
love for a married minister. Whatever the reason, her intense isolation and
lifelong religious doubts led her to probe her own shifting psychological
state. Her often-abstract themes were elemental: life, death, fear, loneliness,
nature, and above all, God, a “Force illegible,” a “distant, stately lover.”
Edgar Allan Poe, born in Boston but reared in Virginia, was a master
of gothic horror and the inventor of the detective story. He delighted in
evoking terror and nursing suspense. He judged prose by its ability to pro-
voke emotional tension, and since he considered fear to be the most power-
ful emotion, he focused his efforts on making the grotesque and the super-
natural seem disturbingly real to his readers. Anyone who has read “The
Tell-Tale Heart” or “The Pit and the Pendulum” can testify to his success.
Herman Melville was a New Yorker who went to sea as a youth. After eigh-
teen months aboard a whaler, he arrived in the Marquesas Islands, in the
South Seas, and jumped ship with a companion. He spent several weeks
with a friendly tribe in “the valley of the Typees” before signing on with an
Australian whaler. He joined a mutiny in Tahiti and finally returned home as
 The Flowering of American Literature • 529

a seaman aboard a U.S. Navy frigate.

An embroidered account of his exotic
adventures, Typee (1846), became an
instant popular success, which he
repeated in Omoo (1847), based on
his stay in Tahiti.
In 1851, the thirty-two-year-old
Melville produced one of the world’s
greatest novels. In Moby-Dick, the
story of Captain Ahab’s obsessive
quest for the “accursed” white whale
that had devoured his leg, Melville
explored the darker recesses of the
soul. The book was aimed at two Edgar Allan Poe
audiences. On one level it is a rip-
Poe has had immense influence on
ping good yarn of adventure on the poets and prose writers in America
high seas. But on another level it and abroad.
explores profound philosophical and
psychological realms: the vengeful Ahab’s crazed obsession with finding
and killing the massive white whale turns the captain into a monster of
destruction who sacrifices his ship, The Pequod, his crew, and himself to
his folly, leaving as the one survivor Ishmael, the narrator of the story.
Just as Henry David Thoreau strove to explore the depths of Walden
Pond, Melville sought to understand the unfathomable depths and dark-
ness of human complexity. Thoreau said of Walden that while “men
believe in the infinite, some ponds will be thought to be bottomless.” The
moral of Moby-Dick is ultimately bottomless and unfathomable, as
“indefinite as God.” Melville loved Shakespeare’s writings, especially King
Lear, whose protagonist, like Ahab, was a complex character who betrayed
a “madness of vital truth” that ensnared all those around him. At one
point in Melville’s novel, Starbuck, the first mate (for whom a popular
coffee shop is named), pleads with Ahab to end his manic crusade: “Oh
my Captain! My Captain, why should anyone give chase to that hated fish!
Away with me! Let us fly these deadly waters! Let us [go] home!” For all of
its power and depth, however, Moby-Dick did not sell well during
Melville’s lifetime. Neither the public nor the critics at the time
applauded the epic novel. Melville’s career wound down into futility. He
supported himself for years with a job in the New York Customhouse and
turned to poetry, much of which, especially the Civil War Battle-Pieces
(1866), won acclaim in later years.
530 • RELIGION, ROMANTICISM, AND REFORM (CH. 13)

The Perilous Situation of Whalemen (ca. 1861)

A harpooned whale breaks the surface of the water, as described by Herman
Melville in Moby-Dick.

The most provocative writer during the nineteenth century was Walt Whit-
man, a vibrant personality who disdained inherited conventions and artistic
traditions. There was something elemental in Whitman’s overflowing charac-
ter, something bountiful and generous and compelling—even his faults and
inconsistencies were ample. Born on a Long Island farm, he moved with his
family to Brooklyn and from the age of twelve worked mainly as a handyman
and journalist, frequently taking the ferry across the harbor to bustling Man-
hattan. The city fascinated him, and he gorged himself on the urban spectacle:
shipyards, crowds, factories, shop windows. From such material he drew his
editorial opinions and poetic inspiration, but he remained relatively obscure
until the first edition of Leaves of Grass (1855) caught the eye and aroused the
rage of readers. Emerson found it “the most extraordinary piece of wit and
wisdom that America has yet contributed,” but more conventional critics
shuddered at Whitman’s explicit sexual references and groused at his indiffer-
ence to rhyme and meter as well as his buoyant egotism. The jaunty Whitman
was a startling figure, with his frank sexuality and homoerotic overtones. He
also stood out from the pack of his fellow writers in rejecting the idea that a
woman’s proper sphere is in a supportive and dependent role. Thoreau
 Education • 531

described Whitman as “the greatest

democrat the world has seen.”

N E W S PA P E R S The flowering of
American literature during the first
half of the nineteenth century coin-
cided with a massive expansion in
newspaper readership. Technology
had sparked a reading revolution.
The steam-driven Napier press,
introduced from England in 1825,
could print four thousand sheets of
newsprint in an hour. Richard Hoe
of New York improved upon it,
inventing in 1847 the rotary press,
which printed twenty thousand Politics in an Oyster House (1848)
sheets an hour. The availability of by Richard Caton Woodville
daily newspapers costing only a Newspapers often fueled public
penny each transformed daily read- discussions and debates.
ing into a form of popular entertain-
ment. Newspaper circulation skyrocketed. The “penny dailies,” explained one
editor, “are to be found in every street, lane, and alley; in every hotel, tavern,
countinghouse, [and] shop.”
By 1850, the United States had more newspapers than any other nation
in the world. It needed them to forge a network of communications across
the expanding republic. As readership soared, the content of the papers
expanded beyond political news and commentary to include society gos-
sip, sports, and reports of sensational crimes and accidents. The prolifera-
tion of newspapers was largely a northern and western phenomenon. Lit-
eracy rates in the South lagged behind those of the rest of the country.
Before any state had even been formed in the Northwest Territory, for
example, the northern region boasted thirteen newspapers while North
Carolina had only four.

E D U C AT I O N

A well-informed citizenry equipped with knowledge not only for

obtaining a vocation but also for promoting civic virtue was one of the ani-
mating ideals of the Founding Fathers. Literacy in Jacksonian America was
532 • RELIGION, ROMANTICISM, AND REFORM (CH. 13)

surprisingly widespread. In 1840, according to census data, some 78 percent

of the total population and 91 percent of the white population could read
and write. Ever since the colonial period, in fact, Americans had had the
highest literacy rate in the Western world. Most children were taught to read
in church or in private “dame” schools, by formal tutors, or by their families.
By 1830, no state had a public school system in the modern sense, although
for nearly two centuries Massachusetts had required towns to maintain
schools.

E A R LY P U B L I C S C H O O L S In the 1830s, the demand for public

schools peaked. Workers wanted free schools to give their children an equal
chance to pursue the American dream. In 1830, the Workingmen’s party of
Philadelphia called for “a system of education that shall embrace equally all
the children of the state, of every rank and condition.” Education, it was
argued, would improve manners and at the same time reduce crime and
poverty.
Horace Mann of Massachusetts led the early drive for statewide school
systems. Trained as a lawyer, he sponsored the creation of a state board of
education, and then served as its leader. Mann went on to sponsor many
reforms in Massachusetts, including the first state-supported “normal
school” for the training of teachers, a state association of teachers, and
a minimum school year of six months. He repeatedly promoted the
public-school system as the way to achieve social stability and equal
opportunity.
In the South, North Carolina led the way in state-supported education. By
1860, North Carolina had enrolled more than two thirds of its white school-
age population for an average term of four months, kept so low because of
the rural state’s need for children to do farm work. But the educational pat-
tern in the South continued to reflect the aristocratic pretensions of the
region: the South had a higher percentage of college students than any other
region but a lower percentage of public-school students. And the South had
some five hundred thousand white illiterates, more than half the total num-
ber in the young nation.
For all the effort to establish state-supported schools, conditions for public
education were seldom ideal. Funds were insufficient for buildings, books,
and equipment; teachers were poorly paid and often poorly prepared. Most
students going beyond the elementary grades attended private academies,
often subsidized by church and public funds. Such schools, begun in colonial
days, multiplied until in 1850 there were more than six thousand of them.
 Education • 533

In 1821, the Boston English High School opened as the nation’s first free pub-
lic secondary school, set up mainly for students not going on to college. By a
law of 1827, Massachusetts required a high school in every town of five
hundred; in towns of four thousand or more, the school had to offer Latin,
Greek, rhetoric, and other college-preparatory courses. Public high schools
became well established only after the Civil War. In 1860 there were barely
three hundred in the whole country.

H I G H E R E D U C AT I O N The post-Revolutionary proliferation of col-

leges continued after 1800 with the spread of small church-supported
schools and the first state universities. The nine colleges founded in the
colonial period survived, but not many of the fifty that had sprung up
between 1776 and 1800 lasted. Of the seventy-eight colleges and universi-
ties in 1840, thirty-five had been founded after 1830, almost all affiliated
with a religious denomination. A post-Revolutionary movement for state-
supported universities flourished in those southern states that had had no
colonial university. Federal policy helped the spread of universities in the
West. When Congress granted statehood to Ohio in 1803, it set aside two
townships for the support of a state university and kept up that policy in
other new states.
The coexistence of state and religious colleges led to conflicts over fund-
ing and curriculum, however. Beset by the need for funds, as colleges usu-
ally were, denominational schools often competed with tax-supported
schools. Regarding curricula, many of the denominational colleges empha-
sized theology at the expense of science and the humanities. On the other
hand, America’s development required broader access to education and
programs geared to vocations. The University of Virginia, “Mr. Jefferson’s
University,” founded in 1819, introduced a curriculum modeled on Thomas
Jefferson’s view that education ought to combine pure knowledge and the
classics with “all the branches of science useful to us, and at this day.” The
model influenced the other new state universities of the South and those of
the West.
Technical education grew slowly. The U.S. Military Academy at West
Point, founded in 1802, and the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, opened in
1845, trained a limited number of engineers. More young men learned tech-
nical skills through practical experience with railroad and canal companies.
The president of Brown University remarked that there were no colleges to
provide “the agriculturalist, the manufacturer, the mechanic, and the mer-
chant with any kind of professional preparation.”
534 • RELIGION, ROMANTICISM, AND REFORM (CH. 13)

The George Barrell Emerson School, Boston, ca. 1850

Although higher education for women initially met with some resistance, semi-
naries like this one, started in the 1820s and 1830s, taught women mathematics,
physics, and history, as well as music, art, and the social graces.

Elementary education for girls met with general acceptance, but train-
ing beyond that level did not. Most people viewed higher education as
unsuited to a woman’s “destiny” in life. Some did argue that education
would produce better wives and mothers, but few promoted genuine edu-
cational equality. Progress began with the academies, some of which
taught boys and girls alike. Good “female seminaries,” like those founded
by Emma Willard at Troy, New York (1821), and by Mary Lyon at South
Hadley, Massachusetts (1837), grew into colleges. The curricula in
women’s seminaries usually differed from the courses in men’s schools,
giving more attention to the social amenities and such “embellishments” as
music and art. Vassar, opened at Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1861, is
usually credited with being the first women’s college to give priority to
academic standards. In general, the West gave the greatest impetus to
coeducation, with state universities in the lead. But once admitted, female
students remained in a subordinate status. At Oberlin College in Ohio, for
 The Reform Impulse • 535

instance, they were expected to clean male students’ rooms and were not
allowed to speak in class or recite at graduation exercises. Coeducation
did not mean equality.

THE REFORM IMPULSE

In 1831 a perceptive French traveler named Alexis de Tocqueville spent

nine months crisscrossing the United States in an effort to understand the
dynamics of the unique young republic. At one point, he wrote that the
“greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other
nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” Americans then and
since have been tenacious reformers. The United States in the first half of the
nineteenth century was awash in reform movements led by prophets,
dreamers, and activists eager to rid society of evils and injustice. The urge to
eradicate evil had its roots in the widespread sense of spiritual zeal and
moral mission, which in turn drew upon the growing faith in human per-
fectibility promoted by both revivalists and Romantic idealists such as the
transcendentalists. Reformers tackled varied issues such as observance of the
Sabbath, dueling, crime and punishment, the hours and conditions of work,
poverty, vice, care of the disabled, pacifism, foreign missions, temperance,
women’s rights, and the abolition of slavery.
While an impulse to “perfect” people and society helped excite the reform
movements during the first half of the nineteenth century, social and eco-
nomic changes helped supply many of the reformers themselves, most of
whom were women. The rise of an urban middle class offered affluent
women greater time to devote to societal concerns. Prosperity enabled them
to hire cooks and maids, often Irish immigrants, who in turn freed them from
the performance of household chores. Many women joined churches and
charitable organizations, most of which were led by men. Some reformers
proposed legislative remedies for social ills; others stressed personal conver-
sion or private philanthropy. Whatever the method or approach, earnest
social reformers mobilized in great numbers during the second quarter of the
nineteenth century.

TEMPERANCE The temperance crusade was perhaps the most wide-

spread of all the reform movements. The census of 1810 reported some
14,000 distilleries producing 25 million gallons of alcoholic spirits each year.
William Cobbett, an English reformer who traveled in the United States,
536 • RELIGION, ROMANTICISM, AND REFORM (CH. 13)

noted in 1819 that one could “go

into hardly any man’s house
without being asked to drink
wine or spirits, even in the
morning.”
The temperance movement
rested on several related argu-
ments. Foremost was the reli-
gious concern that “soldiers
of the cross” should lead blame-
less lives. As early as 1784, the
respected physician Benjamin
Rush noted the bad effects of
distilled beverages on body and
mind. The dynamic new econ-
omy, with factories and railroads
moving on strict schedules, made
tippling by the labor force a far
more dangerous habit than it had
The temperance crusade
been in a simpler time. Humani-
A temperance banner, ca. 1850, depicts a tarians also emphasized the rela-
young man being tempted by a woman
offering him a glass of wine. tionship between drinking and
poverty. Much of the movement’s
propaganda focused on the suf-
ferings of innocent mothers and children abused by husbands and fathers who
abused alcohol. “Drink,” said a pamphlet from the Sons of Temperance, “is the
prolific source (directly or indirectly) of nearly all the ills that afflict the human
family.”
In 1826, a group of ministers in Boston organized the American Society
for the Promotion of Temperance, which organized lectures, press cam-
paigns, an essay contest, and the formation of local and state societies.
A favorite device was to ask each person who took the pledge to put by his or
her signature a T for “total abstinence.” With that a new word entered the
language: teetotaler. In 1833, the society organized a national convention in
Philadelphia, where the American Temperance Union was formed. Like
nearly every reform movement of the day, temperance had a wing of abso-
lutists. They would brook no compromise with Demon Rum and carried the
day with a resolution that liquor was evil and ought to be prohibited by law.
The Temperance Union, at its spring convention in 1836, called for absti-
 The Reform Impulse • 537

nence from all alcoholic beverages, a costly victory in that it caused moder-
ates to abstain from the temperance movement instead.

P R I S O N S A N D A S Y LU M S The Romantic impulse often included the

liberal belief that people are innately good and capable of improvement.
Such an optimistic view of human nature brought about major changes
in the treatment of prisoners, the disabled, and dependent children. Public
institutions (often called asylums) arose that were dedicated to the treatment
and cure of social ills. If removed from society, the theory went, the needy and
the deviant could be made whole again. Unhappily, however, the asylums had
a way over time of turning into breeding grounds for brutality and neglect.
Gradually the idea of the penitentiary developed as a new approach to
reforming criminals. It would be a place where the guilty experienced peni-
tence and underwent rehabilitation, not just punishment. An early model of
the new system, widely copied, was the Auburn Penitentiary, which opened
in New York in 1816. The prisoners at Auburn had separate cells and gath-
ered only for meals and group labor. Discipline was severe. The men were
marched out in lockstep and never put face-to-face or allowed to talk. But
prisoners were at least reasonably secure from abuse by their fellow prison-
ers. The system, its advocates argued, had a beneficial effect on the prisoners
and saved money, since the workshops supplied prison needs and produced
goods for sale at a profit. By 1840, there were twelve penitentiaries of the
Auburn type scattered across the nation.
The Romantic reform impulse also found outlet in the care of the insane.
Before 1800 few hospitals provided care for the mentally ill. The insane were
usually confined at home with hired keepers or in jails or almshouses. In the
years after 1815, however, asylums that separated the disturbed from the
criminal began to appear.
The most important figure in heightening the public’s awareness of the
plight of the mentally ill was Dorothea Lynde Dix. A pious Boston school-
teacher, she was called upon to instruct a Sunday-school class at the East
Cambridge House of Correction in 1841. There she found a roomful
of insane people completely neglected, without even heat on a cold March
day. Dix was so disturbed by the scene that she commenced a two-year inves-
tigation of jails and almshouses in Massachusetts. In a report to the state
legislature in 1843, she revealed that insane people were confined “in cages,
closets, cellars, stalls, pens! Chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into
obedience.” Those managing asylums dismissed her charges as “slanderous
lies,” but she won the support of leading reformers. From Massachusetts, she
538 • RELIGION, ROMANTICISM, AND REFORM (CH. 13)

carried her campaign through-

out the country and abroad. By
1860 she had persuaded twenty
states to heed her advice,
thereby helping to transform
social attitudes toward mental
illness.

WOMEN’S RIGHTS Dorothea

Dix was but one sterling
example of many middle-class
women who devoted themselves
to improving the quality of life
in American society. Others
argued that women should first
focus on improving household
life. Catharine Beecher, a leader
in the education movement and
founder of women’s schools in
Connecticut and Ohio, published
a best-selling guide prescribing
The American Woman’s Home (1869) the domestic sphere for women.
An illustrated page from a book by A Treatise on Domestic Economy
Catharine Beecher and her sister, Harriet (1841) became the leading
Beecher Stowe. handbook of what historians
have labeled the cult of domes-
ticity. While Beecher upheld high standards in women’s education, she also
accepted the prevailing view that the “woman’s sphere” was the home and
argued that young women should be trained in the domestic arts.
The social custom of assigning the sexes different roles was not new, of
course. In earlier agrarian societies, gender-based functions were closely tied
to the household and often overlapped. As the more complex industrial
economy of the nineteenth century matured, economic production came
to be increasingly separated from the home, and the home in turn became
a refuge from the outside world, with separate and distinct functions for
men and women. Some have argued that the home became a trap for
women, a suffocating prison that hindered their individual fulfill-
ment. But others noted that the middle-class home often gave women a
sphere of independence in which they might exercise a degree of initiative
 The Reform Impulse • 539

and leadership. The so-called cult of domesticity idealized a woman’s

moral role in civilizing husband and family.
The official status of women during the first half of the nineteenth century
remained much as it had been in the colonial era. Women were barred from the
ministry and most other professions. Higher education was hardly an option.
Women could not serve on juries, nor could they vote. A wife often had no con-
trol over her property or even over her children. A wife could not make a will, sign
a contract, or bring suit in court without her husband’s permission. Her legal sta-
tus was like that of a minor, a slave, or a free black.
Gradually, however, women began to protest their status, and men began
to listen. The organized movement for women’s rights emerged in 1840,
when the anti-slavery movement split over the question of women’s right to
participate. Women decided then that they needed to organize on behalf of
their own emancipation, too.
In 1848, two prominent moral reformers and advocates of women’s
rights, Lucretia Mott, a Philadelphia Quaker, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a
graduate of New York’s Troy Female Seminary who refused to be merely “a
household drudge,” called a convention to discuss “the social, civil, and
religious condition and rights of women.” The hastily organized Seneca
Falls Convention, the first of its kind, issued on July 19, 1848, a clever para-
phrase of Thomas Jefferson’s
Declaration of Independence.
Called the Declaration of Senti-
ments, it proclaimed the self-
evident truth that “all men
and women are created equal.”
All laws that placed women “in a
position inferior to that of men,
are contrary to the great precept
of nature, and therefore of no
force or authority.” Such lan-
guage was too strong for most
of the one thousand delegates,
and only about a third of them
signed the radical document. Yet
the Seneca Falls gathering repre- Elizabeth Cady Stanton and
sented an important first step in Susan B. Anthony
the evolving campaign for Stanton (left) “forged the thunderbolts and
women’s rights. Miss Anthony hurled them.”
540 • RELIGION, ROMANTICISM, AND REFORM (CH. 13)

From 1850 until the Civil War, the leaders of the women’s rights movement
held annual conventions, delivered lectures, and circulated petitions. The
movement struggled in the face of meager funds and anti-feminist women
and men. Its success resulted from the work of a few undaunted women who
refused to be cowed by the odds against them. Susan B. Anthony, already active
in temperance and anti-slavery groups, joined the crusade in the 1850s. Unlike
Stanton and Mott, she was unmarried and therefore able to devote most of her
attention to the women’s crusade. As one observer put it, Stanton “forged the
thunderbolts and Miss Anthony hurled them.” Both were young when the
movement started, and both lived into the twentieth century, focusing after
the Civil War on demands for women’s suffrage. Many of the feminists, like
Elizabeth Stanton and Lucretia Mott, had supportive husbands, and the move-
ment recruited prominent male champions, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Walt Whitman, William Ellery Channing, and William Lloyd Garrison.
The fruits of the women’s rights movement ripened slowly. Women did
not gain the vote but did make some legal gains. In 1839, Mississippi became
the first state to grant married women control over their property; by the
1860s, eleven more states had such laws. Still, the only jobs open to educated
women in any number were nursing and teaching, both of which extended
the domestic roles of health care and nurture to the outside world. Both pro-
fessions brought relatively lower status and pay than “man’s work” despite
the skills, training, and responsibility involved.

UTOPIAN COMMUNITIES Amid the pervasive climate of reform

during the early nineteenth century, the quest for utopia flourished. Plans
for ideal communities had long been an American passion, at least since the
Puritans set out to build a wilderness Zion in New England. More than a
hundred utopian communities sprang up between 1800 and 1900. Those
founded by the Shakers, officially the United Society of Believers in Christ’s
Second Appearing, proved to be long lasting. Ann Lee (Mother Ann Lee)
arrived in New York from England with eight followers in 1774. Believing
religious fervor to be a sign of inspiration from the Holy Ghost, Mother Ann
and her followers had strange fits in which they saw visions and prophesied.
These manifestations later evolved into a ritual dance—hence the name
Shakers. Shaker doctrine held God to be a dual personality: in Christ the
masculine side was manifested; in Mother Ann, the feminine element.
Mother Ann preached celibacy to prepare Shakers for the perfection that was
promised them in heaven.
Mother Ann died in 1784, but the group found new leaders. From the
first community, at New Lebanon, New York, the movement spread into
 The Reform Impulse • 541

New England, Ohio, and Kentucky. By 1830, about twenty groups were
flourishing. In these Shaker communities all property was held in com-
mon. The Shakers’ farms were among the nation’s leading sources of gar-
den seed and medicinal herbs, and many of their manufactures, including
clothing, household items, and especially furniture, were prized for their
simple beauty.
John Humphrey Noyes, founder of the Oneida Community, had a
quite different model of the ideal community. The son of a Vermont
congressman, educated at Dartmouth College and Yale Divinity School,
Noyes was converted at one of Charles Grandison Finney’s revivals and
entered the ministry. He was forced out, however, when he declared that
with true conversion came perfection and a complete release from sin. In
1836 he gathered a group of “Perfectionists” around his home in Putney,
Vermont. Ten years later, Noyes announced a new doctrine, “complex mar-
riage,” which meant that every man in the community was married to every
woman and vice versa. “In a holy community,” he claimed, “there is no more
reason why sexual intercourse should be restrained by law, than why eating
and drinking should be.” Authorities thought otherwise, and Noyes was
arrested for practicing his “free love” theology. He fled to New York State and
in 1848 established the Oneida Community, which numbered more than
two hundred by 1851.
In contrast to these religious-based communities, Robert Owen’s New Har-
mony was based upon a secular principle. A British capitalist who worried
about the degrading social effects of the factory system, Owen set forth a
scheme for a model community in his pamphlet A New View of Society
(1813). Later he bought the town of Harmonie, Indiana, promptly christen-
ing it New Harmony. In 1825 a varied group of about nine hundred
colonists gathered there for a period of transition from Owen’s ownership to
the new system of cooperation. After a trial period of only nine months,
Owen turned over management of the colony to a town meeting of all resi-
dents and a council of town officers. The high proportion of learned partici-
pants generated a certain intellectual electricity about the place. For a time it
looked like a brilliant success, but New Harmony soon fell into discord.
Every idealist wanted his own plan put into practice. In 1827, Owen
returned from a visit to England to find New Harmony insolvent. The fol-
lowing year he dissolved the project.
Brook Farm in Massachusetts was the most celebrated of all the utopian
communities because it grew out of the Transcendental movement. George
Ripley, a Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist, conceived of Brook
Farm as a kind of early-day think tank, combining high thinking and plain
542 • RELIGION, ROMANTICISM, AND REFORM (CH. 13)

living. In 1841 he and several dozen other like-minded utopians moved to

the 175-acre farm eight miles southwest of Boston. Brook Farm became
America’s first secular utopian community. One of its members, the novelist
Nathaniel Hawthorne, called Brook Farm “our beautiful scheme of a noble
and unselfish life.” The social experiment attracted excited attention and
hundreds of visitors. Its residents shared the tasks of maintaining the
buildings, tending the fields, and preparing the meals. They also organized
picnics, dances, lectures, and discussions. The place survived, however,
mainly because of an excellent community school that drew tuition-paying
students from outside. In 1846, Brook Farm’s main building burned down,
and the community spirit expired in the embers.
Utopian communities, with few exceptions, quickly ran out of steam. The
communal social experiments, performed in relative isolation, had little
effect on the outside world, where reformers wrestled with the sins of the
multitudes. Among all the targets of the reformers’ wrath, one great evil
would finally take precedence over the others: human bondage. The Tran-
scendentalist reformer Theodore Parker declared that slavery was “the blight
of this nation, the curse of the North and the curse of the South.” The para-
dox of American slavery coupled with American freedom, of “the world’s
fairest hope linked with man’s foulest crime,” in the novelist Herman
Melville’s words, would inspire the climactic crusade of the age, abolition-
ism, one that would ultimately move to the center of the political stage and
sweep the nation into an epic civil war.

A N T I - S L AV E R Y M O V E M E N T S

The men who drafted the federal constitution in 1787 were pragma-
tists. They realized that many of the southern states would tolerate no effort
to weaken, much less abolish, the “peculiar institution” of slavery. So they
worked out compromises that avoided dealing with the moral stain of slav-
ery on a young nation dedicated to liberty. But most of them knew that there
eventually would be a day of reckoning. That day of reckoning approached
as the nineteenth century unfolded.

Efforts to weaken or abolish

E A R LY O P P O S I T I O N T O S L AV E R Y
slavery gathered momentum with each passing year after 1800. The first
organized emancipation movement appeared in 1817 with the formation of
the American Colonization Society, which proposed to return freed slaves to
 Anti-Slavery Movements • 543

Africa. Its supporters included such prominent figures as James Madison,

James Monroe, Henry Clay, John Marshall, and Daniel Webster. Some sup-
ported the colonization movement because of their opposition to slavery;
others saw it as a way to bolster slavery by getting rid of potentially trouble-
some free blacks. Leaders of the free black community denounced it from
the start. The United States of America, they stressed, was their native land.
Nevertheless, in 1821, agents of the American Colonization Society acquired
from local chieftains in West Africa a parcel of land that became the nucleus
of a new nation. In 1822 the first freed slaves were transported there, and
twenty-five years later the society relinquished control to the Free and Inde-
pendent Republic of Liberia. But given its uncertain purpose, the African
colonization movement received only meager support from either anti-slavery
or pro-slavery elements. In all only about fifteen thousand blacks migrated to
Africa up to 1860, approximately twelve thousand with the help of the Colo-
nization Society. The number was infinitesimal compared with the number of
slave births each year in the United States.

F R O M G R A D UA L I S M T O A B O L I T I O N I S M Meanwhile, in the early

1830s the anti-slavery movement adopted an aggressive new strategy. Its ini-
tial efforts to promote a gradual end to slavery by prohibiting it in the new
western territories and encouraging owners to free their slaves by the act of
manumission gave way to demands for immediate abolition of slavery every-
where it existed. A zealous white Massachusetts activist named William
Lloyd Garrison best exemplified the change in outlook.
In 1831, Garrison launched in
Boston a new anti-slavery newspaper,
The Liberator. Garrison had edited
several anti-slavery papers but had
grown impatient with the strategy of
moderation. In the first issue of The
Liberator, he renounced “the popular
but pernicious doctrine of gradual
emancipation.” In calling for immedi-
ate abolition, he vowed, “I will be as
harsh as truth, and as uncompromis-
ing as justice. . . . I am in earnest—I
will not equivocate—I will not Portrait of William Lloyd Garrison
excuse—I will not retreat a single Garrison was a vocal abolitionist: an
inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD.” advocate of immediate emancipation.
544 • RELIGION, ROMANTICISM, AND REFORM (CH. 13)

Garrison’s militancy outraged slave owners as well as some whites in the

North. In 1835 a mob of angry whites dragged Garrison through the streets
of Boston at the end of a rope. A southern slaveholder warned Garrison “to
desist your infamous endeavors to instill into the minds of the negroes the
idea that ‘men must be free.’” Garrison reminded critics that, however vio-
lent his language, he was a pacifist opposed to the use of force. “We do not
preach rebellion,” he stressed. The prospect “of a bloody insurrection in the
South fills us with dismay,” but “if any people were ever justified in throwing
off the yoke of their tyrants, the slaves are the people.”
During the 1830s, Garrison became the nation’s most fervent, principled,
and unyielding foe of slavery. He and others making up the vanguard of the
abolitionist crusade were evangelical Christians and mostly Whigs. It is no
coincidence that the surge of involvement in the crusade against slavery
occurred at the same time that the Second Great Awakening was fostering an
aggressive, interdenominational evangelicalism. Most of the northerners
involved in the anti-slavery movement were white churchgoers and their
ministers. In 1831, two prominent New York City evangelical merchants,
Arthur and Lewis Tappan, provided Garrison with the funds to launch his
abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator. Two years later, the Tappans, Garri-
son, and a group of Quaker reformers, black activists, and evangelicals orga-
nized the American Anti-Slavery Society. That same year, Parliament ended
slavery throughout the British Empire by passing the Emancipation Act of
1833, whereby slaveholders were paid to give up their “human property.”
In 1835 the Tappans hired Charles Grandison Finney to head the anti-
slavery faculty at Oberlin, the new college established by the Tappans in
northern Ohio.
The American Anti-Slavery Society, financed by the Tappans, created a
national network of newspapers, offices, chapters, and activists. Virtually
every chapter was affiliated with a local Christian church. By 1840, some
160,000 people belonged to the American Anti-Slavery Society and its affili-
ate organizations. The Society stressed that “slaveholding is a heinous crime
in the sight of God, and that the duty, safety, and best interests of all con-
cerned, require its immediate abandonment.” The society went beyond the
issue of emancipation to argue that blacks should “share an equality with the
whites, of civil and religious privileges.” The group organized a barrage of
propaganda for its cause, including periodicals, tracts, agents, lecturers,
organizers, and fund-raisers. In 1835, the American Anti-Slavery Society
flooded the South with anti-slavery pamphlets and newspapers. Infuriated
southern slaveholders called for state and federal laws to prevent the distrib-
ution of anti-slavery literature.
 Anti-Slavery Movements • 545

The most radical figure among the mostly white Garrisonians was a free
black named David Walker. In 1829, he published Walker’s Appeal, in which
he denounced the hypocrisy of Christians in the slaveholding South endors-
ing the practice of race-based human bondage. “Are we men?” he asked. “I
ask you, O my brethren, are we MEN? Did our Creator make us to be slaves
to dust and ashes like ourselves?”

A S P L I T I N T H E M OV E M E N T As the abolitionist movement spread,

debates over tactics intensified. The Garrisonians, mainly evangelical New
Englanders, felt that American society had been corrupted from top to bot-
tom and needed universal reform. Garrison embraced every important
reform movement of the day: abolition, temperance, pacifism, and women’s
rights. He also championed equal social and legal rights for African Ameri-
cans. His unconventional religious ideas led him to break with the organized
church, which to his mind was in league with slavery. The federal govern-
ment was all the more so. The Constitution, he said, was “a covenant with
death and an agreement with hell.” Garrison therefore refused to vote.

Sarah (left) and Angelina (right) Grimké

After moving away from their slaveholding family, the Grimké sisters devoted
themselves to abolitionism and feminism.
546 • RELIGION, ROMANTICISM, AND REFORM (CH. 13)

Other reformers were less dogmatic and sweeping. They saw American
society as fundamentally sound and concentrated on purging it of slavery.
Garrison struck them as an impractical fanatic. A showdown came in 1840
on the issue of women’s rights. Women had joined the abolition movement
from the start, but largely in groups without men. At that time, it was com-
mon practice to allow women speakers to address audiences comprised only
of women. Then the activities of the Grimké sisters brought the issue of
women’s rights to center stage.
Sarah and Angelina Grimké, daughters of a prominent South Carolina slave-
holding family, had broken with their parents and moved north to embrace
Quakerism, abolitionism, feminism, and other reforms. As anti-slavery activists,
they set out speaking first to audiences of women and eventually to both
men and women. Their unconventional behavior provoked the Congrega-
tional clergy of Massachusetts to chastise them for engaging in unfeminine
activity. The chairman of the Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society declared,
“No woman shall speak or vote where I am a moderator.” Catharine Beecher
reminded the activist sisters that women occupy “a subordinate relation in
society to the other sex” and that they should therefore limit their activities
to the “domestic and social circle.” Angelina Grimké stoutly rejected such
conventional arguments. “It is a woman’s right,” she insisted, “to have a voice
in all laws and regulations by which she is to be governed, whether in church
or in state.”
The debate over the role of women in the anti-slavery movement crackled
and simmered until it finally exploded in 1840. At the Anti-Slavery Society’s
annual meeting that year, the Garrisonians convinced a majority of delegates
that women should participate equally in the organization. They did not
commit the group to women’s rights in any other way, however. Contrary
opinion, mainly from the Tappans’ New York group, ranged from outright
anti-feminism to the fear of scattering shots over too many reforms. The
Tappans and their supporters walked out of the convention and formed the
American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.
A third faction of the American Anti-Slavery Society also broke with
Garrison. They had grown skeptical that the “moral suasion” promoted by
Garrison would ever lead to abolition. In 1840, they formed the Liberty
party in an effort to elect an American president who would abolish slavery.
Their nominee, James Gillespie Birney, was a former slaveholder turned
abolitionist from Alabama. Birney had converted to abolitionism and moved
to Ohio. In 1837, he had become executive secretary of the American Anti-
Slavery Society. In the 1840 election, he polled only seven thousand votes,
but in 1844 he won sixty thousand, and from that time forth an anti-slavery
 Anti-Slavery Movements • 547

Portraits of Frederick Douglass (left) and Sojourner Truth (right)

Both Douglass and Truth were leading abolitionists and captivating orators.

party contested every national election until Abraham Lincoln won the
presidency in 1860.

B L A C K A N T I - S L AV E R Y A C T I V I T Y Many white abolitionists also

balked at granting full recognition to black abolitionists of either sex. White
abolitionists expected free blacks to take a backseat in the movement.
Despite the invitation to form separate groups, African American leaders
were active in the white societies from the beginning. Three attended the
organizational meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, and
some—notably former slaves, who could speak from firsthand experience—
became outstanding agents for the movement. Garrison pronounced men
such as Henry Bibb and William Wells Brown, both escapees from Kentucky,
and Frederick Douglass, who had fled enslavement in Maryland, “the best
qualified to address the public on the subject of slavery.”
Douglass, blessed with an imposing frame and a simple eloquence,
became the best-known black man in America. “I appear before the
immense assembly this evening as a thief and a robber,” he told a Massachu-
setts group in 1842. “I stole this head, these limbs, this body from my master,
and ran off with them.” Fearful of capture after publishing his Narrative of
the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), he left for an extended lecture tour of
548 • RELIGION, ROMANTICISM, AND REFORM (CH. 13)

the British Isles, returning two years later with enough money to purchase
his freedom. He then started an abolitionist newspaper for blacks, the North
Star, in Rochester, New York.
Douglass’s Narrative was but the best known among hundreds of such
accounts. Escapees often made it out of slavery on their own—Douglass
borrowed a pass (required in the slave states for blacks to circulate in soci-
ety) from a free black seaman—but many were aided by the Underground
Railroad, which grew into a vast system of secret routes and safe stopping
places that concealed runaways and spirited them to freedom, often over the
Canadian border. Between 1810 and 1850, tens of thousands of southern
slaves ran away and fled north. A few intrepid refugees returned to the slave
states to organize more escapes. Fearless Harriet Tubman, the most cele-
brated runaway, risked everything to venture back to the South nineteen
times and helped three hundred slaves escape.
Equally courageous was the black abolitionist Sojourner Truth. Born to
slaves in the Dutch farming culture of upstate New York in 1797, she was
given the name Isabella “Bell” Hardenbergh but renamed herself in 1843
after experiencing a conversation with God, who told her “to travel up and
down the land” preaching against the sins of slavery. She did just that, criss-
crossing the country during the 1840s and 1850s, exhorting audiences to
support women’s rights and the immediate abolition of slavery. Having been
a slave until freed by a New York law in 1827, Sojourner Truth was able to
speak with conviction and knowledge about the evils of the “peculiar insti-
tution” and the inequality of women. As she told a gathering of the Ohio
Women’s Rights Convention in 1851, “I have plowed, and planted, and gath-
ered into barns, and no man could head me—and ar’n’t I a woman? I have
borne thirteen children, and seen ’em mos’ all sold off into slavery, and when
I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard—and ar’n’t I a woman?”
Through such compelling testimony, Sojourner Truth demonstrated the
powerful intersection of abolitionism and feminism, and in the process she
tapped the distinctive energies that women brought to reformist causes. “If
the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside
down all alone,” she concluded in her address to the Ohio gathering, “these
women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up
again!”

R E A C T I O N S T O A B O L I T I O N I S M Racism was a pervasive national

problem in the nineteenth century. Even in the North, abolitionists con-
fronted hostile white crowds who disliked blacks or found anti-slavery agi-
tation bad for business. In 1837, a mob in Illinois killed the anti-slavery
 Anti-Slavery Movements • 549

newspaper editor Elijah P. Lovejoy, giving the movement a martyr to the

causes of both abolition and freedom of the press.
Lovejoy had begun his career as a Presbyterian minister in New England.
He moved to St. Louis, in slaveholding Missouri, where he published a
newspaper that repeatedly denounced alcohol, Catholicism, and slavery.
When a pro-slavery mob destroyed his printing office, he moved across
the Mississippi River to Alton, Illinois. There mobs twice more destroyed
his printing press. When a new press arrived, Lovejoy and several of his
supporters armed themselves and took up defensive positions. On Novem-
ber 7, 1837, thugs gathered outside, hurling stones and firing shots into the
building. One of Lovejoy’s allies fired back, killing one of the rioters. The
mob then set fire to the warehouse, shouting, “Kill every damned abolition-
ist as he leaves.” A shotgun blast killed Lovejoy. His murder aroused a frenzy
of indignation. John Quincy Adams said that Lovejoy’s death sent “a shock
as of an earthquake throughout the continent.” At one of the hundreds of
memorial services across the North a grizzled, lean John Brown rose, raised
his right hand, and declared, “Here, before God, in the presence of these
witnesses, from this time, I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery!”
Brown and other militants decided that only violence would dislodge the
sin of slavery.
In the 1830s, abolitionism (also called immediatism) took a political turn,
focusing at first on Congress. One shrewd strategy was to deluge Congress
with petitions calling for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.
Most such petitions were presented by former president John Quincy
Adams, elected to the House from Massachusetts in 1830. In 1836, however,
the House adopted a rule to lay abolition petitions automatically on the
table, in effect ignoring them. Adams, “Old Man Eloquent,” stubbornly
fought this “gag rule” as a violation of the First Amendment and hounded its
supporters until the rule was repealed in 1844.

T H E D E F E N S E O F S L AV E R Y The growing strength and visibility of

the abolitionist movement prompted southerners to launch an equally
aggressive defense of slavery. During the 1830s and after, pro-slavery leaders
worked out an elaborate rationale for the supposed benefits of slavery. The
evangelical Christian churches in the South, which had widely condemned
slavery at one time, gradually turned pro-slavery. Biblical passages were cited
to buttress slaveholding. Had not the patriarchs of the Hebrew Bible held
people in bondage? Had not Saint Paul advised servants to obey their mas-
ters and told a fugitive servant to return to his master? And had not Jesus
remained silent on the subject, at least so far as the Gospels reported his
550 • RELIGION, ROMANTICISM, AND REFORM (CH. 13)

words? In 1844–1845, disputes over slavery split two great denominations along
sectional lines and led to the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention
and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Presbyterians, the only other
major denomination to divide by regions, did not do so until the Civil War.
Biblical defenses of slavery were soon joined by more audacious arguments
in favor of the “peculiar institution.” In February 1837, South Carolina’s
John C. Calhoun, the most prominent southern political leader, told the Sen-
ate that slavery was not evil. Instead, it was “good—a great good.” He brazenly
asserted that the Africans brought to America “had never existed in so com-
fortable, so respectable, or so civilized a condition, as that which is now
enjoyed in the Southern states.” If slavery were abolished, Calhoun warned,
the principle of white racial supremacy would be compromised: “the next
step would be to raise the negroes [sic] to a social and political equality with
the whites.” What is more, Calhoun and other defenders of slavery claimed,
blacks could not be expected to work under conditions of freedom. They
were too shiftless and improvident, the argument went, and if freed, they
would be a danger to themselves as well as to others. White workers, on the
other hand, feared the competition for jobs if slaves were freed. Calhoun’s
strident defense of slavery as a “positive good” led Henry Clay of Kentucky,
himself a slave owner, to describe the South Carolina leader as “a rigid, fanatic,
ambitious, selfishly partisan and sectional turncoat with too much genius and
too little common sense, who will either die a traitor or a madman.”
A new argument on behalf of slavery arose in the late 1850s in a desperate
effort to fend off the rising support for abolition. The Virginian George
Fitzhugh and others began to defend slavery as a better system for workers
than wage labor. Why? Fitzhugh claimed that slaves enjoyed security in sick-
ness and old age, unlike the “wage slavery” practiced by northern factory
owners, which exploited workers for profit and then cast them away. Within
one generation, such ideas had triumphed in the white South over the post-
Revolutionary apology for slavery as an evil bequeathed by the nation’s fore-
fathers. Opponents of the orthodox faith in slavery as a “positive good” were
either silenced or exiled. Freedom of thought in the Old South had become a
victim of the region’s growing obsession with the preservation and expan-
sion of slavery—at all costs.
The increasingly heated debate over slavery drove a widening wedge
between North and South. Of the many reform movements that swept across
the nation during the first half of the nineteenth century, abolitionism would
send tremors throughout the Union. In 1831, William Lloyd Garrison noted
that the “bond of our Union is becoming more and more brittle.” He pre-
dicted—correctly—that an eventual “separation between the free and slave
 Anti-Slavery Movements • 551

States” was “unavoidable.” Although few northerners in the 1830s viewed

slavery as the nation’s foremost issue, that would change by the 1850s. By
mid-century, a large number of Americans, mostly Whigs, had come to see
southern slavery as a national abomination that should not be allowed to
expand into the new western territories. The militant reformers who were
determined to prevent slavery from expanding came to be called “free soil-
ers,” and their crusade to improve American life would reach a fiery climax in
the Civil War.
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Second Great Awakening The Second Great Awakening, an evangelical move-

ment, generated widespread revivals. The Calvinist doctrine of predestination
was often replaced by the concept of salvation by free will. The more democratic
sects, such as Baptists and Methodists, gained huge numbers of converts. Evan-
gelists preached to enslaved people that everyone is equal in the eyes of God.
• Religious Movements The burned-over district in western New York was the
birthplace of several religious movements, including the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints, whose followers call themselves Mormons. Largely because
they allowed multiple marriages, Mormons were persecuted, and their
“prophet,” Joseph Smith, lost his life. Smith’s successor, Brigham Young, led the
Mormons on a trek to then-isolated Utah in the hope that they could worship
freely there. Another sect of this period, the Shakers, established celibate com-
munities and believed that the Second Coming of Christ was imminent.
• Romanticism The transcendentalists embraced the Romantic movement
in reaction to scientific rationalism and Calvinist orthodoxy, producing works
that transcended reason and the material world. At the same time, improved
technology and communication allowed the works of novelists, essayists, and
poets to reach a mass market.
• Social Reform Movements America had an astonishingly high literacy rate,
and reformers sought to establish statewide school systems. New colleges, most
with religious affiliations, also sprang into existence. A few institutions, such as
Vassar College, aimed to provide women with an education equal to that
available to men at the best colleges. Social reformers sought to eradicate such
evils as excessive drinking. They were active in the Sunday-school movement
and in reforming prisons and asylums. With the Seneca Falls Convention of
1848, social reformers also launched the women’s rights movement.
• Anti-Slavery Movement Northern opponents of slavery promoted several
solutions, including deportation of African Americans to colonies in Africa,
gradual emancipation, and immediate abolition. Radical abolitionist efforts in
the North provoked a strong reaction among southern whites, stirring fears for
their safety and resentment of interference. Yet many northerners shared the
belief in the racial inferiority of Africans.
• Defense of Slavery In defense of slavery, evangelical churches declared that it
was sanctioned by the Bible; southerners proclaimed it a “positive good” for
African Americans. Whereas only a quarter of white southerners held slaves,
the planter elite set the standard for southern white culture.
 CHRONOLOGY

1826

1830–1831
1830
Ministers organize the American Society for the Promotion of
Temperance
Charles G. Finney begins preaching in upstate New York
Joseph Smith reveals the Book of Mormon
1831 William Lloyd Garrison begins publication of The Liberator
1833 American Anti-Slavery Society is founded
1836 Transcendental Club holds its first meeting
1840 Abolitionists form the Liberty party
1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is published
1846 Mormons, led by Brigham Young, undertake trek to Utah
1848 At the Seneca Falls Convention, women issue the Declaration of
Sentiments
1851 Sojourner Truth delivers her famous speech Ain’t I a Woman?
1854 Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, or Life in the Woods is published
1855 Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is published

KEY TERMS & NAMES

Second Great Awakening transcendentalism p. 523 William Lloyd Garrison
p. 514 p. 543
Ralph Waldo Emerson
burned-over district p. 517 p. 524 Frederick Douglass p. 547

Church of Jesus Christ of Horace Mann p. 532 Underground Railroad

Latter-day Saints p. 548
(Mormons) p. 518 Dorothea Lynde Dix p. 537
Harriet Tubman p. 548
Joseph Smith p. 519 Elizabeth Cady Stanton p. 539
Sojourner Truth p. 548
Brigham Young p. 521 abolition p. 543
 Part Four


A

HOUSE DIVIDED

AND REBUILT
I n 1840, most Americans were optimistic about the future as their
young nation matured. The United States was already the world’s largest
republic. Its population continued to grow rapidly, economic conditions
were improving, and war with Great Britain seemed a part of the distant
past. Above all, Americans continued to look and move westward, where
vast expanses of land beckoned farmers, ranchers, miners, and shop-
keepers. By the end of the 1840s, the United States—yet again—had
dramatically expanded its territory, claiming Texas, New Mexico, Arizona,
Utah, Nevada, California, and the Pacific Northwest. In the process it
developed a continental empire from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
This extraordinary expansion, gained at the expense of Indians and
Mexicans, was not an unmixed blessing, however. How to deal with the
new western territories emerged as the nation’s flashpoint issue at mid-
century as the differences between America’s three distinctive regions—
North, South, and West—grew more divisive. A series of political
compromises had glossed over the fundamental issue of slavery
during the first half of the nineteenth century,
but abolitionists refused to give up their
crusade against extending slavery into the
new territories. Moreover, a new generation of
politicians emerged in the 1850s, leaders
who were less willing to seek political
compromises. The continuing debate over
allowing slavery into the new western
territories kept sectional tensions at a fever
pitch. By the time Abraham Lincoln was
elected president in 1860, many Americans
had decided that the nation could not
survive half-slave and half-free; something
had to give.
In a last-ditch effort to preserve the
institution of slavery, against federal
restrictions, eleven southern states seceded
from the Union and created a separate
Confederate nation. That, in turn, prompted
northerners such as Lincoln to support a civil
war to restore the Union. No one realized in 1861 how prolonged and
costly the war would become. Over 620,000 soldiers and sailors would
die of wounds or disease. The colossal carnage caused even the most
seasoned observers to blanch in disbelief. As President Lincoln confessed
in his second inaugural address, in 1865, no one expected the war to
become so “fundamental and astonishing.”
Nor did anyone envision how sweeping the war’s effects would be
upon the future of the nation. The northern victory in 1865 restored the
Union and in the process helped accelerate America’s transformation
into a modern nation-state. National power and a national conscious-
ness began to displace the sectional emphases of the antebellum era. A
Republican-led Congress enacted federal legislation to foster industrial
and commercial development and western expansion. In the process the
United States began to leave behind the Jeffersonian dream of a decen-
tralized agrarian republic.
The Civil War also ended slavery, yet the status of the freed African
Americans remained precarious. Former slaves found themselves legally
free, but few of them had property, a home, education, or training.
Although the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) set forth guarantees for
the civil rights of African Americans and the Fifteenth Amendment
(1870) provided that black men could vote, southern officials found
ingenious—and often violent—ways to avoid the spirit and the letter
of the new laws.
The restoration of the former Confederate states to the Union did not
come easily. Bitterness and resistance festered among the vanquished.
Although Confederate leaders were initially disenfranchised, they con-
tinued to exercise considerable authority in political and economic
matters. In 1877, when the last federal troops were removed from the
occupied South, former Confederates declared themselves “redeemed”
from the stain of federal military occupation. By the end of the nine-
teenth century, most states of the former Confederacy had devised a
system of legal discrimination against blacks that re-created many
aspects of slavery.

14
AN EMPIRE IN THE WEST

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• What were the dominant issues in national politics in the 1840s?

• Why did settlers migrate west, and what conditions did they face?
• Why did Texas declare independence from Mexico in 1836, and
why were many Americans reluctant to accept it as a new state in
the Union?
• What were the causes of the Mexican War?
• What territories did the United States gain from the Mexican War,
and what controversial issue consequently arose?

G eography is said to be destiny. In the American experience,

the West’s bounty and boundlessness have always exercised
a magical allure. Moving westward was one of the primary
sources of energy and hope in the development of the United States. The
West—whether defined as the enticing lands over the Allegheny Mountains
that became Ohio and Kentucky or, later, the fertile prairies watered by the
Mississippi River or, finally, the spectacular lands along the Pacific coast that
became the states of California, Oregon, and Washington—served as a pow-
erful magnet for adventurous people dreaming of freedom, self-fulfillment,
and economic gain. During the 1840s and after, Americans moved west in
droves, seeking a better chance and more space. “If hell lay to the west,” one
pioneer declared, “Americans would cross heaven to get there.” Millions of
Americans crossed the Mississippi River and endured unrelenting hardships
in order to fulfill their “providential destiny” to displace the Indians and
subdue the entire continent. By 1860, some 4.3 million people had settled in
the trans-Mississippi West.
560 • AN EMPIRE IN THE WEST (CH. 14)

Most of these settlers and adventurers sought to exploit the many eco-
nomic opportunities afforded by the new land. Trappers and farmers, miners
and merchants, hunters, ranchers, teachers, household servants, and prosti-
tutes, among others, headed west seeking their fortune. Others sought reli-
gious freedom or new converts to Christianity. Whatever the reason, the
pioneers formed an unceasing migratory stream flowing across the Great
Plains and the Rocky Mountains. Of course, the West was not empty land
waiting to be developed by hardy pioneers, trappers, and miners. Others had
been there long before the American migration. The Indian and Hispanic
inhabitants of the region soon found themselves swept aside by successive
waves of American settlement, all facilitated by U.S. presidents who encour-
aged the nation’s continental expansion.

THE TYLER PRESIDENCY

When the amiable President William Henry Harrison took office in

1841, he was the oldest man (sixty-eight) and the first Whig to be inaugu-
rated as president. Like Andrew Jackson, he was elected mainly on the
strength of his military record and because of his evasiveness on volatile
issues. Whig leaders expected him to be a pliant figurehead, a tool in the
hands of the era’s most prominent—and most cunning—statesmen, Daniel
Webster and Henry Clay. Nicholas Biddle, the outspoken former president
of the Second Bank of the United States, told Webster that “the coming
administration will in fact be your administration.” Webster, as it turned
out, became secretary of state, the cabinet position that had regularly pro-
duced future presidents. Clay, still lusting to become president himself,
opted to stay in the Senate, but he sought to fill Harrison’s cabinet with
friends he could manipulate. Within a few days of the inauguration, signs of
strain appeared between Harrison and Clay, whose disappointment at missing
the nomination had made him peevish on top of his natural tendencies to be
arrogant and dictatorial. At one point, an exasperated Harrison exploded:
“Mr. Clay, you forget that I am the President.” But the quarrel never had a
chance to fester, for Harrison served the shortest term of any president. At
his inauguration, held on a chilly, rainy day, he caught a stubborn cold after
delivering a two-hour speech. On April 4, 1841, exactly one month after the
inauguration, the new president died of pneumonia. He was the first presi-
dent to die in office.
Thus, John Tyler of Virginia, the first vice president to succeed upon the
death of a president, served practically all of Harrison’s term. And if there
 The Tyler Presidency • 561

was ambiguity about where Harrison stood on the issues, there was none about
Tyler’s convictions. At age fifty-one, the tall, thin, slave-owning Virginian
was the youngest president to date, but he had already served a long career as
state legislator, governor, congressman, and senator, and his opinions on all
the important issues had been forcefully stated and were widely known.
Although officially a Whig, at an earlier time he might have been called an
Old Republican: he was stubbornly opposed to everything associated with
the Whig party’s “American System,” Henry Clay’s program of economic
nationalism—protective tariffs, a national bank, and internal improvements
at national expense—and, like Thomas Jefferson, Tyler endorsed states’
rights, strict construction of the Constitution, and territorial expansion.
Tyler was a southerner first and foremost. When asked about the concept
of nationalism, he said there was “no such word in my political vocabulary.”
(When he died in 1862, he was serving as a member of the Confederate Con-
gress.) Originally a Democrat, Tyler had broken with the party over Andrew
Jackson’s “condemnation” of South Carolina’s attempt to nullify federal laws.
Tyler believed that South Carolina had a constitutional right to secede from
the nation. In 1840, although Tyler was a renegade Democrat with no alle-
giance to Whig principles, he had been chosen as the party’s vice-presidential
nominee to “balance” the Whig ticket with a southerner. No one expected
that Harrison would die only thirty days after taking office. Acid-tongued
John Quincy Adams said that Tyler was “a political sectarian of the slave-
driving, Virginian, Jeffersonian school, principled against all improvement,
with all the interests and passions and vices of slavery rooted in his moral and
political constitution.”

D O M E S T I C A F FA I R S With more finesse, Henry Clay might have bridged

the nasty dispute between him and President Tyler over financial issues such
as tariff policies and the national bank. But for once, driven by an unrelent-
ing quest to be president, Clay, the “Great Compromiser,” lost his instinct for
compromise. When Congress met in a special session in 1841, Clay aggres-
sively introduced a series of resolutions designed to supply the platform that
the Whig party had evaded in the election. A Democrat reported that Clay
was “carrying everything by storm” in the Congress. “His will is the law of
Congress.” Clay proposed repealing the Independent Treasury Act, establish-
ing a third Bank of the United States, distributing to the states the money
raised from federal land sales, and raising tariffs on imports. The “haughty
and imperious” Clay then set about pushing his program through Congress
without presidential support. “Tyler dares not resist. I will drive him before
me,” he said.
562 • AN EMPIRE IN THE WEST (CH. 14)

Tyler, it turned out, was not easily driven. Although he agreed to the
repeal of the Independent Treasury Act and signed a higher tariff bill in
1842, Tyler, on August 16, 1841, vetoed Clay’s pet project: a new national
bank. Clay was furious. The domineering leader of the Senate belittled the
president in Congress, calling him a traitor who had abandoned his party
and accusing him of “pride, vanity, and egotism,” qualities that applied
equally well to Clay himself. Tyler’s bank veto led the powerful Clay to con-
vince Tyler’s entire cabinet to resign in September, with the exception of
Secretary of State Daniel Webster. Tyler replaced the defectors with anti-
Jackson Democrats who, like him, had become Whigs. The political climate
grew incendiary; fistfights erupted in Congress. Clay and other irate Whigs
expelled Tyler from the party, and Democrats viewed him as an untrustwor-
thy renegade. By 1842, Clay’s vaunted legislative program was in ruins. Yet
by opposing Clay and the Whigs, Tyler had become a president without a
party, shunned by both Whigs and Democrats. Such political turmoil was
occurring amid the worst economic depression in the history of the young
nation. Bank failures mounted. Unemployment soared. But the self-assured
Tyler remained both obstinate and unfazed.

F O R E I G N A F FA I R S In foreign relations, tensions with Great Britain

captured President Tyler’s attention. In 1841, British ships patrolling off the
coast of Africa threatened to board and search vessels flying the American
flag to see if they carried slaves. Relations were further strained late in 1841
when 135 slaves on the American ship Creole mutinied and sailed into
Nassau, in the Bahamas, where the British authorities set them free. Secretary
of State Daniel Webster demanded that the slaves be returned as American
property, but the British refused (the dispute was not settled until 1853, when
England paid $110,000 to the owners of the freed slaves).
At this point, a new British government decided to meet with Webster to
resolve various disputes between the two nations. They sent Lord Ashburton to
Washington, D.C., where the meetings were fruitful. The Webster-Ashburton
Treaty (1842) provided for joint naval patrols off Africa to suppress the out-
lawed slave trade. The treaty also resolved a long-standing dispute between
the United States and Great Britain over the northern boundary of the United
States with Canada. In the end, Webster settled for about seven twelfths of the
contested land along the Maine boundary, and except for Oregon, which
remained under joint Anglo-American occupation, he settled the other bor-
der disputes with Great Britain by accepting the existing line between the
Connecticut and St. Lawrence Rivers and compromising on the line between
Lake Superior and Lake of the Woods in what is now Minnesota.
 The Western Frontier • 563

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What led to negotiations between Webster and Ashburton? Which territorial con-
flicts with Britain were settled, and which ones remained after the 1842 treaty?
In addition to settling the dispute over land, what other issues did the Webster-
Ashburton Treaty settle?

THE WESTERN FRONTIER

In the early 1840s, most Americans were no more stirred by the quar-
rels of John Tyler and Henry Clay over such issues as the banking system and
the tariff policy than students of history are today. What did arouse public
interest were the ongoing economic slump and the mounting evidence that
the United States was hurdling the barriers of the Great American Desert
and the Rocky Mountains, reaching out toward the Pacific coast. In 1845,
a New York newspaper editor and Democratic-party propagandist named
John L. O’Sullivan gave a name to this aggressive spirit of territorial expan-
sion. “Our manifest destiny,” he wrote, “is to overspread the continent allotted
by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.”
God, in other words, deemed that the United States should extend itself
from the Atlantic to the Pacific—and beyond. At best, this much-trumpeted
notion of manifest destiny offered a moral justification for territorial expan-
sion, a prescription for what an enlarged United States could and should be.
At worst, it was a cluster of flimsy rationalizations for naked greed and
imperial ambition. The concept of manifest destiny ignored the prior claims
564 • AN EMPIRE IN THE WEST (CH. 14)

of Native Americans and Hispanics on western lands as settlers began

streaming into the Far West in the aftermath of the panic of 1837 and the
ensuing economic depression.

WESTERN INDIANS In the sprawling territory across the Mississippi

River, white settlers encountered a new environment as well as Native Amer-
ican tribes heretofore unknown to most Americans. The Great Plains and
the Far West were already occupied by Indians and Hispanics, who had lived
in the region for centuries and had established their own distinctive customs
and ways of life. Historians estimate that over 325,000 Indians inhabited the
Southwest, the Great Plains, California, and the Pacific Northwest in 1840,
when the great migration of white settlers began to pour into the region. The
Native Americans often competed with and warred against one another. They
were divided into more than two hundred tribes, each with its own language,
religion, kinship practices, and system of governance. Some were primarily
farmers; others were nomadic hunters who preyed upon game animals, as
well as other Indians.
Many tribes resided on the Great Plains, a vast grassland stretching from
the Mississippi River west to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada south
to Mexico. This region had been virtually devoid of a human presence until
the Spaniards introduced the horse and the gun in the late sixteenth century.

Buffalo Hunt, Chasing Back (1860s)

This painting by George Catlin shows a hunter outrunning a buffalo.
 The Western Frontier • 565

Horses dramatically increased the mobility of the Plains Indians, enabling

them to leave their villages and follow the migrating buffalo herds. The
Indians used buffalo meat for food and transformed the skins into clothing,
bedding, and tepee coverings. The bones and horns served as tools and uten-
sils. Buffalo manure could be dried and burned for heat.
Plains Indians such as the Arapaho, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Kiowa, and
Sioux were horse-borne nomads; they migrated across the prairie grass-
lands, carrying their tepees with them. Quite different Indian tribes lived to
the south and west of them in the arid region that today includes Arizona,
New Mexico, and southern Utah. The peaceful Pueblo tribes—Acoma, Hopi,
Laguna, Taos, Zia, Zuni—were sophisticated farmers who lived in adobe vil-
lages along rivers that irrigated their crops of corn, beans, and squash. Their
rivals were the Apache and the Navajo, warlike hunters who roamed the
countryside in small bands and preyed upon the Pueblos. They, in turn, were
periodically harassed by their powerful enemies, the Comanches.
To the north, in the Great Basin between the Rocky Mountains and the
Sierra Nevadas, Paiutes and Gosiutes struggled to survive in the harsh, arid
region of what is today Nevada, Utah, and eastern California. They traveled
in family groups and subsisted on berries, pine nuts, insects, and rodents.
West of the mountains, along the California coast, Indians lived in small vil-
lages. They gathered wild plants and acorns and were adept at fishing in the
rivers and bays.
The Indian tribes living in the Pacific Northwest—the Nisqually, Spokane,
Yakama, Chinook, Klamath, and Nez Perce (Pierced Nose)—enjoyed the most
abundant natural resources and the most temperate climate. The ocean and
rivers provided bountiful supplies of food: whales, seals, salmon, and crabs.
The lush inland forests harbored game, berries, and nuts. And the majestic
forests of fir, redwood, and cedar offered wood for cooking and shelter.
All these Indian tribes eventually felt the unrelenting pressure of white
expansion and conquest. Because Native American life on the plains depended
upon the buffalo, the influx of white settlers and hunters posed a direct threat
to the Indians’ cultural survival. When federal officials could not coerce, cajole,
or confuse Indian leaders into selling the title to their tribal lands, fighting
ensued. And after the discovery of gold in California in early 1848, the tidal
wave of white expansion flowed all the way to the west coast, violently engulf-
ing Native Americans and Mexicans in its wake.

As
T H E S PA N I S H W E S T A N D M E X I C A N I N D E P E N D E N C E
American settlers trespassed across Indian lands, they also encountered
Spanish-speaking peoples. Many whites were as contemptuous of Hispanics
566 • AN EMPIRE IN THE WEST (CH. 14)

as they were of Indians. Senator Lewis Cass, an expansionist from Michigan

who would be the Democratic candidate for president in 1848, expressed the
sentiment of many Americans during a debate over the annexation of New
Mexico. “We do not want the people of Mexico,” he declared, “either as citi-
zens or as subjects. All we want is their . . . territory.” The vast majority of the
Spanish-speaking people in what is today the American Southwest resided in
New Mexico. Most of them were of mixed Indian and Spanish blood and
were ranch hands or small farmers and herders. The desire of Americans for
“their” territory provoked violent confrontations and cultural as well as
racial oppression in the southwestern borderlands.
The centuries-old Spanish efforts at colonization had been less successful in
Arizona and Texas than in New Mexico and Florida. The Yuma and Apache
Indians in Arizona and the Comanches and Apaches in Texas thwarted Spanish
efforts to establish Catholic missions. After years of fruitless missionary efforts
among the Pueblo Indians, one Spaniard complained that “most [of them] have
never forsaken idolatry, and they appear to be Christians more by force than to be
Indians who are reduced to the
Holy Faith.” By 1790, the His-
panic population in Texas num-
bered only 2,510, while in New
Mexico it exceeded 20,000.
In 1807, French forces had
occupied Spain and imprisoned
the king, creating consterna-
tion and confusion throughout
Spain’s colonial pos sessions,
including Mexico. Miguel
Hidalgo y Costilla, a creole priest
(born in the New World of Euro-
pean ancestry), took advantage
of the fluid situation to convince
Indians and mestizos to revolt
against Spanish rule in Mexico.
But the poorly organized uprising
failed miserably. In 1811, Span-
ish troops captured Hidalgo
“¡Viva El Cura Hidalgo!” and executed him. Other Mexi-
This patriotic broadside celebrating Mexican
cans, however, continued to
independence shows Father Miguel Hidalgo yearn for independence, and in
in an oval medallion. 1820, Mexicans again tried to
 The Western Frontier • 567

liberate themselves from Spanish authority. By then the Spanish forces in

Mexico had lost much of their cohesion and dedication. Facing a growing
revolt, the last Spanish officials withdrew in 1821, and Mexico became an
independent nation. The infant Mexican republic struggled to develop a sta-
ble government and an effective economy, however. Localism and corruption
flourished, and Mexican officials showed neither the will nor the ability to
govern the new republic. Americans were eager to take advantage of Mexico’s
instability.
Mexican independence from Spain unleashed tremors throughout the
Southwest. American fur traders streamed into New Mexico and Arizona and
developed a lucrative commerce in beaver pelts. American entrepreneurs also
flooded into the western Mexican province of California and soon became a
powerful force for change; by 1848, Americans made up half the non-Indian
population. In Texas, American adventurers decided to seize their own inde-
pendence from a chaotic Mexican government. Suddenly, it seemed, the
Southwest was ripe for a new phase of American exploitation and settlement.

T H E R O C K Y M O U N TA I N S A N D O R E G O N C O U N T R Y During
the early nineteenth century, the Far Northwest consisted of the Nebraska,
Washington, and Oregon Territories. Fur traders were especially drawn to
the vast watershed of the Missouri River. By the mid-1820s, the “rendezvous
system” had developed, in which trappers, traders, and Indians from the
Rocky Mountain territories gathered annually at some designated place,
usually in or near the Grand Tetons, to trade pelts and hides. But by 1840 the
great days of the western fur trade were over, as the streams no longer
teemed with beavers; they had been hunted nearly to extinction by Indians
and French trappers.
During the 1820s and 1830s, the fur trade had inspired “mountain men”
to abandon civilization in pursuit of beaver pelts and revert to a primitive
existence in the wilderness. The rugged trappers lived sometimes in splendid
isolation, sometimes in the shelter of primitive forts, and sometimes among
Indians. They were the first whites to find their way around the Rocky
Mountains, and they pioneered the trails that settlers by the 1840s were
beginning to travel as they flooded the Oregon Country and trickled across
the border into California.
Beyond the mountains the Oregon Country stretched from the 42nd par-
allel north to 54°40⬘, a region in which Spain and Russia had given up their
rights, leaving Great Britain and the United States as the only claimants. By
the Convention of 1818, the two countries had agreed to “joint occupation”
of the Oregon Country, which then included land that has become the states
568 • AN EMPIRE IN THE WEST (CH. 14)

Fur Traders Descending the Missouri (1845)

One of George Caleb Bingham’s paintings from his winter in central Missouri.
A bear cub is depicted at the bow.

of Washington, Oregon and Idaho, parts of Montana and Wyoming, and the
Canadian province of British Columbia. During the 1830s, however, joint
occupation had been a legal technicality, because the only American pres-
ence was the occasional mountain man who wandered across the Sierra
Nevadas or the infrequent trading vessel from Boston or New York.
Word of Oregon’s fertile soil, plentiful rainfall, and magnificent forests
gradually spread eastward. By the late 1830s, during the economic hard
times after the panic of 1837, a trickle of emigrants—farmers, missionaries,
fur traders, and shopkeepers—was flowing along the Oregon Trail, a 2,000-
mile trail connecting the Missouri River near St. Louis with Oregon. Soon,
however, “Oregon fever” swept the nation. In 1841 and 1842, the first sizable
wagon trains made the trip, and in 1843 the movement became a mass
migration. “The Oregon fever has broke out,” wrote a settler in 1843, “and is
now raging like any other contagion.” By 1845 there were about five thou-
sand settlers in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.

THE SETTLEMENT OF CALIFORNIA California was also an allur-

ing attraction for new settlers and entrepreneurs. It had first felt the influence
of European culture in 1769, when Spain grew concerned about Russian seal
traders moving south along the Pacific coast from their base in Alaska. To
thwart Russian intentions, Spain sent a naval expedition to settle the
region. The Spanish anchored in San Francisco Bay and constructed pre-
sidios (military garrisons) at San Diego and Monterey. Even more impor-
tant, Franciscan friars, led by Junípero Serra, established a Catholic mission
 The Western Frontier • 569

at San Diego. Over the next fifty years, twenty more Franciscan missions
were built, spaced a day’s journey apart along the coast from San Diego
northward to San Francisco. The mission-centered culture created by the
Hispanic settlers who migrated to California from Mexico was quite different
from the patterns of conquest and settlement in Texas and New Mexico. In
those more settled regions the original missions were converted into secular
parishes, and the property was divided among the Indians. In California the
missions were much larger, more influential, and longer lasting.
Franciscan missionaries, aided by Spanish soldiers, gathered most of the
coastal Indian population in California under their control. They viewed the
Indians as ignorant, lazy heathens living in a “free and undisciplined” society.
The friars were determined to convert the Indians to Catholicism and make
them vassals of the Spanish Empire. The Spanish government provided the
missions with military support, annual cash grants, and supplies from Mex-
ico. The Franciscan friars enticed the local Indians into the adobe-walled,
tile-roofed missions by offering gifts or impressing them with their “magi-
cal” religious rituals. Once inside the missions, the Indians were baptized as
Catholics, taught the Spanish language, and stripped of their native heritage.
Soldiers living in the missions enforced the will of the friars.
The California mission served multiple roles. It was church, fortress, home,
town, farm, and imperial agent. The missions were economic as well as reli-
gious and cultural institutions: they quickly became substantial agricultural
enterprises. Missions produced crops, livestock, clothing, and household
goods, both for profit and to supply the neighboring presidios (forts). Indians
provided the labor. The Franciscans viewed regimented Indian labor as more
than a practical necessity: they saw it as a morally enriching responsibility
essential to transforming unproductive Indians into industrious Christians.
A mission’s daily routine began at dawn with the ringing of a bell, which
summoned the community to prayer. Work began an hour later and did not
end until an hour before sunset. Indians worked at the missions six days a
week; they did not work on Sundays and religious holidays. Children and the
elderly were expected to work as well. Most Indian men performed manual
labor in the fields. Some were trained in special skills, such as masonry, car-
pentry, or leatherwork. Women handled domestic chores, such as cooking,
sewing, cleaning, and shucking corn. During harvest season everyone was
expected to help in the fields. In lieu of wages the Indians received clothing,
food, housing, and religious instruction.
The Franciscans used overwhelming force to control the Indians as cap-
tive laborers in the missions. Rebellious Indians were whipped or imprisoned.
Mission Indians died at an alarming rate. One Franciscan friar reported that
570 • AN EMPIRE IN THE WEST (CH. 14)

Sketch of the mission at Santa Barbara

From Edward Vischer’s collection of reminiscences of California under Spain
and Mexico.

“of every four Indian children born, three die in their first or second year,
while those who survive do not reach the age of twenty-five.” Infectious dis-
ease was the primary threat, but the grueling labor regimen took a high toll
as well. The Native American population along the California coast declined
from 72,000 in 1769 to 18,000 by 1821. Saving souls cost many lives.

E A R LY D E V E L O P M E N T O F C A L I F O R N I A For all of its rich nat-

ural resources, California remained thinly populated by Indians and mission
friars well into the nineteenth century. In 1821, when Mexico wrested its
independence from Spain, Californians took comfort in the fact that Mexico
City was so far away that it would exercise little effective control over its far-
thermost state. During the next two decades, Californians, including many
recent American arrivals, staged ten revolts against the Mexican governors
dispatched to lord over them.
Yet the shift from Spanish to Mexican rule did produce a dramatic change
in California history. In 1824, Mexico passed a colonization act that granted
hundreds of huge rancho estates to Hispanic settlers. With free labor extracted
from Indians, who were treated like slaves, the rancheros lived a life of self-
indulgent luxury and ease, roaming their lands, gambling, horse racing, bull
baiting, and dancing. The freebooting rancheros soon cast covetous eyes on
the vast estates controlled by the Franciscan missions. In 1833–1834, they
persuaded the Mexican government to confiscate the missions, exile the
Franciscan friars, release the Indians from church control, and make the mis-
sion lands available for economic development. Within a few years some 700
new rancho grants of 4,500 to 50,000 acres were issued along the California
 Moving West • 571

coast. Organized like feudal estates, these sprawling ranches resembled south-
ern plantations—but the death rate among Indian workers was twice as high
as that of enslaved blacks in the Deep South.
Few accounts of life in California took note of the brutalities inflicted
upon the Indians, however. Instead, they portrayed the region as a proverbial
land of milk and honey, ripe for development. Such a natural paradise could
not long remain a secret. By the late 1820s, American trappers had wandered
in from time to time, and American ships had begun to enter the “hide and
tallow” trade: the ranchos of California produced cowhide and beef tallow in
large quantities, and both products enjoyed a brisk demand, cowhides
mainly for shoes and tallow chiefly for candles. By the mid-1830s, shipping
companies had stationed representatives in California to buy the hides and
store them until a company ship arrived. One of these agents, Thomas O.
Larkin at Monterey, would play a leading role in the acquisition of California
by the United States.
The most noteworthy of the traders, however, was not American but Swiss.
John A. Sutter had abandoned his family in Europe in order to avoid arrest
for bankruptcy. He found his way to California and persuaded the Mexican
governor to give him land on which to plant a colony of Swiss émigrés. At
the juncture of the Sacramento and American Rivers (later the site of the city
of Sacramento), Sutter built an enormous enclosure that guarded an entire
village of settlers and shops. At New Helvetia (Americans called it Sutter’s
Fort), completed in 1843, no Swiss colony materialized, but the baronial
estate, worked by local Indians, became a magnet for Americans bent on set-
tling the Sacramento country. It stood at the end of what became the most
traveled route through the Sierra Nevada mountains, the California Trail,
which forked off the Oregon Trail and led through the mountains near Lake
Tahoe. By the start of 1846, there were perhaps eight hundred Americans in
California, along with eight thousand to twelve thousand Californios (settlers
of Hispanic descent).

M OV I N G W E S T

Most of the western pioneers during the second quarter of the nine-
teenth century were American-born whites from the Upper South and the
Midwest. Only a few African Americans joined in the migration. What pre-
cipitated the massive migration westward across the Mississippi River was
the continuing population explosion in the United States. (America’s rate of
population growth remained much higher than that of Europe.) Although
572 • AN EMPIRE IN THE WEST (CH. 14)

some emigrants traveled by sea to California, most went overland. Between

1841 and 1867, some 350,000 men, women, and children made the arduous
trek to California or Oregon, while hundreds of thousands of others settled
along the way, in Colorado, Texas, Arkansas, and other areas.

T H E S A N TA F E T R A I L After gaining its independence from Spain in

1821, the new Mexican government was much more interested in trade with
the United States than Spain had been. In Spanish-controlled Santa Fe, in
fact, all commerce with the United States had been banned. After 1821, how-
ever, trade flourished. Hundreds of entrepreneurs made the thousand-mile
trek from St. Louis to Santa Fe, forging a route that became known as the
Santa Fe Trail. Soon Mexican traders began leading caravans east to Mis-
souri. By the 1830s, there was so much commercial activity between Mexico
and St. Louis that the Mexican silver peso had become the primary medium
of exchange in Missouri.
Thousands of Americans risked their lives along the Santa Fe Trail to exploit
the commercial opportunities afforded by trade with the Mexicans. On a good
day their wagons might travel twelve to fourteen miles through rough terrain.
Water was scarce, as was forage for their livestock. Indians occasionally
raided the wagon trains. In 1847 almost 50 pioneers were killed, 330 wagons
destroyed, and 6,500 animals stolen by hostile Indians. The traders who sur-
vived pioneered more than a new trail. They showed that heavy wagons could
cross the plains and the mountains, and they developed the technique of orga-
nized caravans for common protection.

T H E OV E R L A N D T R A I L S Like those on the Santa Fe Trail, travelers

bound for Oregon and California rode in wagon caravans. But on the Over-
land Trails to the West Coast, most of the pioneers were settlers rather than
traders, and they traveled mostly in family groups and came from all over
the United States. The Oregon-bound wagon trains followed the trail west
from Independence, Missouri, along the North Platte River into what is now
Wyoming, through South Pass down to Fort Bridger (abode of the celebrated
mountain man Jim Bridger), then down the Snake River to the Columbia
River and along the Columbia to their goal in Oregon’s fertile Willamette
River valley. They usually left Missouri in late spring, completing the gruel-
ing two-thousand-mile trek in six months. Traveling in ox-drawn canvas-
covered wagons nicknamed “prairie schooners,” they jostled their way across
the dusty or muddy trails and rugged mountains. By 1845, some 5,000
people were making the arduous journey annually. The discovery of gold in
California in 1848 brought some 30,000 pioneers along the Oregon Trail in
 Moving West • 573

VANCOUVER
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What did settlers migrating west hope to find? What were the perils of the Santa Fe
Trail? Describe the experience of a typical settler traveling on the Overland Trails.

1849. By 1850, the peak year of travel along the trail, the annual count had
risen to 55,000.
Contrary to the mythology, Indians rarely attacked white wagon trains.
Less than 4 percent of the fatalities associated with the Overland Trails expe-
rience were the result of Indian attacks. More often, Native Americans either
allowed the settlers to pass through their tribal lands unmolested or demanded
payment. Many wagon trains never encountered a single Indian, and others
received generous aid from Indians who served as guides, advisers, or traders.
574 • AN EMPIRE IN THE WEST (CH. 14)

The Indians, one female pioneer noted, “proved better than represented.” To
be sure, as the number of pioneers increased dramatically during the 1850s,
disputes with Indians over land and water increased, but never to the degree
portrayed in novels and films.
Still, the journey west was extraordinarily difficult. The diary of Amelia
Knight, who set out for Oregon in 1853 with her husband and seven children,
reveals the mortal threats along the trail: “Chatfield quite sick with scarlet
fever. A calf took sick and died before breakfast. Lost one of our oxen; he
dropped dead in the yoke. I could hardly help shedding tears. Yesterday my
eighth child was born.” Cholera claimed many lives. On average there was one
grave every eighty yards along the trail.
Initially the pioneers along the Overland Trails adopted the same division
of labor used back East. Women cooked, washed, sewed, and monitored the
children while men drove the wagons, tended the horses and cattle, and did
the heavy labor. But the unique demands of the western trails soon dissolved
such neat distinctions and posed new tasks. Women found themselves gath-
ering buffalo dung for fuel, pitching in to dislodge a wagon mired in mud,

Gathering buffalo chips

Women on the Overland Trails not only cooked and washed and took care of their
children but also gathered dried buffalo dung to use as fuel as their wagons
crossed the treeless plains.
 Moving West • 575

helping to construct a makeshift

bridge, or participating in a vari-
ety of other “unladylike” tasks.
The hard labor of the trails
understandably provoked ten-
sions within families and pow-
erful yearnings for home. Many
a tired pioneer could identify
with the following comment in
a girl’s journal: “Poor Ma said Wagon-wheel ruts near Guernsey, Wyoming
only this morning, ‘Oh, I wish The wheels of thousands of wagons traveling
we had never started.’ She to Oregon cut into solid rock as oxen
looks so sorrowful and dejected.” strained up hillsides, leaving indentations
Another woman wondered “what that are still visible today.
had possessed my husband, any-
way, that he should have thought of bringing us away out through this God
forsaken country.” Some turned back, but most continued on. And once in
Oregon or California they set about establishing stable communities. Noted
one settler: “Friday, October 27.—Arrived at Oregon City at the falls of the
Willamette. Saturday, October 28.—Went to work.”

T H E I N D I A N S A N D G R E AT P L A I N S E C O L O G Y The massive
migrations along the Overland Trails wreaked havoc on the environment of
the Great Plains. Hundreds of thousands of settlers and traders brought
with them millions of animals—horses, cattle, oxen, and sheep—all of
which consumed huge amounts of prairie grass. The wagons and herds
trampled vegetation and gouged ruts in the landscape that survive to this
day. With the onset of the California gold rush in 1848, Plains Indians, led by
Cheyennes, began supplying buffalo meat and skins to the white pioneers.
Tracking and killing buffalo required many horses, and the four-legged crea-
tures added to the strain on the prairie grasslands and river bottoms. A
major climatic change coincided with the mass migrations sparked by the
gold rush in California. In 1849 a prolonged drought struck the region west
of the Mississippi River and produced widespread suffering. Starving Indians
demanded or begged for food from passing wagon trains. Tensions between
Native Americans and white travelers brought additional federal cavalry
units to the plains, exacerbating the shortage of forage grasses.
In 1851, U.S. officials invited the Native Americans tribes from the
northern plains to a conference in the grassy valley along the North Platte
River in what is now southeastern Wyoming, near Fort Laramie. Almost ten
576 • AN EMPIRE IN THE WEST (CH. 14)

thousand Indians—men, women, and children—attended the treaty coun-

cil. What made the huge gathering even more remarkable is that so many of
the tribes were at war with one another. After nearly three weeks of heated
discussions, during which the chiefs were presented with a mountain of
gifts, federal negotiators and tribal leaders agreed to what became known
as the Fort Laramie Treaty. The government promised to provide annual
cash payments to the Indians as compensation for the damage caused by
wagon trains traversing their hunting grounds. In exchange, the Indians
agreed to stop harassing white caravans, allow federal forts to be built, and
confine themselves to a specified area “of limited extent and well-defined
boundaries.”
Several tribes, however, refused to accept the treaty’s provisions. The
most powerful, the Lakota Sioux, reluctantly signed the agreement but
thereafter failed to abide by its restrictions. “You have split my lands and I
don’t like it,” declared Black Hawk, a Sioux chief at Fort Laramie. “These
lands once belonged to the Kiowas and the Crows, but we whipped these
nations out of them, and in this we did what the white men do when they
want the lands of the Indians.” Yet despite the dissension, the Fort Laramie
Treaty was significant. As the first comprehensive treaty with the Plains

Indian rendering of the Fort Laramie Treaty

This buffalo-hide robe commemorates the 150th anniversary of the signing of
the Fort Laramie Treaty.
 Moving West • 577

Indians, it foreshadowed the “reservation” concept that would come to

define Indian life by the end of the nineteenth century.

T H E D O N N E R PA R T Y The most tragic story of the Overland Trails

involved the party led by George Donner, a prosperous sixty-two-year-old
farmer from Illinois, who led his family and a train of other settlers along
the Oregon Trail in 1846. They made every mistake possible: starting too late
in the year, overloading their wagons, and taking a foolish shortcut to
California across the Wasatch Mountains in the Utah Territory. In the
Wasatch, they were joined by a group of thirteen other pioneers, bringing
the total to eighty-seven. Finding themselves lost on their “shortcut,” they
backtracked before finding their way across the mountains and into the
desert leading to the Great Salt Lake. Crossing the desert exacted a terrible
toll. They lost over a hundred oxen and were forced to abandon several wag-
ons and their precious supplies.
When the Donner party reached Truckee Pass, the last mountain barrier
before reaching the Sacramento River valley in California, a two-week-long
snowfall trapped them in two separate camps. By December, eighty-one set-
tlers, half of them children, were marooned with only enough food to last
through the end of the month. Seventeen of the strongest members decided
to cross the pass on their own, only to be trapped by more snow on the west-
ern slope. Two of them died of exposure and starvation. Just before he died,
Billy Graves urged his daughters to eat his body. The daughters were
appalled by the prospect of cannibalism but a day later saw no other choice.
The group struggled on, and when two more died, they, too, were consumed.
Only seven lived to reach the Sacramento Valley.
Back at the main camps, at Alder Creek and Truckee Lake, the survivors
had slaughtered and eaten the last of the livestock, then proceeded to boil
hides and bones. When the rescue party finally reached them, they discov-
ered a grisly scene. Thirteen people had died, and cannibalism had become
commonplace; one pioneer had noted casually in his diary, “Mrs. Murphy
said here yesterday that she thought she would commence on Milt and eat
him.” As the rescuers led the forty-seven survivors over the pass, George
Donner, so weakened that he was unable to walk, stayed behind to die. His
wife chose to remain with him.

T H E PAT H F I N D E R : J O H N F R É M O N T Despite the hardships and

dangers of the overland crossing, the Far West proved an irresistible attrac-
tion. The most enthusiastic champion of American settlement in Mexican
California and the Far West was an impetuous junior army officer—John
578 • AN EMPIRE IN THE WEST (CH. 14)

Charles Frémont, “the Pathfinder”—

who mainly “found” paths that moun-
tain men showed him. Born in
Savannah, Georgia, and raised in
the South, he had a robust love of
the outdoors and an exuberant, self-
promoting personality. Frémont was
commissioned a second lieutenant in
the U.S. Topographical Corps in
1838. In the early 1840s, his new
father-in-law, Missouri senator Thomas
Hart Benton, arranged the explo-
rations that made Frémont famous.
“The Pathfinder” In 1842, Frémont and two dozen
John Charles Frémont became a soldiers mapped the eastern half of
national hero early in life. the Oregon Trail—and met Christo-
pher “Kit” Carson, one of the most
knowledgeable of the mountain men, who became his frequent associate. In
1843–1844, Frémont, typically clad in a deerskin shirt, blue army trousers,
and moccasins, went on to Oregon, then surprised his superior officers when
he impetuously launched a “military” expedition. Frémont swept down
the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevadas, headed southward through the cen-
tral valley of Mexican California, and returned via the Great Salt Lake in
Utah. His excited reports on both expeditions, published together in 1845,
gained a wide circulation and played a crucial role in prompting the mass
migration of American settlers to Oregon and California.

CALIFORNIA IN TURMOIL American presidents beginning with Andrew

Jackson had tried to purchase from Mexico at least northern California,
down to the San Francisco Bay. Jackson reasoned that as a free state, Califor-
nia would balance the future admission of Texas as a slave state. But Jackson’s
agent had to be recalled after a clumsy effort to bribe Mexican officials.
Rumors flourished that the British and the French were scheming to grab
California, though neither government actually had such intentions. Political
conditions in Mexico left the remote territory in near anarchy much of the
time as governors came and went in rapid succession. Amid the chaos, many
Californios reasoned that they would be better off if they cut ties to Mexico
altogether. Some favored California’s becoming an independent nation, per-
haps under French or British protection. A larger group wanted to join the
United States.
 Annexing Texas • 579

ANNEXING TEXAS

AMERICAN SETTLEMENTS The lust for new western land focused

on the most accessible of all the Mexican borderlands, Texas. By the 1830s,
the sparsely populated Mexican state of Texas was rapidly turning into a
province of the United States, for Mexico initially recruited white American
settlers, known as Anglos or Texians, on the condition that they would
become loyal Mexican citizens. Foremost among the promoters of American
settlement in Texas was Stephen F. Austin, a Missouri resident who won
from Mexico a huge land grant originally given to his father by Spanish
authorities. Austin promised to create a “buffer” on the northern frontier of
Texas between the marauding Comanches and the settlements to the south.
By 1824, more than two thousand hardy souls had settled on his land, and
many others followed, settling across Texas. Most of the newcomers were
southern or western farmers drawn to rich new cotton land selling for only a
few cents an acre. A few were wealthy planters who brought large numbers of
slaves with them to Texas at a time when Mexico was prohibiting the impor-
tation of slaves (1829). By 1830, the coastal region of Texas had about twenty
thousand white settlers and one thousand enslaved blacks brought in to
work the cotton.
The Mexican government, increasingly opposed to slavery, grew alarmed
that the effort to recruit Americans had become too successful. The Anglos
engulfed Mexico’s Texas province, prompting President Andrew Jackson in
1829 to offer to buy Texas from Mexico. The Mexican government spurned
the request, and in the Law of April 6, 1830, it outlawed further American
immigration into Texas or, Tejas, as the Mexicans called it. The new law also
encouraged Mexicans to migrate north into Texas to counterbalance the
rapidly growing American presence. But illegal immigrants from the United
States moved across the long border as easily as illegal Mexican immigrants
would later cross in the opposite direction. And the Texians increasingly
ignored Mexican laws. A Mexican congressman warned in 1830 that the
Americans in Texas were not loyal to Mexico. They instead displayed a “greed
for territory. . . . They have made their homes with us, but their hearts are
with their native land.” By 1835, the some thirty thousand Anglos (and three
thousand black slaves) outnumbered the Tejanos (Spanish-speaking Texans
of Mexican or Spanish descent clustered around San Antonio) ten to one.
The changing political landscape in Mexico exacerbated the growing ten-
sions between Texians and Mexican authorities. General Antonio López de
Santa Anna, ardently opposed to slavery, was elected president of Mexico in
1833. The following year, he dissolved the national congress and became a
580 • AN EMPIRE IN THE WEST (CH. 14)

self-promoting dictator, calling himself the “Napoleon of the West.” Anglo

Texans feared that the new Mexican leader intended to free “our slaves and
to make slaves of us.” In the fall of 1835, wary Texans rebelled against Santa
Anna’s “despotism.” A furious Santa Anna ordered all Americans expelled,
all Texans disarmed, and all rebels arrested. As fighting erupted, volunteers
from southern states rushed to assist the 30,000 Texan Anglos in their revo-
lution against a Mexican nation of 7 million people. The chaotic situation in
October 1835 prompted some of the enslaved African Americans in Stephen
Austin’s colony to rebel against white control. Texians quickly suppressed the
revolt. Some of the insurgents were hanged “or whipped nearly to death.”
One reason the Texan war for independence relied so heavily on white vol-
unteers (called filibusterers) streaming in from the southern states was that
the widespread fear of slave uprisings prevented many Texians from joining
the fight against the Mexican army.

T E X A S I N D E P E N D E N C E At San Antonio, in southern Texas, the Mex-

ican army assaulted a small garrison of Texians, Hispanics, and American
volunteers recently arrived from southern states holed up behind the adobe
walls of an abandoned mission called the Alamo. Nearly two hundred rebels
in the Alamo were led by the twenty-six-year-old colonel William B. Travis, a
hot-tempered young lawyer from Alabama. Among the other American set-
tlers and volunteers who defended the Alamo, the most celebrated was David
Crockett, the Tennessee frontiersman, bear hunter, and sharpshooter who
had fought Indians under Andrew Jackson and served as an anti-Jackson
Whig congressman. He told his fellow defenders in the Alamo that he had
come “to aid you all that I can in your noble cause.”
In February 1836, General Santa Anna arrived with six thousand Mexican
troops and demanded that the vastly outnumbered defenders of the Alamo
surrender. They answered with a cannon shot. The Mexicans then launched
a series of assaults and bombardments against the outnumbered defenders.
For twelve days, the Mexicans were repulsed, suffering heavy losses. Then, on
the chilly morning of March 6, the defenders of the Alamo were awakened
by the sound of Mexican bugles playing the dreaded “Degüello” (No Mercy
to the Defenders). Soon thereafter, wave after wave of Santa Anna’s men
attacked from every side. They were twice forced back, but on the third try
the Mexicans broke through the battered north wall. Most of the Alamo
defenders were killed or wounded.
A half dozen or so Alamo defenders, perhaps including Crockett, survived
and were captured. General Santa Anna ordered his men to kill the American
prisoners; they were hacked to death with swords. A Mexican officer wrote
 Annexing Texas • 581

The Alamo
David Crockett, pictured with his rifle above his head, joined the legendary battle to
defend the Alamo against the Mexican army.

that the captives “died without complaining and without humiliating them-
selves before their torturers.” The only survivors of the Alamo were a
handful of women, children, and slaves. It was a complete victory for the
Mexicans, but a costly one, for the Battle of the Alamo became a heroic leg-
end and provided a rallying cry for Texians. While General Santa Anna pro-
claimed a “glorious victory,” his aide wrote in his own diary, “One more such
‘glorious victory’ and we are finished.”
On March 2, 1836, while the siege of the Alamo continued, delegates from
all fifty-nine Texas towns met at the village of Washington-on-the-Brazos
and signed a declaration of independence. Over the next seventeen days, the
delegates drafted a constitution for the Republic of Texas and established an
interim government. The delegates then hastily adjourned as Santa Anna’s
troops, fresh from their victory at the Alamo, bore down upon them.
The commander in chief of the Texas forces was Sam Houston, a Ten-
nessee frontiersman who had learned war under the tutelage of General
Andrew Jackson. After living among the Cherokee Indians and serving in
Congress as well as governor of Tennessee, Houston had moved to Texas in
582 • AN EMPIRE IN THE WEST (CH. 14)

1832. Three years later he was named

commander in chief of the Texas
armies. After learning of the Anglo
defeat at the Alamo, Houston and his
Texian army surprised a Mexican
army encampment on April 21, 1836.
The Texians charged, yelling “Remem-
ber the Alamo,” and overwhelmed the
panic-stricken Mexicans. Virtually the
entire Mexican army was killed; many
of them were slain while trying to sur-
render by vengeful Texians. General
Santa Anna was captured the next day.
The Mexican dictator then bought his
Sam Houston freedom by signing a treaty recogniz-
Houston was commander in chief of ing the independence of the Republic
the Texas forces. of Texas, with the Rio Grande as its
southern boundary with Mexico. The
Mexican Congress, however, deposed Santa Anna, repudiated the treaty, and
never officially recognized the loss of its northern province, but the war was
at an end.

N E G O T I AT I O N S FOR In 1836, the Lone Star

A N N E X AT I O N
Republic drafted a constitution that legalized slavery and banned free
blacks, elected Sam Houston its first president, voted overwhelmingly for
annexation to the United States, and began systematically suppressing and
displacing the Indians living in Texas. The American president at the time
was Houston’s old friend Andrew Jackson, who personally wanted Texas to
join the Union, but even Old Hickory could be discreet when political deli-
cacy demanded it. The addition of Texas as a new slave state in 1836 threat-
ened a serious sectional quarrel that might endanger the election of Martin
Van Buren, Jackson’s handpicked successor. Worse than that, it raised the
specter of war with Mexico. Jackson delayed official recognition of the
Republic of Texas until his last day in office, early in 1837, and Van Buren
shied away from the issue of annexation during his single term as president.
Texan leaders, rebuffed by Van Buren, began to talk of expanding their
new nation to the Pacific, thus rivaling the United States as a continental
power. Sam Houston, serving again as president of the Republic of Texas,
confronted enormous challenges: there was little money in the Texas trea-
sury, a mounting government debt, and continuing friction with Mexico. He
 Annexing Texas • 583

grew convinced that there were only two choices for the struggling republic:
annexation to the United States or closer economic ties to Great Britain.
France and Britain extended formal recognition to the republic and began to
develop trade relations with Texas merchants. Meanwhile, thousands more
Americans poured into Texas. The population more than tripled between
1836 and 1845, from 40,000 to 150,000. Many white settlers were attracted
by the low land prices and the pro-slavery policies. In fact, the enslaved pop-
ulation of the Republic of Texas grew even faster than the free population.
Soon after John Tyler became president, in 1841, he vigorously promoted
the idea of annexing Texas as well as other western territories. Secret negoti-
ations with Texas began in 1843, and in April, South Carolinian John C.
Calhoun, then secretary of state, completed an annexation treaty that went
to the Senate for ratification. Calhoun had long been the most outspoken
champion of slavery within the Senate, and now, as the nation’s chief diplo-
mat, he sent the British government a letter trumpeting the blessings of
slavery. The letter was made public, and many people were outraged that
Calhoun was so openly supporting annexation as a means of promoting the
expansion of slavery. It was so worded, one observer wrote to Andrew Jack-
son, as to “drive off every northern man from the support” of Texas annexa-
tion. Sectional division, plus fear of a war with Mexico, contributed to the
Senate’s overwhelming rejection of the 1843 Texas annexation treaty. Solid
Whig opposition, led by abolitionists, including former president John
Quincy Adams, was the most important factor behind its defeat.

THE ELECTION OF 1844 Although adding Texas to the Union was

an enormously popular idea among many Americans, prudent leaders in
both political parties had hoped to keep the divisive issue out of the 1844
presidential campaign. Whig Henry Clay and Democrat Martin Van Buren,
the leading candidates for their party’s nomination, had reached the same
conclusion about pro-slavery Texas: when the annexation treaty was submit-
ted to the Senate, both released public letters opposing it for fear the debate
might spark civil war. The slave-owning Clay feared that the furor over pro-
slavery Texas would inflame sectional tensions in the United States and lead
to war with Mexico. He also worried that John Calhoun and other southern
Democrats were using the Texas issue in a deliberate attempt to outflank the
Whig party. At their nominating convention, the Whigs nominated Clay
unanimously. The Whig platform omitted any reference to Texas.
The Democratic Convention was a different story. Van Buren’s southern sup-
porters, including Andrew Jackson, abandoned him because of his principled
opposition to Texas annexation. Jackson wrote his former vice president a brutally
 584 • AN EMPIRE IN THE WEST (CH. 14)

OREGON NH 6
ME
VT 6 9
COUNTRY
WI NY MA 12
IOWA TERR. MI
UNORGANIZED TERR. 5 36
RI 4
TERRITORY PA CT 6
OH 26 NJ 7
IL IN 23
9 12 DE 3
VA MD 8
MO 17
7 KY 12
NC
TN 13 11
Disputed AR SC
area 3 9
MS AL GA
REPUBLIC 6 9 10
OF LA
TEXAS 6
FLORIDA
TERRITORY

THE ELECTION OF 1844 Electoral Vote Popular Vote

James Knox Polk 170 1,337,000
(Democrat)
Henry Clay 105 1,299,000
(Whig)

Why was the annexation of Texas a divisive issue? Why was Polk’s platform appeal-
ing to Americans in the South and the West? How did Polk win the election in New
York, and why was winning that state important?

frank letter, conveying his intense disappointment with Van Buren’s anti-Texas
stance. He told the New Yorker that his chances of being elected were now about
as great as an effort to reverse the flow of the Mississippi River. A future presi-
dent, James Buchanan, the head of the Pennsylvania Democrats, declared that
Van Buren’s stance against annexing pro-slavery Texas would cost him the
party’s nomination. Van Buren, he said, was like a “dead cock in the pit.”
With the Democratic Convention deadlocked, annexationists, including
Andrew Jackson, rallied to nominate James Knox Polk, former Speaker of
the House and former governor of Tennessee (he had been defeated for
reelection in 1841), an ardent expansionist who was determined to make the
United States a transcontinental global power. On the ninth ballot, Polk
became the first “dark horse” candidate to win a major-party nomination.
 Annexing Texas • 585

The party platform embraced the annexation of Oregon and Texas. Missouri
senator Thomas Hart Benton, a Van Buren supporter, lamented what had
taken place at the convention. The single-minded preoccupation with Texas
among the southern delegates foreshadowed national disaster in the form of
secession and civil war. “Under the pretext of getting Texas into the Union,”
he observed, “the scheme is to get the South out of it.” Pro-slavery southern-
ers gloated at Polk’s nomination. “We have triumphed,” declared Francis
Pickens of South Carolina. “Polk is nearer to us than any public man who
was named. He is a large Slave holder & plants cotton.”
The 1844 presidential election proved to be one of the most significant in
American history. The Democratic combination of southern and western
expansionism offered a winning strategy, one so popular it forced the Whig
candidate Henry Clay to alter his position on Texas at the last minute; now
he claimed that he had “no personal objection to the annexation” if it could
be achieved “without dishonor, without war, with the common consent of
the Union, and upon just and fair terms.” He also predicted that slavery was
“destined to become extinct at some distant day” so it was not worth squab-
bling over now. His explanation seemed clear enough, but prudence was no
match for the emotional pull of further western expansion. The net result of
Clay’s stand on Texas was to turn more anti-slavery votes to the new Liberty
party, which increased its count from about 7,000 in 1840 (the year it was
founded) to more than 62,000 in 1844. In the western counties of New York,
the Liberty party drew enough votes from the Clay and the Whigs to give the
state to Polk and the Democrats. Had he carried New York, the overconfi-
dent Clay would have won the national election by 7 electoral votes. Instead,
Polk won a narrow national plurality of 38,000 popular votes (the first pres-
ident since John Quincy Adams to win without a majority) but a clear
majority of the Electoral College, 170 to 105. A devastated Henry Clay had
lost his third and last effort to win the presidency. His rival, Daniel Webster,
blamed the savagely ambitious Clay for the Whig defeat, declaring that he
had behaved as if he were willing to say or do anything to gain the White
House, and “his temper was bad—resentful, violent & unforgiving.”
The humiliated but still haughty Clay could not understand how a states-
man of his stature could have lost to James K. Polk, a “third-rate” politician
lacking natural leadership abilities. Yet Polk had been surprising people his
whole career. Born near Charlotte, North Carolina, he graduated first in his
class at the University of North Carolina, then moved to Tennessee where he
became a successful lawyer and planter, entered politics early, and served
fourteen years in Congress (four as Speaker of the House) and two as gover-
586 • AN EMPIRE IN THE WEST (CH. 14)

nor of Tennessee. “Young Hickory,” as his partisans liked to call him, was a
short, slender man with a shock of grizzled hair and a seemingly permanent
grimace. Humorless, drab, and dogmatic, he had none of Old Hickory’s
charisma, but he was a bold, persistent workaholic in his efforts to continue
Jackson’s opposition to a national bank and other Whig economic policies.
Although at forty-nine Polk was America’s youngest president up to that
time, he worked so hard during his four years in the White House that his
health deteriorated, and he died in 1849, at age fifty-three, just three months
after leaving office. He died knowing that his strenuous presidential efforts
had paid off. Polk was one of the few presidents to accomplish all of his major
objectives—and one of the few to pledge that he would serve only one term.

P O L K ’ S P R O G R A M “Young Hickory” Polk reflected the growing influ-

ence of the slaveholding South on the Democratic party. Abolitionism, Polk
warned, could destroy the Union. Anti-slavery northerners had already
begun to abandon the Democratic party, which they complained was coming
to represent southern slaveholding interests. Polk himself had slaves on his
Tennessee and Mississippi plantations. Like Andrew Jackson and most
Americans of the time, Polk was a racist about both African Americans and
Native Americans, and he sought to avoid any public discussion of slavery.
Polk’s major presidential objectives were reducing tariffs on imports,
reestablishing Van Buren’s independent Treasury (“We need no national
banks!”), resolving the Oregon boundary dispute with Britain, and acquiring
California from Mexico. He accomplished them all. The Walker Tariff of 1846,
in keeping with longstanding Democratic beliefs, slashed tariff rates. In the
same year, Polk persuaded Congress to restore the independent Treasury, which
the Whigs had eliminated. Twice Polk vetoed bills for federally funded con-
struction projects. In each case, his blows to the economic policies promoted by
Henry Clay’s Whigs satisfied the slaveholding South, but at the cost of annoying
northerners who wanted higher tariffs and westerners who longed for internal
improvements in the form of federally financed roads and harbors.

T H E S TAT E O F T E X A S Polk’s top priority was geographic expansion.

He wanted to complete the annexation of Texas while acquiring California
and New Mexico as well, preferably by purchase. The acquisition of slave-
holding Texas was already under way when Polk entered the White House. In
his final months in office, President John Tyler, taking Polk’s election as a
mandate to act, had asked Congress to annex Texas by joint resolution,
which required only a simple majority in each house and avoided the two-
 Annexing Texas • 587

thirds Senate vote needed to ratify a treaty. Congress had read the election
returns too, and after a bitter debate over slavery, the resolution narrowly
passed by votes of 27 to 25 in the Senate and 120 to 98 in the House. The
Whig leader Daniel Webster was aghast. He felt “sick at heart” to see Con-
gress aggravate sectional tensions by endorsing the “greediness for more
slave Territory and for the greater increase of Slavery!”
On March 1, 1845, in his final presidential action, President Tyler signed
the resolution admitting Texas to the Union. Texas, which had remained an
independent republic for ten years, formally joined the United States as the
twenty-eighth state on December 29, 1845. An outraged Mexico denounced
the annexation of Texas as “an act of aggression” and dispatched troops to
the Rio Grande border as enterprising Americans rushed to buy land in the
newest state. Texas then had 100,000 whites living in it and 38,000 blacks,
nearly all of them enslaved. By 1850, the Texas population—both white and
black—had soared by almost 50 percent (the census then did not include
Native Americans).

OREGON Meanwhile, the dispute with Great Britain over the Oregon
territory boundary heated up as expansionists insisted that President Polk

Polk’s Dream (1846)

The devil advises Polk to pursue the 54°40⬘ boundary of the disputed Oregon
territory even if “you deluge your country with seas of blood, produce a servile
insurrection and dislocate every joint of this happy and prosperous union!!!”
588 • AN EMPIRE IN THE WEST (CH. 14)

0 150 300 Miles

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9
MEXICO Great Salt Lake

Why were the Americans and the British involved in a dispute over
Oregon? What were the terms of the Buchanan-Pakenham Treaty?
Why were both the Americans and the British eager to settle the
disagreement over the territory?

abandon previous offers to settle with Britain and fulfill the Democrats’
platform pledge to take all of the Oregon Country (“54°40´ or Fight”). The
expansionists were prepared to risk war with Britain over the Oregon issue.
“All of Oregon or none,” they cried. The British sent a warship to the dis-
puted area. Polk was not to be bullied, however. In his inaugural address, the
president had claimed that the American title to Oregon was “clear and
unquestionable,” and he was willing to go to the brink of war to achieve his
goals. “If we do have war,” Polk said, “it will not be our fault.”
Fortunately for Polk, the British government was unwilling to risk war
over a remote wilderness territory at the cost of profitable trade relations
with the United States. So in 1846, the British submitted a draft treaty that
extended the border between the United States and Canada along the 49th
parallel. On June 15, James Buchanan, now Polk’s secretary of state, signed
it, and three days later the Buchanan-Pakenham Treaty was ratified in the
Senate. The only opposition came from a group of expansionists who
 The Mexican War • 589

wanted more, but most Americans were satisfied. Southerners cared less
about Oregon than about Texas, and northern business interests valued
British trade more than they valued trying to gain all of the Oregon Terri-
tory. Besides, the country by then was at war with Mexico.

T H E M E X I C A N WA R

T H E O U T B R E A K O F WA R While tensions with the British were rising

over the Oregon boundary dispute, Texas was officially—and eagerly—
joining the Union. On March 6, 1845, two days after James Polk took office,
the Mexican government broke off relations with the United States to
protest the U.S. annexation of Texas. When an effort at negotiation failed,
the hard-driving Polk focused his efforts on subverting Mexican authority in
California. He wrote Consul Thomas O. Larkin in Monterey that he would
make no effort to admit California to the Union, but “if the people should
desire to unite their destiny with ours, they would be received as brethren.”
Larkin, who could take a hint, began to line up Americans and Californios who
wanted to join the United States.
Meanwhile, Polk ordered several thousand U.S. troops under General
Zachary Taylor to advance some 150 miles south of the Texas frontier and
take up positions around Corpus Christi, near the Rio Grande in Texas. The
U.S. troops were in territory that was doubly disputed: Mexico recognized
neither the American annexation of Texas nor the Rio Grande boundary.
Polk’s aggressive actions in Texas gained widespread support from rabid
expansionists. The Democratic newspaper editor John L. O’Sullivan exclaimed
that God wanted Americans to take over the lands owned by the “imbecile and
distracted” Mexico because of their racial superiority. “The Anglo-Saxon foot
is already on its borders. Already the irresistible army of Anglo-Saxon emigra-
tion has begun to pour down upon it, armed with the plow and the rifle.”
O’Sullivan spoke for many Americans who believed it their duty (their
“manifest destiny”) to redeem the Mexican people from their “backward” civ-
ilization and their chaotic government.
The last hope for peace died when an American official, sent to Mexico City
to negotiate a settlement, gave up in March 1846. Mexican officials had allowed
their pride to displace their prudence in refusing to acknowledge some of the
legitimate issues between the two nations. Polk then resolved that he could
achieve his expansionist purposes only by force. On May 9, he won cabinet
approval of a war message to Congress. That evening the news arrived that
Mexican troops had attacked U.S. soldiers north of the Rio Grande. Eleven
Americans were killed, five wounded, and the remainder taken prisoner. Polk’s
590 • AN EMPIRE IN THE WEST (CH. 14)

scheme to provoke an attack had worked. As a U.S. Army officer in Texas wrote
in his diary, “We have not one particle of right to be here. It looks as if the gov-
ernment sent a small force on purpose to bring on a war, so as to have a pretext
for taking California and as much of this country [Mexico] as it chooses.”
In his war message to Congress, Polk claimed that war was the only
response to Mexican aggression. Mexico, he reported, “has invaded our terri-
tory, and shed American blood upon the American soil.” Congress quickly
passed the war resolution, and Polk signed the declaration of war on May 13,
1846. Congress then authorized the recruitment of fifty thousand soldiers,
but sixty-seven Whigs voted against the measure, a sign of a rising anti-war
opposition, especially in the North, where people assumed that the south-
erner Polk wanted a war with Mexico in order to acquire more territory for
the expansion of slavery.

O P P O S I T I O N T O T H E WA R In the Mississippi River Valley, where

expansion fever ran high, the war with Mexico was immensely popular. Bonfires
were lit, parades held, stirring poems and songs composed, and patriotic
speeches delivered. So many men rushed to volunteer that tens of thousands had
to be turned back. In Illinois, efforts to form four regiments produced fourteen.
In New England, however, there was much less enthusiasm for “Mr. Polk’s
War.” Congressman John Quincy Adams, who voted against the war resolution,
called it “a most unrighteous war” designed to extend slavery. An obscure new
congressman from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln, upon taking his seat
in 1847, began introducing “spot resolutions,” calling on President Polk to
identify the spot where American blood had been shed on American soil,
implying that U.S. troops may, in fact, have been in Mexico when fired upon.
The Whig leader Daniel Webster was convinced that the outbreak of war with
Mexico was driven by a Democratic party scheme to add more slave states to
the Union. The Massachusetts senator worried that an “expensive and bloody
war” would end up fragmenting the Union. He was “quite alarmed for the
state of the Country.” Many other New Englanders denounced the war as the
work of pro-slavery southerners seeking new territories. The fiery abolitionist
William Lloyd Garrison charged that the unjust war was one “of aggression, of
invasion, of conquest, and rapine—marked by ruffianism, perfidy, and every
other feature of national depravity.”

P R E PA R I N G F O R B AT T L E The United States was ill prepared for the

Mexican War. At the outset of the fighting, the regular army numbered
barely over 7,000, in contrast to the Mexican force of 32,000. Before the war
ended, the U.S. military had grown to 78,718 troops, of whom about 31,000
 The Mexican War • 591

Fall of Mexico City

General Winfield Scott formally enters Mexico City upon its capture on
September 14, 1847.

were regular army troops and marines; the others were state militiamen. The
state militiamen were often frontier toughs who lacked uniforms, standard
equipment, and discipline. Repeatedly, these undisciplined soldiers engaged
in plunder, rape, and murder.
Yet the motley American troops outmatched larger Mexican forces, which
had their own problems with training, discipline, morale, supplies, and
munitions. Many of the Mexican soldiers had been forced into service or
recruited from prisons, and they made less than enthusiastic fighters. Mexican
artillery pieces were generally obsolete, and the gunpowder was so faulty
that American soldiers could often dodge cannonballs that fell short and
bounced ineffectively along the ground.
The Mexican War would last two years, from March 1846 to April 1848,
and would be fought on four fronts: southern Texas, central Mexico, New
Mexico, and California. The United States entered the war without even a
tentative military strategy, and politics complicated matters. What Polk
wanted, a senator wrote, was “a small war, just large enough to require a
treaty of peace, and not large enough to make military reputations, danger-
ous for the presidency.” Winfield Scott, general in chief of the army, was a
politically ambitious Whig. Nevertheless, Polk at first named him to take
592 • AN EMPIRE IN THE WEST (CH. 14)

charge of the southern Texas front. When Scott quarreled with Polk’s secre-
tary of war, however, the exasperated president withdrew the appointment.
There now seemed a better choice for commander. General Zachary Taylor’s
men had scored two victories over Mexican forces north of the Rio Grande, at
Palo Alto (May 8) and Resaca de la Palma (May 9). On May 18, Taylor crossed
the Rio Grande and occupied Matamoros, which a demoralized and bloodied
Mexican army had abandoned. These quick victories brought Taylor instant
popularity, and the president responded willingly to the demand that he be
made overall commander for the conquest of Mexico. Old “Rough-and-
Ready” Taylor impressed Polk as less of a political threat than Scott.

T H E A N N E X AT I O N O F C A L I F O R N I A Along the Pacific coast, the

conquest of Mexican territory was under way before news of the Mexican War
erupting had arrived. Near the end of 1845, John C. Frémont, overflowing
with self-importance, recruited a band of sixty frontiersmen and headed into
California’s Sacramento Valley, where they encouraged Americans in the area
to mimic their Texas counterparts and declare their independence from
Mexico. They captured Sonoma on June 14, proclaimed the Republic of Cali-
fornia, and hoisted a hastily designed flag featuring a grizzly bear and star, a
version of which would later become the state flag. But the Bear Flag Republic
lasted only a month. In July, the commodore of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, having

The Battle of the Plains of Mesa

This sketch was made at the battle, which took place just before U.S. forces entered
Los Angeles.
 The Mexican War • 593

heard of the outbreak of hostilities with Mexico, sent troops ashore to raise the
American flag and proclaim California part of the United States. Most Califor-
nians of whatever origin welcomed a change that promised order in prefer-
ence to the confusion of the infant Bear Flag Republic.
Before the end of July, a new navy commodore, Robert F. Stockton, led the
American occupation of Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, on the California
coast. By mid-August, Mexican resistance had evaporated. On August 17,
Stockton declared himself governor, with John C. Frémont as military governor
in the north. At the same time, another American military expedition headed
for New Mexico. On August 18, General Stephen Kearny and 1,600 U.S. soldiers
entered Santa Fe. After naming a civilian governor, Kearny divided his force,
leading 300 men west toward California.
In southern California, Kearny’s troops met up with Stockton’s forces at
San Diego and joined them in the conquest of southern California. They
entered Los Angeles on January 10, 1847. Mexican forces capitulated three
days later. As for Lieutenant Colonel Frémont, Kearny had him arrested
when he refused to transfer his title of military governor. Frémont was even-
tually convicted of mutiny. President Polk, however, commuted his sentence
of a dishonorable discharge, but Frémont elected to resign anyway.

TAY L O R ’ S B AT T L E S Both California and New Mexico had been taken

from Mexican control before General Zachary Taylor fought his first major
battle in northern Mexico. Having waited for more men and munitions, he
assaulted the fortified city of Monterrey in September 1846, which surren-
dered after a five-day siege. The old dictator General Antonio López de Santa
Anna, forced out of power in 1845, got word to Polk from his exile in Cuba
that in return for the right considerations he would bring about a settlement
of the Mexican War. Polk in turn assured the exiled Mexican leader that the
U.S. government would pay well for any territory taken from Mexico. In
August 1846, on Polk’s orders, Santa Anna was permitted to pass through the
American blockade into Veracruz. Soon he was again in command of the
Mexican army and was named president once more. Polk’s scheme had unin-
tentionally put the feisty Mexican general back in command, where he busily
organized his forces to strike at Taylor. As it turned out, General Santa Anna
was much more remarkable at raising armies than leading them in battle.
By then, another American front had been opened, and Taylor was
ordered to wait in place, outside Matamoros. In October 1846, Polk and his
cabinet ordered U.S. troops to assault Mexico City by way of Veracruz, a port
city on the Gulf of Mexico southeast of Mexico City. Polk named General
Winfield Scott to the field command. Taylor, miffed at his reduction to a
 594 • AN EMPIRE IN THE WEST (CH. 14)

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Why did John C. Frémont initially settle in the Salinas Valley before marching
north, only to march south to San Francisco? How did Polk’s fear of Zachary
Taylor’s popularity undermine the Americans’ military strategy?

minor role, disobeyed orders and moved west to attack Mexican forces near
the hacienda of Buena Vista. Santa Anna met Taylor’s untested volunteers
with a large but ill-trained and tired army. The Mexican general invited the
outnumbered Americans to surrender. “Tell him to go to hell,” Taylor
replied. In the hard-fought Battle of Buena Vista (February 22–23, 1847),
Taylor’s son-in-law, Colonel Jefferson Davis, the future president of the
Confederacy, led a regiment that broke up a Mexican cavalry charge. Neither
 The Mexican War • 595

side could claim victory. It was the last major action on the central Mexican
front, and Taylor was granted leave to return home. The general’s growing
popularity forced Polk to promote him, despite the president’s concerns
about his political aspirations. In a self-serving moment, Polk recorded in
his diary that Taylor was a “hard fighter” but had “none of the other qualities
of a great general.” For his part, Taylor came to view Polk with contempt.

SCOT T ’S TRIUMPH Meanwhile, the long-planned assault on Mexico

City had begun on March 9, 1847, when Winfield Scott’s army landed on the
beaches south of Veracruz. It was the first major amphibious operation by
U.S. military forces and was carried out without loss. Veracruz surrendered
on March 27 after a weeklong siege. Scott then set out on the route taken by
Cortés and his Spanish troops more than three hundred years earlier. After a
series of battles in which they overwhelmed Mexican defenses, U.S. forces
entered Mexico City on September 13, 1847. At the national palace a battalion
of marines raised the American flag and occupied “the halls of Montezuma.”
News of the victory led some expansionists to new heights of land lust. The
editor John O’Sullivan, who had coined the term manifest destiny, shouted,
“More, More, More! Why not take all of Mexico?”

T H E T R E AT Y O F G UA D A L U P E H I D A L G O After the fall of the capi-

tal, Santa Anna resigned and a month later left the country. Meanwhile, talks
leading to a peace treaty began on January 2, 1848, at the village of Guadalupe
Hidalgo, just outside the capital, and dragged on through the month. By the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed on February 2, 1848, Mexico gave up all
claims to Texas above the Rio Grande and ceded California and New Mexico
to the United States. In return for the transfer of half a million square miles of
territory, more than half of all of Mexico, the United States agreed to pay
$15 million and assume the claims of U.S. citizens against Mexico up to
$3.25 million. Like the Louisiana Purchase, what came to be called the Mexi-
can Cession was a remarkable bargain.
Polk submitted the treaty to the Senate. A growing movement to annex all
of Mexico briefly excited the president, but as Polk confided in his diary,
rejecting the treaty would be too risky. If he should spurn a treaty made in
accord with his own original terms in order to gain more territory, “the
probability is that Congress would not grant either men or money to prose-
cute the war.” In that case he might eventually have to withdraw the army
and lose everything. So the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo went to the Senate,
which ratified it on March 10, 1848. By the end of July, the last remaining
U.S. soldiers had left Mexico.
596 • AN EMPIRE IN THE WEST (CH. 14)

T H E WA R ’ S L E G A C I E S The Mexican War cost the United States 1,733

killed in battle, 4,152 wounded, and, as usual, far more—11,550—dead of
disease, mostly dysentery and chronic diarrhea (“Montezuma’s revenge”). It
remains the deadliest war in American history in terms of the percentage of
combatants killed. Out of every 1,000 soldiers in Mexico, some 110 died. The
next highest death rate would be in the Civil War, with 65 dead out of every
1,000 participants.
The Mexican War was a crushing defeat for Mexico and a defining event for the
United States. As a result of the conflict, the United States expanded its national
domain by over a third. It acquired more than 500,000 square miles of territory
(almost 1 million, counting Texas), including the future states of California,
Nevada, and Utah and parts of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Wyoming.
Except for a small addition made by the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, these
annexations rounded out the continental United States and doubled its size.
The area taken from Mexico was larger than the Louisiana Purchase.
Several important firsts are associated with the Mexican War: the first suc-
cessful imperial American war, the first occupation of an enemy capital, the
first in which West Point graduates played a major role, and the first reported
by war correspondents. It was also the first significant combat experience for
a group of junior officers who would later serve as leading generals during
the Civil War: Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson,
George B. McClellan, George Meade, and others.
Initially the victory in Mexico unleashed a surge of national pride in the
United States, but as the years passed, the Mexican War also proved to be a
catalyst in deepening sectional tensions over slavery. It was increasingly seen
as a shameful war of conquest and imperialistic plunder directed by a presi-
dent bent on territorial expansion for the sake of slavery. Ulysses S. Grant
later called it “one of the most unjust wars ever waged by a stronger against a
weaker nation.” America’s terrible Civil War fifteen years later, he added, was
“our punishment” for the unholy Mexican War. For a brief season the glory
of conquest added political luster to the names of Generals Zachary Taylor
and Winfield Scott, who both had presidential aspirations. Polk’s presidency
proved to be as tragic as it was triumphant. Despite his best efforts, he had
manufactured the next, and last, two Whig candidates for president. One of
them, Taylor, would replace him in the White House, with the storm of sec-
tional conflict already on the horizon.
The acquisition of Oregon, Texas, California, and the New Southwest
made the United States a transcontinental nation. Extending authority over
this vast new land greatly expanded the scope of the federal government.
 The Mexican War • 597

In 1849, for example, Congress created the Department of the Interior to

supervise the distribution of land, the creation of new territories and states,
and the “protection” of the Indians and their land. President Polk naively
assumed that the dramatic expansion of American territory to the Pacific
would strengthen “the bonds of Union.” He was wrong. No sooner was Texas
annexed and gold discovered in California than a violent debate erupted
over the extension of slavery into the new territories. That debate would cul-
minate in a war that would nearly destroy the Union.
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Nationalism Nationalism and westward expansion were the dominant issues in

the 1840s, although President John Tyler, a former Democrat turned Whig,
vetoed traditional Whig policies, such as a new national bank and higher tariffs.
Boundaries with Canada were finally settled. The desire for westward expansion
culminated in the Mexican War.
• Westward Migration Many Americans believed that the West was divinely
ordained to be part of the United States. Although populated by Indians and
Latinos, the West was portrayed as an empty land. The lure of cheap, fertile land
led to Oregon fever, and settlers moved along the Overland Trails, enduring
great physical hardships.
• Texas Republic Many southerners had moved to the Mexican province of Texas
to grow cotton, taking their slaves with them. The Mexican government opposed
slavery and in 1830 forbade further immigration. American settlers declared
Texas independent in 1836, and the slaughter at the Alamo made the indepen-
dence of Texas a popular cause in the United States. As soon as Mexico recog-
nized the Texas Republic, many Texans clamored for annexation. The notion
was unpopular among the growing anti-slavery faction, however, because it
meant adding another slave state to the Union; thus, Texas remained
independent for nearly a decade.
• Mexican War Annexation of Texas, declared by a joint resolution of Congress
in 1845, infuriated Mexico. The newly elected president, James K. Polk, sought
to acquire California and New Mexico as well as Texas, but negotiations soon
failed. When Mexican troops crossed the Rio Grande, Polk urged Congress to
declare war.
• Results of the Mexican War In 1848, in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,
Mexico ceded California and New Mexico to the United States and gave up
claims to land north of the Rio Grande. The vast acquisition did not strengthen
the Union, however, because a fierce debate immediately erupted about allowing
slavery in the new territories.
 CHRONOLOGY

1821
1836
1841
Mexico gains independence from Spain
Americans are defeated at the Alamo
John Tyler becomes president
1842 Americans and British agree to the Webster-Ashburton
Treaty
1845 United States annexes Texas
Mexican War begins
1846 Most members of the Donner party die en route to
California
1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends the Mexican War
1849 California gold rush begins
1851 Plains Indians agree to the Fort Laramie Treaty

KEY TERMS & NAMES

Webster-Ashburton Treaty John C. Frémont, “the Sam Houston p. 581
p. 562 Pathfinder” p. 578
Lone Star Republic p. 582
manifest destiny p. 563 Stephen F. Austin p. 579
James Knox Polk, “Young
mountain men p. 567 Tejanos p. 579 Hickory” p. 584

Oregon fever p. 568 General Antonio López de Winfield Scott p. 591

Santa Anna p. 579
Franciscan missions p. 569 Bear Flag Republic p. 592
Battle of the Alamo p. 581
Overland Trails p. 572 Zachary Taylor p. 593

15
THE GATHERING STORM

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• Who were the members of the free-soil coalition, and what

arguments did they use to demand that slavery not spread to the
territories?
• Why did the issue of statehood for California precipitate a crisis
for the Union?
• What were the major elements of the Compromise of 1850?
• How did the Kansas-Nebraska Act initiate the collapse of the
second party system?
• Why did the southern states secede?

J ohn C. Calhoun of South Carolina and Ralph Waldo Emerson

of Massachusetts had little in common, but both men saw in
the Mexican War the omens of a national disaster. Mexico,
Calhoun warned, was “the forbidden fruit; the penalty of eating it would be
to subject our institutions to political death.” Calhoun knew that the
addition of new territory acquired from Mexico would ignite a political
firestorm over the expansion of slavery. Emerson agreed. “The United States
will conquer Mexico,” Emerson conceded, “but it will be as the man swallows
the arsenic. . . . Mexico will poison us.” Wars, as both men knew, have a way
of corrupting ideals and breeding new wars, often in unforeseen ways.
America’s victory in the war with Mexico spawned heated quarrels over
newly acquired lands, quarrels that set in motion a series of fractious dis-
putes that would fracture the Union.
 Slavery in the Territories • 601

S L AV E R Y IN THE TERRITORIES

The dispute over the motives behind the Mexican War carried over
into American political life during the 1850s. During the mid–nineteenth
century, the United States remained a largely rural nation. Its 23 million
people were increasingly diverse in ethnic background and religious beliefs,
but they shared a passion for politics and political issues. Participation in
civic life was high. Nearly three fourths of the electorate participated in the
two presidential elections during the 1850s. People flocked to hear political
speeches and avidly read the partisan daily newspapers. A European tourist
reported that in America “you meet newspaper readers everywhere.”
At mid-century, newspapers spread the word that political storm clouds
over the fate of slavery were forming. In 1833, Andrew Jackson had predicted
that southerners “intend to blow up a storm on the slave question.” He
added that the pro-slavery firebrands “would do any act to destroy this
union and form a southern confederacy bounded, north, by the Potomac
River.” In 1848, the storm over the expansion of slavery swept across the
nation.

THE W I L M O T P R O V I S O The Mexican War was less than three

months old when the seeds of a new political conflict began to sprout. On
August 8, 1846, a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania, David
Wilmot, delivered a provocative speech to the House in which he endorsed
the annexation of Texas as a slave state. But slavery had come to an end in the
rest of Mexico, he noted, and if new Mexican territory should be acquired by
the United States, Wilmot declared, “God forbid that we should be the
means of planting this institution [slavery] upon it.” If any additional land
should be acquired from Mexico, Wilmot proposed, then “neither slavery
nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist” there.
The proposed Wilmot Proviso ignited the festering debate over the exten-
sion of slavery. For a generation, since the Missouri controversy of 1819–1821,
the issue had been lurking in the wings. The Missouri Compromise had
provided a temporary solution by protecting slavery in states where it already
existed but not allowing it in any newly acquired territories. Now, with the
addition of new territories taken from Mexico, the stage was set for an even
more volatile national debate. In 1846, the House of Representatives
adopted the Wilmot Proviso, but the Senate balked. When Congress recon-
vened in December 1846, President James K. Polk, who believed a debate
over slavery had no place in the conduct of the war in Mexico, dismissed
the proviso as “mischievous and foolish.” He convinced David Wilmot to
602 • T HE G ATHERING S TORM (CH. 15)

withhold his amendment from any bill dealing with the annexation of
Mexican territory. By then, however, others were ready to take up the cause.
In one form or another, Wilmot’s idea kept cropping up in Congress for
years thereafter. Abraham Lincoln later recalled that during his one term as a
congressman, in 1847–1849, he voted for it “as good as forty times.”
Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, meanwhile, devised a thesis
to counter Wilmot’s proviso, which he set before the Senate on February 19,
1847. Calhoun began by reasserting his pride in being a slaveholding cotton
planter. He made no apologies for holding slaves and insisted that slavehold-
ers had an unassailable right to take their slaves into any territories. Wilmot’s
effort to exclude slaves from territories acquired from Mexico, Calhoun
declared, would violate the Fifth Amendment, which forbids Congress to
deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law,
and slaves were property. By this clever stroke of logic, Calhoun took that
basic guarantee of liberty, the Bill of Rights, and turned it into a basic guar-
antee of slavery. The irony was not lost on his critics, but the point became
established southern dogma—echoed by his colleagues and formally
endorsed by the Virginia legislature.
The burly senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, himself a slaveholder
but also a nationalist eager to calm sectional tensions, found in Calhoun’s
stance a set of abstractions “leading to no result.” Wilmot and Calhoun between
them, he said, had fashioned a pair of shears. Neither blade alone would cut
very well, but joined together they could sever the nation in two. One factor
increasing the political tensions over slavery was the sharp rise in the price paid
for slaves during the 1850s. The expansion of slavery into the new southwestern
states created a spike in demand that meant that only the wealthy could afford
to purchase slaves. Owning slaves and controlling the fruits of their labors
became the foremost determinants of wealth in the South during the 1850s.
And with wealth came political power. Large slaveholders and their supporters
grew increasingly fierce in their insistence that owners be allowed to take their
slaves into the new territories. To them, there was too much at stake to be
denied access to new lands. Slavery thus played the crucial role in the series of
events dividing the nation and prompting secession and civil war.

P O P U L A R S OV E R E I G N T Y Senator Benton and others sought to bypass

the brewing conflict over slavery in the new territories. President Polk was
among the first to suggest extending the Missouri Compromise, dividing
free and slave territory at the latitude of 36°30′, all the way to the Pacific
Ocean. Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan suggested that the citizens of a terri-
tory “regulate their own internal concerns in their own way,” like the citizens
 Slavery in the Territories • 603

of a state. Such an approach would take the contentious issue of allowing

slavery in new territories out of the national arena and put it in the hands of
those directly affected.
Popular sovereignty, or “squatter sovereignty,” as the idea was also called,
appealed to many Americans. Without directly challenging the slaveholders’
access to the new lands, it promised to open the lands quickly to non-
slaveholding farmers, who would almost surely dominate the territories.
With this tacit understanding, the idea prospered in the Midwest, where
Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and other prominent Democrats
soon endorsed it.
In 1848, when the Mexican War ended, the issue of introducing slavery
into the new territories was no longer hypothetical. Nobody doubted that
Oregon would become a free-soil (non-slave) territory, but it, too, was
drawn into the growing controversy. Territorial status for Oregon, pending
since 1846, was delayed because its provisional government had excluded
slavery. To concede that provision would imply an authority drawn from the
powers of Congress, since Congress created territories. After much wran-
gling, an exhausted Congress let Oregon organize without slavery but post-
poned a decision on the Southwest territories. President Polk signed the bill
on the principle that Oregon was north of 36°30′, the latitude that had
formed the basis of the Missouri Compromise in 1820.
President Polk had promised to serve only one term; exhausted and having
accomplished his major goals, he refused to run again. At the 1848 Democratic
Convention, Michigan senator Lewis Cass won the presidential nomination,
but the party refused to endorse Cass’s “squatter sovereignty” plan. Instead, it
simply denied the power of Congress to interfere with slavery in the states and
criticized all efforts by anti-slavery activists to bring the question before Con-
gress. The Whigs devised an even more artful shift. Once again, as in 1840, they
passed over their party leader, Henry Clay, this time, for a popular warrior,
General Zachary Taylor, whose fame had grown since the Battle of Buena Vista.
Taylor, born in Virginia and raised in Kentucky, was a Louisiana resident who
owned more than a hundred slaves. He was an apolitical figure who had never
voted in a national election, but he was also unusual among slaveholders in that
he vigorously opposed the extension of slavery into new western territories and
denounced the idea of secession. Stunned that his party had deserted him in
favor of a “wholly incompetent” general with no political experience, Henry
Clay concluded that the Whigs were on the verge of dissolution.

T H E F R E E - S O I L C OA L I T I O N
As it had done in the 1840 election,
the Whig party adopted no platform in an effort to avoid the divisive issue of
604 • T HE G ATHERING S TORM (CH. 15)

slavery. But the anti-slavery impulse was not easily squelched. Congressman
David Wilmot had raised a standard for resisting the expansion of slavery, to
which a broad coalition could rally. Those Americans who had qualms about
slavery but shied away from calling for abolition where it already existed
could readily endorse the exclusion of slavery from the western territories.
The Northwest Ordinance and the Missouri Compromise supplied honored
precedents for doing so. Free soil in the new territories, therefore, rather
than abolition in the slave states, became the rallying point for those
opposed to slavery—and also the name of a new political party.
Three major groups combined to form the free-soil coalition: rebellious
northern Democrats, anti-slavery Whigs, and members of the Liberty party,
which had been formed in 1840. Disaffection among the Democrats cen-
tered in New York, where the Van Burenite “Barnburners” seized upon the
free-soil issue as a moral imperative. The Whigs who promoted Free-soil
principles were centered in Massachusetts, where a group of “Conscience”
Whigs battled the “Cotton” Whigs, a coalition of northern businessmen and
southern planters. Conscience Whigs rejected the slaveholding nominee of
their party, Zachary Taylor.
In 1848, these groups—Van Burenite Democrats, Conscience Whigs, and
followers of the Liberty party—combined to create the Free-Soil party at a
convention at Buffalo, New York, and nominated Martin Van Buren for pres-
ident. The party’s platform endorsed the Wilmot Proviso’s declaration that
slavery would not be allowed in the new territories acquired from Mexico.
The Free-Soil party entered the campaign with the catchy slogan of “free
soil, free speech, free labor, and free men.” The new party infuriated John C.
Calhoun and other southern Democrats committed to the expansion of
slavery. Calhoun called Van Buren a “bold, unscrupulous and vindictive
demagogue.” Other Democrats, both northern and southern, denounced
Van Buren as a traitor and a hypocrite, while the New Yorker’s supporters
praised his service as a “champion of freedom.”
The impact of the new Free-Soil party on the election was mixed. The Free-
Soilers split the Democratic vote enough to throw New York to the Whig
Zachary Taylor, and they split the Whig vote enough to give Ohio to the Demo-
crat Lewis Cass, but Van Buren’s 291,000 votes lagged well behind the totals of
1,361,000 for Taylor and 1,222,000 for Cass. Taylor won with 163 to 127 electoral
votes, and both major parties retained a national following. Taylor took eight
slave states and seven free; Cass, just the opposite: seven slave and eight free.

T H E C A L I F O R N I A G O L D RU S H Meanwhile, a new dimension had

been introduced into the vexing question of the western territories: on Janu-
 Slavery in the Territories • 605

Martin Van Buren

Martin Van Buren was nominated as the presidential candidate for the Free-Soil
party, at the party’s convention in Buffalo, New York. In this cartoon, he is shown
riding a buffalo past the Democratic and Whig party candidates.

ary 24, 1848, on the property of John A. Sutter along the south fork of the
American River, gold was discovered in the Mexican province of California,
which nine days later would be ceded to the United States as a result of the
treaty ending the Mexican War. As word of the gold strike spread, mass hys-
teria set in. Gold is one of the few precious metals that can be “mined” with
little expense, so nearly anyone could become a miner. In 1849, nearly one
hundred thousand Americans from every state, mostly men, set off for Cali-
fornia, determined to find riches; by 1854 the number would top three hun-
dred thousand. The California gold rush constituted the greatest mass
migration in American history—and one of the most significant events in
the first half of the nineteenth century. The infusion of California gold into
the U.S. economy triggered a surge of prosperity that eventually helped
finance the Union military effort in the Civil War. The gold rush trans-
formed the sleepy coastal village of San Francisco into the nation’s largest
city west of Chicago. New business enterprises emerged to serve the bur-
geoning population of miners, including one dedicated to the production of
sturdy denim trousers made of sailcloth, their pockets reinforced by copper
606 • T HE G ATHERING S TORM (CH. 15)

rivets. The blue jeans, known to this day as Levi’s, were developed by the
German-Jewish immigrant Levi Strauss.
The gold rush also shifted the nation’s center of gravity westward, spurred
the construction of railroads and telegraph lines, and excited dreams of an
eventual American empire based in the Pacific and focused on trade with
Asia. The massive migration to California had profound effects nationwide.
So many men left New England, for instance, that it would be years before
the region’s gender ratio evened out again. The “forty-niners” included peo-
ple from every social class and every state and territory, as well as slaves
brought by their owners. Most forty-niners went overland; the rest sailed
around South America or to Panama, where steamship passengers would
have to disembark and make their way across the isthmus to the Pacific
coast, where they would board another steamship for the trip to San Fran-
cisco. Getting to California by sea could take as long as six months. The
influx of gold seekers quickly reduced the fourteen thousand Hispanic
inhabitants of California to a minority, and sporadic conflicts with the Indians
of the Sierra Nevada foothills decimated California’s Native Americans.

California News (1850) by William Sidney Mount

During the California gold rush, San Francisco quickly became a cosmopolitan
city as the population increased almost fiftyfold in a few months.
 Slavery in the Territories • 607

Gold miners, ca. 1850

Miners panning for gold at their claim.

Unlike the land-hungry pioneers who traversed the overland trails, the
miners were mostly unmarried young men with varied ethnic and cultural
backgrounds. Few were interested in establishing a permanent settlement.
They wanted to strike it rich and return home. The mining camps in Califor-
nia’s valleys and canyons and along its creek beds thus sprang up like mush-
rooms and disappeared almost as rapidly. As soon as rumors of a new strike
made the rounds, miners converged on the area, joined soon thereafter by a
hodgepodge of merchants and camp followers. When no more gold could be
found, they picked up and moved on.
The mining camps and shantytowns may have had colorful names—
Whiskey Flat, Lousy Ravine, Petticoat Slide, Piety Hill—but the male-
dominated communities were in fact dismal, dirty, disorderly, and often
lawless places. Vigilante justice prevailed in camps speckled with saloons and
gambling halls. One newcomer reported that “in the short space of twenty-
four days, we have had murders, fearful accidents, bloody deaths, a mob,
whippings, a hanging, an attempt at suicide, and a fatal duel.” Within six
months of arriving in California in 1849, one gold seeker in every five was
dead. The goldfields and mining towns were so dangerous that life insurance
companies refused to provide coverage. The town of Marysville had seven-
teen murders in one week. Suicides were common, and disease was rampant.
Cholera and scurvy plagued every camp.
608 • T HE G ATHERING S TORM (CH. 15)

Women were as rare in the mining camps as liquor and guns were abun-
dant. In 1850, less than 8 percent of California’s population was female, and
even fewer women dared to live in the camps. Those who did could demand a
premium for their work, as cooks, laundresses, entertainers, and prostitutes.
In the polyglot mining camps, white Americans often looked with disdain
upon the Hispanics and Chinese, who were most often employed as wage
laborers to help in the panning process, separating gold from sand and gravel.
But the whites focused their contempt on the Indians in particular. In the
mining culture, it was not a crime to kill Indians or work them to death. Amer-
ican miners tried several times to outlaw foreigners in the mining country but
had to settle for a tax on foreign miners, which was applied to Mexicans in
express violation of the treaty ending the Mexican War.

C A L I F O R N I A S TAT E H O O D In 1849 the new president, Zachary Tay-

lor, decided to use California’s request for statehood as a lever to end the
stalemate in Congress brought about by the slavery issue. Taylor had been a
soldier most of his life. Constantly on the move, he had finally acquired a
home in Louisiana and a plantation in Mississippi. Southern Whigs had ral-
lied to his support, expecting him to uphold the cause of slavery. Instead, he
turned out to be a southern man who championed Union principles. Inex-
perienced in politics, Taylor had a soldier’s practical mind. Slavery should be
upheld where it existed, he believed, but he had little patience with abstract
theories about slavery in territories where it probably could not exist. Why
not make California and New Mexico free states immediately, he reasoned,
and bypass the vexing issue of slavery?
But the Californians, in desperate need of organized government, were
ahead of him. By December 1849, without consulting Congress, Americans in
Hispanic California had put a free-state (no-slavery) government into opera-
tion. New Mexico responded more slowly, but by 1850, Americans there had
adopted a free-state constitution. The Mormons around Salt Lake, in Utah,
meanwhile, drafted a basic law for the state of Deseret, which embraced most
of the Mexican cession, including a slice of the coast from Los Angeles to San
Diego. In his annual message on December 4, 1849, President Taylor
endorsed immediate statehood for California and urged Congress to avoid
injecting slavery into the issue. The new Congress, however, was in no mood
for simple solutions. By 1850, tensions over the morality and the future of
slavery were boiling over. At the same time that tempers were flaring over the
issue of allowing slavery into the new western territories, anti-slavery mem-
bers of the House of Representatives were proposing legislation to ban slavery
in the District of Columbia. Further complicating the political debate was the
 The Compromise of 1850 • 609

claim by Texas, a slave state, to half of the New Mexico Territory. These were
only a few of the complex dilemmas confronting the nation’s statesmen as
they assembled in Washington, D.C., for the 1850 legislative session.

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850

At the end of 1849, southerners fumed over President Taylor’s efforts

to bring California and New Mexico into the union as free states. After all,
some of them reasoned, mostly southerners had fought in the Mexican War,
and therefore their concerns about the expansion of slavery should be given
more weight. Other southerners demanded a federal fugitive slave law that
would require northern authorities to arrest and return runaways. Irate
southerners threatened to leave the Union. “I avow before this House and
country, and in the presence of the living God,” shouted Robert Toombs, a
Georgia congressman, “that if by your legislation you seek to drive us [slave-
holders] from the territories of California and New Mexico . . . and to abol-
ish slavery in this District [of Columbia] . . . I am for disunion.”
As the new legislative session opened, the spotlight fell on the Senate,
where a stellar cast—the triumvirate of Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and
Daniel Webster, with William H. Seward, Stephen A. Douglas, and Jefferson
Davis in supporting roles—enacted one of the great dramas of American pol-
itics: the Compromise of 1850. With southerners threatening secession,
leaders again turned to seventy-two-year-old Henry Clay, who, as Abraham
Lincoln later said, was “regarded by all, as the man for the crisis.” Clay had
earlier fashioned the Missouri Compromise, and those seeking peace
between the regions looked to him again. After arriving in Washington, D.C.,
for the new legislative session, Senator Clay, suffering from tuberculosis
that would take his life two years later, observed that the “feeling for dis-
union among some intemperate Southern politicians is stronger than
I supposed it could be.” The nation, he worried, was teetering “at the edge
of the precipice.” Unless some compromise could be found, he warned, a
war “so furious, so bloody, so implacable and so exterminating” would
fracture the Union. Clay was so devoted to the preservation of the Union
that he was willing to alienate southern supporters by once again assuming
the role of Great Compromiser.

T H E G R E AT D E B AT E On January 29, 1850, having gained the support

of Daniel Webster, Clay presented to Congress a package of eight resolutions
meant to settle the “controversy between the free and slave states, growing
610 • T HE G ATHERING S TORM (CH. 15)

out of the subject of slavery.” His proposals represented what he called a

“great national scheme of compromise and harmony.” He proposed (1) to
admit California as a free state; (2) to organize the territories of New Mexico
and Utah without restrictions on slavery, allowing the residents to decide the
issue for themselves; (3) to deny Texas its extreme claim to much of New
Mexico; (4) to compensate Texas by having the federal government pay the
pre-annexation Texas debts; (5) to retain slavery in the District of Columbia;
but (6) to abolish the slave trade in the nation’s capital; (7) to adopt a more
effective federal fugitive slave law; and (8) to deny congressional authority to
interfere with the interstate slave trade. His complex cluster of proposals
became in substance the Compromise of 1850, but only after the most cele-
brated debate in Congressional history.
On February 5–6, Clay summoned all his eloquence in promoting his
proposed settlement to the Senate. In the interest of “peace, concord and
harmony,” he called for an end to “passion, passion—party, party—and

Clay’s compromise
Warning against an impending sectional conflict, Henry Clay outlines his plan for
“compromise and harmony” on the Senate floor.
 The Compromise of 1850 • 611

intemperance.” Otherwise, he warned, continued sectional bickering would

lead to a “furious, bloody” civil war. No sooner had Clay finished than a
crowd rushed forward to shake his hand and kiss his cheek.
On March 4, John C. Calhoun, the uncompromising defender of slavery,
left his sickbed to sit in the Senate chamber, a gaunt, pallid figure draped in a
black cloak, as a colleague read his defiant speech in which he blamed the
North for inciting civil war. “I have, Senators, believed from the first that the
agitation of the subject of slavery would, if not prevented by some timely
and effective measure, end in disunion,” said James M. Mason on Calhoun’s
behalf. Neither Clay’s compromise nor Taylor’s efforts would serve the
Union, he added. The South simply needed the Congress to accept its rights:
equality of treatment in the territories, the return of fugitive slaves, and
some guarantee of “an equilibrium between the sections.” Otherwise, Cal-
houn warned, the “cords which bind” the Union would be severed. The
South would leave the Union and form its own government.
Three days later, Calhoun, who would die in three weeks, returned to the
Senate to hear Daniel Webster speak. He chose as the central theme of his
much-anticipated three-hour speech the preservation of the Union: “I wish
to speak today, not as a Massachusetts man, not as a Northern man, but as an
American. . . . I speak today for the preservation of the Union.” The geo-
graphic extent of slavery had already been determined, Webster insisted, by
the Northwest Ordinance, by the Missouri Compromise, and in the new ter-
ritories by the law of nature. He criticized extremists on both sides: both
northerners and southerners, to be sure, had legitimate grievances. On the
one hand the excesses of “infernal fanatics and abolitionists” in the North,
and on the other hand southern efforts to expand slavery. But, he cautioned,
“Secession! Peaceable secession! Sir, your eyes and mine are never destined
to see that miracle.” Instead of looking into such “caverns of darkness,” let
“men enjoy the fresh air of liberty and union. Let them look to a more hope-
ful future.”
Webster’s conciliatory March 7 speech brought down a storm upon his
head. New England anti-slavery leaders lambasted him for betraying the
ideals of his region. On March 11, William Seward, the Whig senator from
New York, gave the anti-slavery reply to Webster. He declared that any com-
promise with slavery was “radically wrong and essentially vicious.” There
was, he said, “a higher law than the Constitution,” and it demanded the abo-
lition of slavery. He refused to endorse any legislation that extended slavery
into any of the new western territories. Abolitionists loved Seward’s address,
but southerners as well as northern conservatives despised it. “Senator
Seward is against all compromise,” the New York Herald reported. His “views
612 • T HE G ATHERING S TORM (CH. 15)

are those of the extreme fanatics of the North, looking forward to the utter
destruction of the institutions of the South.”
President Taylor continued to oppose Clay’s compromise, and their feud
threatened to split the Whig party wide open. As the weeks and months
passed, Clay worked tirelessly to convince opponents that compromise by all
parties was essential to preserving the Union. Yet as the stalemate continued
and the atmosphere in Congress became more fevered and violent, he grew
frustrated and peevish. “Mr. Clay with all his talents,” Daniel Webster told a
friend, “is not a good leader. . . . He is irritable, impatient, and occasionally
overbearing; & he drives people off.” Another crisis loomed near the end of
June when word came that New Mexico was applying for statehood, with
President Taylor’s support and on the basis of boundaries that conflicted
with the Texas claim to the east bank of the Rio Grande.

T O WA R D A C O M P R O M I S E On July 4, 1850, supporters of the Union

staged a grand rally at the base of the unfinished Washington Monument in
Washington, D.C. President Zachary Taylor went to hear the speeches, lin-
gering in the hot sun and humid heat. Five days later he died of cholera,
likely caused by tainted food or water.
President Taylor’s sudden death strengthened the chances of a congres-
sional compromise over the slavery issue. Taylor, a soldier, was replaced by
Vice President Millard Fillmore. The son of a poor upstate New York farmer,
Fillmore had succeeded despite few
opportunities or advantages. Largely
self-educated, he had made his own
way in the profession of law and the
rough-and-tumble world of New York
politics. Experience had taught him
caution, which some interpreted as
indecision, but he had made up his
mind to support Henry Clay’s compro-
mise and had so informed Taylor. It was
a strange switch: Taylor, the Louisiana
slaveholder, had been ready to make
war on his native region; Fillmore, who
southerners thought opposed slavery,
Millard Fillmore was ready to make peace.
Fillmore’s support of the Compromise
At this point, the young senator
of 1850 helped sustain the Union Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, a ris-
through the crisis. ing star in the Democratic party,
 The Compromise of 1850 • 613

rescued Henry Clay’s faltering compromise. Brash and brilliant, short and
stocky, and famous for his large head, Douglas argued that given nearly
everybody’s objections to one or another provision of Clay’s “comprehensive
scheme,” the best solution was to break it up into separate measures. Few
members were prepared to vote for all of them, but Douglas hoped to mobi-
lize a majority for each.
The plan worked. By September 20, President Fillmore had signed the last
of the measures into law. The Union had muddled through another crisis,
and the settlement went down in history as the Compromise of 1850. For a
time it defused an explosive situation, settled each of the major points at
issue, and postponed secession and civil war for ten years.
In its final version, the Compromise of 1850 included the following ele-
ments: (1) California entered the Union as a free state, ending forever the old
balance of free and slave states; (2) the Texas–New Mexico Act made New
Mexico a territory and set the Texas boundary at its present location. In
return for giving up its claims, Texas was paid $10 million, which secured
payment of the state’s debt; (3) the Utah Act set up the Utah Territory. The

C A N A D A
PACI F I C
ME
OCEAN
OREGON VT NH
TERRITORY MINNESOTA
NY MA
TERRITORY
WI CT RI
MI
PA
UNORGANIZED on NJ
IA n-Dix
TERRITORY OH Maso DE
IL Line
UTAH IN MD
TERRITORY VA
CALIFORNIA MO
KY
(admitted as free NC
state, 1850) Missouri Compromise Line
TN
36°30'N
NEW MEXICO SC
AR
TERRITORY AT L A N T I C
AL GA OCEAN
MS

TX LA
THE COMPROMISE OF 1850
FL
Free states and territories
Slave states
GULF OF MEXICO
Open to slavery by
popular sovereignty, 0 150 300 Miles
Compromise of 1850
0 150 300 Kilometers

What events forced the Compromise of 1850? How did Stephen A. Douglas rescue
the compromise? What were its terms?
614 • T HE G ATHERING S TORM (CH. 15)

territorial act in each case omitted reference to slavery except to give the ter-
ritorial legislature authority over “all rightful subjects of legislation” with
provision for appeal to the federal courts. For the sake of agreement, the
deliberate ambiguity of the statement was its merit. Northern congressmen
could assume that the territorial legislatures might act to exclude slavery;
southern congressmen assumed that they could not; (4) a new Fugitive Slave
Act put the matter of apprehending runaway slaves wholly under federal
jurisdiction and stacked the cards in favor of slave catchers; and, (5) as a ges-
ture to anti-slavery forces, the public sale of slaves, but not slavery itself, was
abolished in the District of Columbia. The awful spectacle of chained-
together slaves passing through the streets of the nation’s capital, to be sold
at public auctions, was brought to an end.
President Millard Fillmore pronounced the five measures making up the
Compromise of 1850 “a final settlement.” Still, doubts lingered that both
North and South could be reconciled to the measures permanently. In the
South, the disputes of 1846–1850 had transformed the abstract doctrine of
secession into a growing reality fed by “fire-eaters” such as Robert Barnwell
Rhett of South Carolina, William Lowndes Yancey of Alabama, and Edmund
Ruffin of Virginia.
But once the furies aroused by the Wilmot Proviso had been spent, the
compromise left little on which to focus pro-slavery agitation. Ironically, after
its formation as a state, California tended to elect pro-slavery men to Con-
gress. New Mexico and Utah were far away, and in any case at least hypotheti-
cally open to slavery. In fact, both states adopted slave codes, but the census of
1860 reported no slaves in New Mexico and only twenty-nine in Utah.

T H E F U G I T I V E S L AV E A C T The Fugitive Slave Act was the most con-

troversial element of the compromise. It was the one clear-cut victory for the
cause of slavery, but would the North enforce it? Southern insistence on the
Fugitive Slave Act as part of the Compromise of 1850 outraged abolitionists.
The act did more than strengthen the hand of slave catchers; it offered a
strong temptation to kidnap free blacks in northern “free” states. The law
denied alleged fugitives a jury trial. In addition, federal marshals could
require citizens to help locate and capture runaways; violators could be
imprisoned for up to six months and fined $1,000. Abolitionists fumed.
“This filthy enactment was made in the nineteenth century, by people who
could read and write,” Ralph Waldo Emerson marveled in his diary. He
advised neighbors to break the new law “on the earliest occasion.” The occa-
sion soon arose in Detroit, Michigan, where only military force stopped the
rescue of an alleged fugitive slave by an outraged mob in October 1850. There
 The Compromise of 1850 • 615

were relatively few such incidents,

however. In the first six years of
the Fugitive Slave Act, only three
runaways were forcibly rescued
from slave catchers. On the other
hand, probably fewer than two
hundred were returned to bondage
during those years. The Fugitive
Slave Act was a powerful emo-
tional and symbolic force arous-
ing the anti-slavery impulse in the
North.

U N C L E T O M ’ S C A B I N Dur-
ing the 1850s, anti-slavery forces
found their most persuasive ap-
peal not in the Fugitive Slave Act
but in the fictional drama of Har-
riet Beecher Stowe’s best-selling
novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852).
The pious daughter, sister, and Threats to free blacks
wife of Congregationalist minis- An 1851 notice to the free blacks of
ters, Stowe epitomized the power- Boston to avoid “the watchmen and police
officers . . . empowered to act as kidnappers
ful religious underpinnings of and slave catchers.”
the abolitionist movement. While
living in Cincinnati during the
1830s and 1840s, she met fugitive slaves who had crossed the Ohio River
from Kentucky. Stowe was disgusted with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. In
the spring of 1850, having moved to Maine, Stowe decided to write the chap-
ters that would initially be published as magazine pieces and then consoli-
dated into the novel. “The time has come,” she wrote, “when even a woman
or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to
speak.”
Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a smashing commercial success. Within a year, it
had sold three hundred thousand copies in the United States and over a
million in Great Britain. By 1855 it was called “the most popular novel of
our day.” Uncle Tom’s Cabin depicts a combination of unlikely saints
and sinners, stereotypes, fugitive slaves, impossibly virtuous black victims,
and melodramatic escapades. The long-suffering slave Uncle Tom, whose
gentleness and generosity grow even as he is sold as a slave and taken south;
616 • T HE G ATHERING S TORM (CH. 15)

the villainous white planter Simon

Legree who torments and tortures
Tom before ordering his death; the
angelic white girl Little Eva who
dies after befriending Tom; the
beautiful but desperate Eliza who
escapes from bounty hunters by
carrying her child to freedom
across the icy Ohio River—all
became stock characters in Ame-
rican folklore.
Slavery, seen through Stowe’s
eyes, was an abominable sin. Her
novel made the brutal realities of
slavery real to readers. The aboli-
tionist leader Frederick Douglass,
a former slave himself, said that
“The Greatest Book of the Age” Uncle Tom’s Cabin was like “a
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as this advertisement flash” that lit “a million camp fires
indicates, was a best seller.
in front of the embattled hosts
of slavery.” Slaveholders were
incensed by Stowe’s best-selling book. One of them mailed Stowe an anony-
mous parcel containing the severed ear of a disobedient slave. Yet it took
time for the novel to work its effect on public opinion. At the time of its pub-
lication, the country was enjoying a surge of prosperity fueled by California
gold, and the course of the presidential campaign in 1852 reflected a com-
mon desire to lay sectional quarrels to rest.

THE ELECTION OF 1852 In 1852, the Democrats chose Franklin

Pierce of New Hampshire as their presidential candidate; their platform
endorsed the Compromise of 1850. For their part, the Whigs repudiated the
lackluster Millard Fillmore, who had faithfully supported the Compromise of
1850, and once again tried to exploit martial glory. It took fifty-three ballots,
but the convention finally chose General Winfield Scott, the hero of the Mex-
ican War and a Virginia native backed mainly by northern Whigs. The Whig
Convention dutifully endorsed the compromise, but with some opposition
from the North. Scott, an able army commander but an inept politician, had
gained a reputation for anti-slavery and nativist sentiments, alienating
German- and Irish-American voters. In the end, Scott carried only Tennessee,
Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Vermont. Pierce overwhelmed him in the Elec-
 The Kansas-Nebraska Crisis • 617

toral College, 254 to 42, although the popular vote was close: 1.6 million to
1.4 million. The third-party Free-Soilers mustered only 156,000 votes, for
John P. Hale, in contrast to the 291,000 they had tallied for Van Buren in 1848.
Forty-eight-year-old Franklin Pierce, an undistinguished but handsome
former congressman and senator who had fought in the Mexican War, was,
like James Polk, touted as another Andrew Jackson. He eagerly promoted
western expansion, even if it meant adding more slave states to the Union.
But the youngest president to date was unable to unite the warring factions
of his party. He was neither a statesman nor a leader. After the election,
Pierce wrote a poignant letter to his wife in which he expressed his frustra-
tion at the prospect of keeping North and South together. “I can do no
right,” he sighed. “What am I to do, wife? Stand by me.” By the end of Pierce’s
first year in office, the leaders of his own party had decided he was a failure.
By trying to be all things to all people, Pierce was labeled a “doughface”: a
“Northern man with Southern principles.” Theodore Roosevelt later wrote
that Pierce was a “servile tool of men worse than himself.” He was too willing
“to do any work the slavery leaders” requested.

THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA CRISIS

America’s growing commercial interests in Asia during the mid–

nineteenth century helped spark a growing desire for a transcontinental rail-
road line connecting the eastern seaboard with the Pacific coast. During the
1850s, the only land added to the United States was a barren stretch of some
thirty thousand square miles south of the Gila River in present-day New
Mexico and Arizona. By the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, the United States
paid Mexico $10 million for land offering a likely route for a transcontinen-
tal railroad. The idea of building a railroad linking the far-flung regions of
the new continental domain of the United States reignited sectional rivalries
and reopened the slavery issue.

DOUGLAS’S NEBRASKA PROPOSAL In 1852 and 1853, Congress

debated several proposals for a transcontinental rail line. Secretary of War
Jefferson Davis favored the southern route and promoted the Gadsden Pur-
chase. Any other route, he explained, would go through the territories
granted to Indians, which stretched from Texas to the Canadian border.
Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois offered an alternative: Chicago
should be the transcontinental railroad’s eastern terminus. Since 1845, Doug-
las and other supporters of a northern transcontinental route had offered
618 • T HE G ATHERING S TORM (CH. 15)

bills for a new territory west of Mis-

souri and Iowa bearing the Indian
name Nebraska. In 1854, settlers in
Kansas and Nebraska asked Congress
to grant them official status as U.S.
territories eligible for statehood. New
territories, however, raised the vexing
question of slavery. As chairman of
the Committee on Territories, Senator
Douglas introduced a bill, later called
the Kansas-Nebraska Act, that in-
cluded the entire unorganized portion
of the Louisiana Purchase, extending
to the Canadian border. To win the
Stephen A. Douglas, ca. 1852
support of southern legislators,
Author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Douglas championed the principle of
“popular sovereignty,” whereby voters in each territory could decide whether
to allow slavery.
It was a clever dodge, since the 1820 Missouri Compromise would exclude
slaves until a territorial government had made a decision. Southerners
quickly spotted the barrier, and Douglas just as quickly made two more
concessions. He supported an amendment for repeal of the Missouri Com-
promise insofar as it excluded slavery north of latitude 36°30′, and he agreed
to the creation of two new territorial governments, Kansas, west of Missouri,
and Nebraska, west of Iowa and Minnesota.
Douglas’s motives remain unclear. Railroads were foremost in his mind,
but he was also influenced by the desire to win support for his bill in the
South, by the hope that his promotion of “popular sovereignty” would quiet
the slavery issue and open the Great Plains to development, or by a chance to
split the Whigs over the issue. Whatever his reasoning, he had blundered,
damaging his presidential chances and setting the country on the road to
civil war. In abandoning the long-standing Missouri Compromise boundary
line and allowing territorial residents to decide the issue of slavery for them-
selves, Douglas renewed sectional tensions and forced moderate political
leaders to align with the extremes. In the end, the Kansas-Nebraska Act
would destroy the Whig party, fragment the Democratic party, and spark a
territorial civil war in Kansas.
The tragic flaw in Douglas’s reasoning was his failure to appreciate the
growing intensity of anti-slavery sentiment spreading across the country.
His proposal to repeal the Missouri Compromise was less than a week old
 The Kansas-Nebraska Crisis • 619

0 150 300 Miles

THE GADSDEN PURCHASE, 1853
0 150 300 Kilometers

o
ad
or r INDIAN

Ri ol
ve
TERRITORY

C
CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles NEW MEXICO
TERRITORY
Gila River

Tucson
TEXAS
El Paso
Route of Southern Pacific
GADSDEN Railroad, completed 1886
PURCHASE, Houston
1853

Rio
Gr
an
MEXICO

ed
Why did the U.S. government purchase from Mexico the land
south of the Gila River? What was the route of the new South-
ern Pacific Railroad? How did the debate over the national
railroad open up sectional conflicts?

when six anti-slavery congressmen published a protest, the “Appeal of the

Independent Democrats.” It denounced the proposed Kansas-Nebraska Act as
a “gross violation of a sacred pledge [the Missouri Compromise].” The mani-
festo urged Americans to use all means to defeat Douglas’s bill and thereby
“rescue” the nation “from the domination of slavery, . . . for the cause of
human freedom is the cause of God.” Across the North, editorials, sermons,
speeches, and petitions echoed this indignation. What had been the opinion of
a radical minority was fast becoming the common view of northerners.
In Congress, however, Douglas had masterfully assembled the votes for
his Kansas-Nebraska Act, and he forced the issue with tireless energy. The
inept President Pierce impulsively added his support. Southerners lined up
behind Douglas, with notable exceptions, such as Texas senator Sam Hous-
ton, who denounced the act’s violation of two solemn compacts: the Mis-
souri Compromise and the confirmation of the territory deeded to the
Indians “as long as grass shall grow and water run.” He was not the only one
concerned about the Indians; federal agents were already busy hoodwinking
or bullying Indians into relinquishing their lands or rights. Douglas and
Pierce whipped reluctant Democrats into line (though about half the northern
Democrats refused to yield), pushing the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska
 620 • T HE G ATHERING S TORM (CH. 15)

CANADA
WASHINGTON ME
TERRITORY
VT
MINNESOTA NH
OREGON TERRITORY MA
NEBRASKA NY
TERRITORY WI MI
TERRITORY RI
PA CT
n-Dix
on NJ
IA Maso
OH DE
Inset area Line
UTAH IL IN MD
TERRITORY KANSAS VA
TERRITORY MO KY
CALIFORNIA
˚30 ' N NC
Missouri Compromise Line 36
TN
INDIAN AND
NEW MEXICO OKLAHOMA SC
TERRITORY TERRITORIES AR
AL GA
MS AT L A N T I C
OCEAN
TX LA
FL

GULF OF MEXICO
PACIF IC
MEXICO 0 150 300 Miles
OCEAN
0 150 300 Kilometers

THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT, 1854 BLEEDING KANSAS

Atchison

M
Free states and territories
M

KANSAS
iss

IS
Slave states Leavenworth
ou

i
r

River

SO
Open to slavery by popular sovereignty,
Lecompton
Compromise of 1850
UR
Lawrence
Open to slavery by popular sovereignty, T E R R I T O RY Osawatomie
I
Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854 Pottawatomie Os
Massacre a ge
River
Battle site

What were the terms of the Kansas-Nebraska Act? How did it lead to the creation of
the Republican party? What happened at Pottawatomie and Osawatomie?

bill by a vote of 37 to 14 in the Senate and 113 to 100 in the House. The anti-
slavery faction in the Congress had been crushed.
Many in the North argued that if the Missouri Compromise was not a
sacred pledge, then neither was the Fugitive Slave Act. On June 2, 1854,
Boston witnessed the most dramatic demonstration against the act. Free
blacks in Boston had taken in a runaway Virginia slave named Anthony
Burns; federal marshals then arrived to arrest and return him. Incensed by
what had happened, a crowd of two thousand abolitionists led by a minister
stormed the jail in an effort to free Burns. In the melee, a federal marshal was
killed. At Burns’s trial, held to determine whether he indeed was a fugitive, a
 The Kansas-Nebraska Crisis • 621

compromise was proposed that would have allowed Bostonians to buy

Burns his freedom, but the plan was scuttled by President Pierce, who was
determined to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. On June 2, the day that state
militia and federal troops marched Burns through Boston to a ship waiting
to return him to Virginia, some fifty thousand people lined the streets. Many
of them shouted insults at the federal officials.
Over the next several weeks, demonstrations against the Fugitive Slave Act
grew in scope and intensity, fed by rampant coverage of the issues in news-
papers. At a July 4 rally in Framingham, Massachusetts, the abolitionist edi-
tor William Lloyd Garrison burned copies of the Fugitive Slave Act and the
Constitution. Later in the day, the transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau
delivered a fiery speech in which he charged that the trial of Burns was
“really the trial of Massachusetts.” Prominent New Englanders despised
President Pierce for his handling of the Burns case. In a letter to the White
House, one of them wrote: “To the chief slave-catcher of the United States.
You damned, infernal scoundrel, if I only had you here in Boston, I would
murder you!” As it happened, Anthony Burns was the last fugitive slave to be
returned from Boston and was soon freed through purchase by the African
American community of Boston.

T H E E M E R G E N C E O F T H E R E P U B L I C A N PA R T Y By the mid-
1850s, the sharp tensions over slavery were fracturing the nation. The
national organizations of Baptists and Methodists, for instance, had split
over slavery by 1845 and formed new northern and southern organizations
supporting the two denominations. The national parties were also beginning
to buckle under the strain of slavery. The Democrats managed to postpone
disruption for a while, but their congressional delegation lost heavily in the
North, enhancing the influence of their southern wing.
The strain of the Kansas-Nebraska Act soon destroyed the Whig party.
Southern Whigs now tended to abstain from voting, while northern Whigs
gravitated toward two new parties. One was the American (“Know-
Nothing”) party, which had emerged in response to the surge of mostly
Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Germany. The anti-Catholic “Know-
Nothings” embraced nativism (opposition to foreign immigrants) by
promoting the denial of citizenship to newcomers. In the early 1850s, Know-
Nothings won several local elections in Massachusetts and New York.
The other new party, which attracted even more northern Whigs, was
formed in 1854 when the so-called “conscience Whigs,” those opposed to
slavery, split from the “cotton Whigs” and joined with independent Dem-
ocrats and Free-Soilers to form the Republican party. A young Illinois
622 • T HE G ATHERING S TORM (CH. 15)

Congressman named Abraham Lincoln illustrated the transition of many

northern Whigs to the new Republican party. He said that the passage of
Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Act angered him “as he had never been before.” It
transformed his views on slavery. Unless the North mobilized to stop the
efforts of pro-slavery southerners, the future of the Union was imperiled.
From that moment on, Lincoln focused his energies on reversing the Kansas-
Nebraska Act and promoting the anti-slavery movement. He often asked audi-
ences if any issue had so divided and aroused the nation as had the future of
slavery. By stopping the expansion of slavery and affirming the moral princi-
ple of freedom for all, “we shall not only save the Union,” Lincoln said in 1854,
“but we shall have so saved it, as to make, and to keep it, forever worthy of the
saving.”

“ B L E E D I N G K A N S A S ” After the controversial passage of the Kansas-

Nebraska Act in 1854, attention swung to the plains of Kansas, where oppos-
ing elements gathered to stage a rehearsal for civil war. While Nebraska
would become a free state, Kansas soon exposed the potential for mischief in
Senator Douglas’s idea of popular sovereignty. The ambiguity of the law,
useful to Douglas in getting it passed, only added to the chaos. The people
living in the Kansas Territory were “perfectly free to form and regulate their
domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution.”
That in itself invited conflicting interpretations, but the law said nothing
about the timing of any decision, adding to each side’s sense of urgency in
getting political control of the fifty-million-acre territory.
The settlement of Kansas therefore differed from the typical pioneering
efforts. Groups sprang up in North and South to hurry right-minded migrants
westward. Senator William Seward of New York announced that the anti-
slavery coalition in the North would “engage in competition for the virgin soil
of Kansas, and God give the victory to the side which is stronger in numbers as
it is in the right.” Most of the settlers were from Missouri and its surrounding
states. Although few of them held slaves, they were not sympathetic to aboli-
tionism; racism was prevalent even among non-slaveholding whites. Many of
the Kansas settlers wanted to keep all blacks, enslaved or free, out of the terri-
tory. “I kem to Kansas to live in a free state,” declared a minister, “and I don’t
want niggers a-trampin’ over my grave.” By 1860, there were only 627 African
Americans in the Kansas Territory.
When Kansas’s first federal governor arrived, in 1854, he ordered a cen-
sus taken and scheduled an election for a territorial legislature in 1855. On
election day, several thousand “border ruffians” crossed the river from Mis-
souri, illegally swept the polls for pro-slavery forces, and vowed to kill every
 The Kansas-Nebraska Crisis • 623

“The Border Ruffian Code in Kansas” (1856)

This map, which appeared in a pamphlet published by Horace Greeley’s New York
Tribune, shows the nation divided into slave states (dark), free states (white), and
those in the middle (gray). It attempts to “prove how the suffering South is
oppressed by the North.”

“God-damned abolitionist in the Territory.” The governor denounced the

vote as a fraud but did nothing to alter the results, for fear of being killed.
The territorial legislature expelled its few anti-slavery members, adopted a
drastic slave code, and made it a capital offense to aid a fugitive slave and
a felony even to question the legality of slavery in the territory.
Outraged free-state advocates rejected this “bogus” government and
moved directly toward application to Congress for statehood. In 1855, a
constitutional convention, the product of an extralegal election, met in
Topeka, drafted a state constitution excluding both slavery and free blacks
from Kansas, and applied for admission to the Union. By 1856, a free-state
“governor” and “legislature” were functioning in Topeka; thus, there were
two illegal governments in the Kansas Territory. The prospect of getting
any government to command authority seemed dim, and both sides began
to arm.
Finally, the tense confrontation began to slip into violent conflict. In May
1856, a pro-slavery mob entered the free-state town of Lawrence, Kansas,
destroyed newspaper presses, set fire to the free-state governor’s home, stole
property, and demolished the Free-State Hotel.
624 • T HE G ATHERING S TORM (CH. 15)

The “sack of Lawrence” resulted in

just one casualty, but the excitement
aroused a zealous abolitionist named
John Brown, who had a history of
mental instability. The child of fervent
Ohio Calvinists who taught their chil-
dren that life was a crusade against
sin, Brown believed that Christians
must “break the jaws of the wicked,”
and slavery was the most wicked of
sins. Two days after Lawrence was
sacked, Brown set out with four of his
sons and three other men for Pot-
tawatomie, Kansas, the site of a pro-
slavery settlement near the Missouri
border, where they dragged five men
from their houses and hacked them
to death with swords in front of
Kansas a Free State their screaming families. “God is my
judge,” Brown told his son upon their
This broadside advertises a series of
mass meetings in Kansas in support return. “We were justified under the
of the free-state cause, based on the circumstances.”
principle of “squatter” or popular The Pottawatomie Massacre (May
sovereignty. 24–25, 1856) set off a guerrilla war
in the Kansas Territory that lasted
through the fall. On August 30, Missouri ruffians raided the free-state settle-
ment at Osawatomie, Kansas. They looted and burned the houses and shot
John Brown’s son Frederick through the heart. The elder Brown, who barely
escaped, looked back at the town being devastated by “Satan’s legions” and
swore to his surviving sons and followers, “I have only a short time to live—
only one death to die, and I will die fighting for this cause.” Altogether, by
the end of 1856, about 200 settlers had been killed in Kansas and $2 million
in property destroyed during the territorial civil war over slavery. Approxi-
mately 1,500 federal troops were dispatched to restore order.

V I O L E N C E I N T H E S E N AT E The violence in Kansas over slavery

spilled over into Congress. On May 22, 1856, the day after the burning of
Lawrence and two days before the Pottawatomie Massacre, a sudden flash of
violence on the Senate floor electrified the whole country. Just two days ear-
lier, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, an unyielding foe of slavery,
 The Kansas-Nebraska Crisis • 625

had delivered an inflammatory speech on “The Crime against Kansas.” Sum-

ner, elected five years earlier by a coalition of Free-Soilers and Democrats,
was a brilliant orator with a sharp tongue and self-righteous manner. His
incendiary two-day speech, delivered from memory, insulted slaveowners.
The pro-slavery Missourians who crossed into Kansas, he charged, were
“hirelings picked from the drunken spew and vomit of an uneasy civiliza-
tion.” Their treatment of Kansas was “the rape of a virgin territory,” he said,
“and it may be clearly traced to a depraved longing for a new slave State, the
hideous offspring of such a crime.” Sumner singled out the elderly senator
Andrew Pickens Butler of South Carolina for censure. Butler, Sumner
charged, had “chosen a mistress . . . who . . . though polluted in the sight of
the world, is chaste in his sight—I mean the harlot, Slavery.”
Sumner’s indignant rudeness might well have backfired had it not been
for Butler’s cousin Preston S. Brooks, a fiery-tempered South Carolina con-
gressman. For two days, Brooks brooded over the insult to his relative,
knowing that Sumner would refuse a challenge to a duel. On May 22, he
found Sumner writing at his Senate desk after an adjournment, accused him
of slander against South Carolina and Butler, and began beating him about
the head with a cane while stunned colleagues looked on. Sumner, struggling
to rise, wrenched the desk from the floor and collapsed. Brooks kept beating
him until his cane broke.

“Bully” Brooks’s attack on Charles Sumner

The incident worsened the strains on the Union.
626 • T HE G ATHERING S TORM (CH. 15)

Brooks had satisfied his rage, but in doing so had created a martyr for the
anti-slavery cause. For two and a half years, Sumner’s empty Senate seat was
a solemn reminder of the violence done to him. When the House censured
Brooks, he resigned, only to return after being triumphantly reelected. The
South Carolina governor held a banquet in Brooks’s honor, and hundreds of
southern admirers sent him new canes. By contrast, the news of the beating
drove John Brown “crazy,” his eldest son remembered, “crazy.” The brutal
beating of Senator Sumner had a direct political effect by driving more
northerners into the new Republican party. By late spring of 1856, there were
Republican party offices in twenty-two states and the District of Columbia.

SECTIONAL POLITICS Within the span of five days in May of 1856,

“Bleeding Kansas,” “Bleeding Sumner,” and “Bully Brooks” had set the tone
for another presidential election. The major parties could no longer evade
the slavery issue. Already in February it had split the infant American party
wide open. Southern delegates, with help from New York, killed a resolution
to restore the Missouri Compromise and nominated Millard Fillmore for
president. Later what was left of the Whig party endorsed him as well. But as
a friend wrote Fillmore, the “outrageous proceedings in Kansas & the assault
on Mr. Sumner have contributed very much to strengthen the [new] Repub-
lican Party.”
At its first national convention, the Republican party passed over its leading
figure, New York senator William H. Seward, who was awaiting a better chance
in 1860. The party instead fastened on a military hero, John C. Frémont, “the
Pathfinder,” who had led the conquest of Mexican California. The Republican
platform also owed much to the Whigs. It favored a transcontinental railroad
and, in general, more government-financed internal improvements. It con-
demned the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the Democratic policy of
territorial expansion, and “those twin relics of barbarism—Polygamy and
Slavery.” The campaign slogan echoed that of the Free-Soilers: “Free soil, free
speech, and Frémont.” It was the first time a major-party platform had taken a
stand against slavery.
The Democrats, meeting two weeks earlier in June, had rejected Franklin
Pierce, the hapless victim of so much turmoil. Pierce, who struggled most of
his life with alcoholism and self-doubt, may have been the most hated per-
son in the nation by 1856. A Boston newspaper vilified him for promoting
sectionalism. “Who but you, Franklin Pierce, have . . . kindled the flames of
civil war on the desolated plains of Kansas?” A Philadelphia newspaper was
even blunter. The Pierce presidency, it charged, was one of “weakness, inde-
cision, rashness, ignorance, and an entire and utter absence of dignity.”
 The Kansas-Nebraska Crisis • 627

Pierce remains the only elected president to be denied renomination by his

party. The Democrats also turned their back on Stephen A. Douglas because
of the damage done by his Kansas-Nebraska Act. The party therefore turned
to James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, a former senator and secretary of
state who had long sought the nomination. The party and its candidate
nevertheless supported Pierce’s policies. The Democratic platform endorsed
the Kansas-Nebraska Act, called for vigorous enforcement of the fugitive
slave law, and stressed that Congress should not interfere with slavery in
either states or territories. The party reached out to its newly acquired Irish
and German voters by condemning nativism and endorsing religious liberty.
The campaign of 1856 resolved itself as a sectional contest in which par-
ties vied for northern or southern votes. The Republicans had few southern

WASHINGTON
TERRITORY NH 5
ME
VT 5 8
OREGON MINNESOTA
TERRITORY
NEBRASKA TERRITORY WI MI NY MA 13
TERRITORY 5 6 35
RI 4
IA PA CT 6
UTAH 4 27
OH NJ 7
TERRITORY IL IN 23
CA 11 13 DE 3
4 KANSAS VA MD 8
MO 15
TERRITORY 9 KY 12
NC
NEW MEXICO UNORG. TN 12 10
TERR. AR SC
TERRITORY 4 8
MS AL GA
7 9 10
TX
4 LA
6
FL
3

THE ELECTION OF 1856 Electoral Vote

James Buchanan 174
(Democrat)
John C. Frémont 114
(Republican)
Millard Fillmore 8
(American)

What was the platform of the new Republican party? Why did Democrats pick
James Buchanan? What were the key factors that decided the election?
628 • T HE G ATHERING S TORM (CH. 15)

supporters and only a handful in the border states, where fear of disunion
held many Whigs in line. Buchanan thus went into the campaign as the
candidate of the only remaining national party. Frémont swept the north-
ernmost states with 114 electoral votes, but Buchanan added five free
states—Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Illinois, Indiana, and California—to his
southern majority for a total of 174.
The sixty-five-year-old Buchanan, America’s first unmarried president,
brought to the White House a portfolio of impressive achievements in poli-
tics and diplomacy. His political career went back to 1815, when he served as
a Federalist legislator in Pennsylvania before switching to Andrew Jackson’s
party in the 1820s. He had served in Congress for over twenty years and had
been ambassador to Russia and Britain as well as James Knox Polk’s secretary
of state. His long quest for the presidency had been built on his commitment
to states’ rights and his aggressive promotion of territorial expansion. His
political debts reinforced his belief that saving the Union depended upon
concessions to the South. Republicans charged that he lacked the backbone
to stand up to the southerners who dominated the Democratic majorities in
Congress. His choice of four slave-state men and only three free-state men
for his cabinet seemed another bad omen. It was.

THE DEEPENING SECTIONAL CRISIS

During James Buchanan’s first six months in office in 1857, three

major events caused his undoing: (1) the Supreme Court decision in the
Dred Scott case, (2) new troubles in strife-torn Kansas, and (3) a financial
panic that sparked a widespread economic depression. For all of Buchanan’s
experience as a legislator and diplomat, he failed to handle those and other
key issues in a statesmanlike manner. The new president proved to be a
mediocre chief executive.

THE D R E D S C O T T C A S E On March 6, 1857, two days after

Buchanan’s inauguration, the Supreme Court rendered a decision in the
long-pending case of Dred Scott v. Sandford. Dred Scott, born a slave in Vir-
ginia in about 1800, had been taken to St. Louis in 1830 and sold to an army
surgeon, who took him to Illinois, then to the Wisconsin Territory (later Min-
nesota), and finally back to St. Louis in 1842. While in the Wisconsin Territory,
Scott had married Harriet Robinson, and they eventually had two daughters.
After his owner’s death, in 1843, Scott had tried to buy his freedom. In
1846, Harriet Scott persuaded her husband to file suit in the Missouri courts,
 The Deepening Sectional Crisis • 629

claiming that residence in Illi-

nois and the Wisconsin Territory
had made him free. A jury
decided in his favor, but the state
supreme court ruled against
him. When the case rose on
appeal to the Supreme Court,
the nation anxiously awaited its
opinion on whether freedom
once granted could be lost by
returning to a slave state.
Seventy-nine-year-old Chief
Justice Roger B. Taney, an ardent
supporter of the South and slav-
ery, wrote the Court’s majority
opinion. He ruled that Scott
lacked legal standing because he
lacked citizenship, as did all
former slaves. At the time the Dred Scott
Constitution was adopted, Taney By suing for his family’s freedom, Scott
sparked a controversy amid the growing
claimed, blacks “had for more tensions over slavery.
than a century been regarded
as . . . so far inferior, that they
had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” On the issue of
Scott’s residency, Taney argued that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 had
deprived citizens of property by prohibiting slavery in selected states, an
action “not warranted by the Constitution.”
The upshot was that Chief Justice Taney and the rest of the Supreme
Court had declared an act of Congress unconstitutional for the first time
since Marbury v. Madison (1803). Congress had repealed the Missouri Com-
promise in the Kansas-Nebraska Act three years earlier, but the Dred Scott
decision now challenged the concept of popular sovereignty. If Congress
itself could not exclude slavery from a territory, then presumably neither
could a territorial government created by an act of Congress.
Far from settling the issue of slavery in the territories, Taney’s ruling
fanned the flames of dissension. Republicans protested the Dred Scott
decision because it nullified their anti-slavery program. It had also rein-
forced the suspicion that the pro-slavery faction was hatching a conspiracy.
Were not all but one of the justices who had voted with Taney in the Dred
Scott case southerners? And President Buchanan had sought to influence the
630 • T HE G ATHERING S TORM (CH. 15)

Court’s decision both before and during his inaugural ceremony. Besides, if
Dred Scott were not a citizen and had no standing in court, there was no case
before the Court. The majority ruling about slavery in the territories was an
obiter dictum—a statement not essential to deciding the case and therefore
not binding. Pro-slavery elements greeted the Court’s opinion as binding.
Now the most militant among them were emboldened to make yet another
demand. It was not enough to deny Congress the right to interfere with slav-
ery in the territories; Congress had an obligation to protect the property of
slaveholders, making a federal slave code the next step in the militant effort
to defend slavery.

THE LECOMPTON CONSTITUTION Meanwhile, out west, in the

Kansas Territory, the struggle over slavery in the future state continued. Just
before Buchanan’s inauguration, in early 1857, the pro-slavery territorial
legislature called for a constitutional convention. Since no provision was
made for a referendum on the constitution, however, the governor vetoed
the measure, and then the legislature overrode his veto. The Kansas governor
resigned on the day Buchanan took office, and the new president replaced
him with Robert J. Walker. A native Pennsylvanian who had made a political
career first in Mississippi and later as a member of Polk’s cabinet, Walker
had greater prestige than his predecessors, and he put the fate of the Union
above the expansion of slavery. In Kansas, he sensed a chance to advance the
cause of both the Union and his Democratic party. Under Stephen A. Douglas’s
principle of “popular sovereignty,” fair elections would produce a state that
would be both free and Democratic.
Walker arrived in Kansas in 1857, and with Buchanan’s approval the new
governor pledged to the free-state Kansans (who made up an overwhelming
majority of the residents) that the new constitution would be submitted to a
fair vote. In spite of his pleas, however, he arrived too late to persuade free-
state men to vote for convention delegates in elections they were sure had
been rigged against them. Later, however, Walker did persuade the free-state
leaders to vote in the election of a new territorial legislature.
As a result, a polarity arose between an anti-slavery legislature and a pro-
slavery constitutional convention. The convention, meeting at Lecompton,
Kansas, drafted a constitution under which Kansas would become a slave
state. Free-state men boycotted the vote on the new constitution on the
claim that it, too, was rigged. At that point, President Buchanan took a fate-
ful step. Influenced by southern advisers and politically dependent upon
powerful southern congressmen, he decided to renege on his pledge to Gov-
ernor Walker and endorse the pro-slavery Lecompton convention. A new
 The Deepening Sectional Crisis • 631

wave of outrage swept across the northern states. Democratic senator

Stephen A. Douglas dramatically broke with the president over the issue,
siding with Republicans because the people of Kansas had been denied the
right to decide the issue. Governor Walker resigned in protest, and the elec-
tion went according to form: 6,226 for the constitution with slavery, 569 for
the constitution without slavery. Meanwhile, the acting governor had con-
vened the anti-slavery legislature, which called for another election to vote
the Lecompton Constitution up or down. Most of the pro-slavery settlers
boycotted this election, and the result, on January 4, 1858, was overwhelm-
ing: 10,226 against the constitution, 138 for the constitution with slavery, 24
for the constitution without slavery.
The combined results suggested a clear majority against slavery, but the
pro-southern Buchanan stuck to his support of the unpopular Lecompton
Constitution, driving another wedge into the Democratic party. In the Sen-
ate, administration forces convinced enough northern Democrats to follow
his lead, and in 1858 the Lecompton Constitution was passed. In the House
enough anti-Lecompton Democrats combined to put through an amend-
ment for a new and carefully supervised popular vote in Kansas. Enough
senators went along to permit passage of the House bill. Southerners were
confident the new Kansas vote would favor slavery because to reject it the vot-
ers would have to reject the new constitution, an action that would postpone
statehood until the population reached ninety thousand. On August 2, 1858,
Kansas voters nevertheless rejected the Lecompton constitution, 11,300 to
1,788. With that vote, Kansas, now firmly in the hands of its new anti-slavery
legislature, largely ended its provocative role in the sectional controversy.

T H E PA N I C O F 1 8 5 7 The third emergency of Buchanan’s first half

year in office, a national financial crisis, occurred in August 1857. It was
brought on by a reduction in foreign demand for American grain, overly
aggressive railroad construction, a surge in manufacturing production
that outran the growth of market demand, and the continued confusion
caused by the state banknote system. The failure of the Ohio Life Insur-
ance and Trust Company on August 24, 1857, precipitated the panic, which
was followed by an economic slump from which the country did not
emerge until 1859.
Every major event in the late 1850s seemed to get drawn into the vortex of
the festering sectional conflict, and business troubles were no exception.
Northern businessmen tended to blame the depression on the Democratic
Tariff of 1857, which had cut rates on imports to their lowest level since
1816. The agricultural South weathered the crisis better than the North.
632 • T HE G ATHERING S TORM (CH. 15)

Cotton prices fell, but slowly, and world markets for cotton quickly recov-
ered. The result was an exalted notion of King Cotton’s importance to the
world economy and an apparent confirmation of the growing argument that
the southern system of slave-based agriculture was superior to the free-labor
system of the North.

T H E R E V I VA L S O F 1 8 5 7 – 1 8 5 9 The business panic and depression

coincided with a widespread national revival of religious life. In New York
City, where over thirty thousand people had lost their jobs, Jeremiah Lan-
phier, a business executive–turned–lay missionary, grew despondent at the
suffering in the city as well as an alarming decline in church membership.
God, he later claimed, led him to begin a weekly prayer service in the Wall
Street financial district so that executives might commune with God. He
began on September 23, 1857, with six people attending. Within a few
months, though, the number of participants soared. To accommodate the
overflow crowds (largely male), nondenominational prayer meetings were
offered daily at locations across the city. Soon the daily prayer ritual spread
across the nation, especially in the northern tier of states. Women were even-
tually encouraged to attend the meetings, but they were rarely allowed to
speak.
The “prayer-meeting” revivals generated excited discussion; stories about
the latest “awakening” dominated big-city newspapers, some of which cre-
ated regular sections to report the daily progress of the crusade. Between
1857 and 1859, over half a million people joined churches. The revivals of
the late 1850s were distinctive in several respects. Unlike the Second Great
Awakening of the 1830s and 1840s, the prayer-meeting revivals were largely
uninterested in social reform. In fact, prayers about controversial issues,
such as slavery, were expressly prohibited at the meetings. The focus of the
meetings was personal spiritual renewal, not social transformation. The tran-
scendentalist minister and militant reformer Theodore Parker denounced
the revivalists for ignoring the evils of slavery. The Revival of 1857–1859
also differed from earlier awakenings in that it did not feature charismatic
ministers or fire-and-brimstone evangelizing. Instead, it was largely a lay
movement focused on discreet prayer.

DOUGLAS VERSUS LINCOLN Amid the recriminations over the

Dred Scott decision, “Bleeding Kansas,” and the floundering economy, the
center could not hold. The controversy over slavery in Kansas put severe
strains on the most substantial cord of union that was left, the Democratic
party. To many, Senator Stephen A. Douglas seemed the best hope for unity
 The Deepening Sectional Crisis • 633

and union, one of the few remaining Democratic leaders with support in
both the North and the South. But now Douglas was being whipsawed by
partisan extremists. The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act had cast him in
the role of a “doughface,” a northerner with southern sympathies. Yet his
opposition to the Lecompton Constitution, the fraudulent fruit of popular
sovereignty, had alienated him from Buchanan’s southern supporters. For all
his flexibility and opportunism, however, Douglas had convinced himself
that popular sovereignty was a point of principle, a bulwark of democracy
and local self-government. In 1858 he faced reelection to the Senate against
the opposition of both Buchanan Democrats and Republicans. The year
1860 would give him a chance for the presidency, but first he had to secure
his home base in Illinois.
To oppose him, Illinois Republicans named a small-town lawyer from
Springfield, Abraham Lincoln, the lanky, rawboned former Whig state
legislator and one-term congressman. Lincoln had served in the Illinois leg-
islature until 1842 and in 1846 had won a seat in Congress. After a single
term, he had retired from active politics to cultivate his law practice in
Springfield. In 1854, however, the Kansas-Nebraska Act drew Lincoln back
into the political arena. When Douglas appeared in Springfield to defend his
idea of popular sovereignty, Lincoln countered from the same platform. Lin-
coln abhorred slavery but was no abolitionist. He did not believe the two
races could coexist as equals, but he did oppose any further extension of
slavery into new territories. Like many others at the time, Lincoln assumed
that over time slavery would die a “natural death.” Slavery, he said in the
1840s, was a vexing but “minor question on its way to extinction.”
At first Lincoln had held back from the rapidly growing Republican party,
but in 1856 he had joined it and had given some fifty speeches promoting
the Frémont presidential ticket in Illinois and nearby states. By 1858, as the
obvious choice to oppose Douglas for the Senate seat, he was resorting to the
classic ploy of the underdog: he challenged the favorite to debate him. Doug-
las agreed to meet Lincoln in seven locations around the state.
Thus the titanic Lincoln-Douglas debates took place, from August 21 to
October 15, 1858. They attracted thousands of spectators and were read in
the newspapers by many more. The debates transformed an Illinois contest
for a Senate seat into a battle for the very future of the Republic. The two
men could not have presented a more striking contrast. Lincoln was well
over six feet tall, sinewy and craggy featured with a singularly long neck
and deep-set, brooding eyes. Unassuming in manner, dressed in homely,
well-worn clothes, and walking with a shambling gait, he lightened
his essentially serious demeanor with a refreshing sense of humor. To
634 • T HE G ATHERING S TORM (CH. 15)

sympathetic observers he conveyed an

air of simplicity, sincerity, and com-
mon sense. Douglas, on the other
hand, was attired in the finest custom-
tailored suits. A man of considerable
abilities and even greater ambition, he
strutted to the platform with the
pugnacious air of a predestined cham-
pion. Douglas traveled to the debate
sites in a private railroad car; Lincoln
rode alone on his horse.
During the second debate, at
Freeport, Lincoln asked Douglas how
Debate announcement he could reconcile his concept of popu-
lar sovereignty with the Dred Scott rul-
An announcement for the seventh
and final Lincoln-Douglas debate. ing that citizens had the right to carry
slaves into any territory. Douglas’s
answer, thenceforth known as the Freeport Doctrine, was to state the obvi-
ous: whatever the Supreme Court might say about slavery, it could not exist
anywhere unless supported by local police regulations.
The basic difference between the two men, Lincoln insisted, lay in Doug-
las’s professed indifference to the moral question of slavery. He said he cared
“more for the great principle of self-government, the right of the people to
rule, than I do for all of the negroes in Christendom.” Douglas was preoccu-
pied with process (“popular sovereignty”); Lincoln was focused on principle.
He insisted that the American government could not “endure, permanently
half slave and half free. . . . It will become all one thing, or all the other.”
If Lincoln had the better of the argument in the long view, Douglas had
the better of a close election in traditionally Democratic Illinois. Douglas
retained his Senate seat (senators were then selected by legislatures, not by a
popular vote), but Lincoln’s energetic campaign had made him a national
figure well positioned to become the Republican presidential candidate in
1860. Across the nation, however, Democrats did not fare as well as Douglas
in 1858. As the balance of power in the Democratic party shifted more and
more to the southern wing, as northern Democrats switched to the new
Republican party, party loyalties no longer served to promote a national
outlook. The political parties grew increasingly sectional in their composi-
tion and outlook: Democrats in the South and Republicans in the North.
Most Democratic congressional candidates who aligned themselves with
President Buchanan lost their elections in 1858, thus signaling in the North
 The Deepening Sectional Crisis • 635

and the West the political shift toward the new Republican party and its
anti-slavery principles.
At the same time that the political balance in the North was beginning to
shift from the Democrats to the Republicans, political tensions over slavery
were becoming more intractable—and violent. In 1858, members of Con-
gress engaged in the largest brawl ever staged on the floor of the House of
Representatives. Harsh words about slavery incited the melee, which involved
more than fifty legislators shoving, punching, and wrestling one another. The
fracas culminated when John “Bowie Knife” Potter of Wisconsin yanked off
the wig of a Mississippi congressman and claimed, “I’ve scalped him.” Like
the scuffling congressmen, more and more Americans began to feel that slav-
ery could be ended or defended only with violence. The editor of a Kansas
newspaper exclaimed that he yearned to kill an abolitionist: “If I can’t kill a
man, I’ll kill a woman; and if I can’t kill a woman, I’ll kill a child.”

J O H N B R O W N ’ S R A I D The gradual return of prosperity in 1859

offered hope that the sectional storms of the 1850s might yet pass. But the
slavery issue remained tornadic. In October 1859, the militant abolitionist
John Brown once again surfaced, this time in the East. Since the Pot-
tawatomie Massacre in 1856, he had led a furtive existence, acquiring money
and weapons from prominent New England sympathizers. His heartfelt
commitment to abolish the “wicked
curse of slavery” and promote com-
plete racial equality had intensified
to a fever pitch because he saw the
institution of slavery becoming more
deeply entrenched in American soci-
ety, cemented by law, economics, and
religious sanction. Brown was driven
by a sense of vengeful righteousness.
His penetrating gray eyes and flow-
ing beard, as well as his conviction
that he was an instrument of God,
struck fear into supporters and oppo-
nents alike. Brown was one of the few
whites willing to live among black
people and to die for them. He John Brown
viewed himself as carrying out a
Although his anti-slavery efforts were
divine mission on behalf of a venge- based in Kansas, Brown was a native of
ful God. Connecticut.
636 • T HE G ATHERING S TORM (CH. 15)

On October 16, 1859, the crusading Brown launched his supreme gesture.
From a Maryland farm he clambered down mist-shrouded bluffs and
crossed the Potomac River with about twenty heavily armed men, including
five African Americans. Under cover of darkness, they occupied the federal
arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), at the confluence of
the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, some sixty miles northwest of Wash-
ington, D.C. “I want to free all the negroes in this state,” Brown told one of
his first hostages, a night watchman. “If the citizens interfere with me, I must
only burn the town and have blood.” Brown’s ludicrous plan was to seize the
arsenal and then arm thousands of the slaves in the area, who he assumed
would flock to his cause; then he would set up a black stronghold in the
mountains of western Virginia, thus providing a nucleus of support to
inspire slave insurrections across the South.
What Brown and his soldiers of a vengeful God actually did was take the
town by surprise, cut the telegraph lines, and take control of the railroad sta-
tion, musket factory, rifle works, and arsenal. Brown then sent a few his men
to kidnap several prominent slave owners in the area and spread the word
for local slaves to rise up and join the rebellion. But only a few slaves
heeded Brown’s call to arms. By dawn local white militias and enraged towns-
men had surrounded Brown’s raiders. Brown and a dozen of his men, along
with eleven white hostages (including George Washington’s grandson) and
two of their slaves, holed up for thirty-two hours. In the morning, Brown sent
his son Watson and another man out under a white flag, hoping to trade his
hostages for his freedom, but the angry crowd shot them both. Intermittent
shooting continued, and another Brown son was wounded. He begged his
father to kill him to end his suffering, but Brown refused, screaming, “If you
must die, die like a man.” A few minutes later the son was dead.
Throughout the day, hundreds of men poured into Harper’s Ferry to
dislodge Brown and his raiders. Late that night Lieutenant Colonel Robert E.
Lee, one of the army’s most promising officers, arrived with his aide, Lieu-
tenant J.E.B. Stuart, and a force of U.S. marines, having been dispatched
from Washington, D.C., by President Buchanan. The following morning,
October 18, Stuart and his troops, with thousands of spectators cheering,
broke down the barricaded doors and rushed in. A young lieutenant found
Brown kneeling with his rifle cocked. Before Brown could fire, however, the
marine used the hilt of his sword to beat Brown unconscious. The siege was
over. Altogether, Brown’s men had killed four townspeople and wounded
another dozen. Of their own force, ten were killed (including two of Brown’s
sons) and five were captured; another five escaped.
Brown and his accomplices were quickly tried for treason, murder, and
“conspiring with Negroes to produce insurrection.” He was convicted on
 The Center Comes Apart • 637

October 31 and hanged on December 2, 1859. (Among the crowd watching

the execution was a popular young actor named John Wilkes Booth, who
would later assassinate Abraham Lincoln.) On his way to the gallows, Brown
predicted that slavery would end only “after much bloodshed.” If Brown had
failed in his primary purpose to ignite a massive slave rebellion, he had
achieved two things: he had become a martyr for the anti-slavery cause,
and he had set off a panic throughout the slaveholding South. At his sen-
tencing he delivered one of America’s classic speeches: “Now, if it is deemed
necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of jus-
tice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with
the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by
wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I say, let it be done.”
When John Brown, still unflinching, embraced martyrdom for the aboli-
tionist cause and was hanged, there were solemn observances in the North.
“That new saint,” Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “. . . will make the gallows
glorious like the cross.” Brown wielded more power and influence dead than
alive. “Living, he made life beautiful,” the writer Louisa May Alcott wrote on
the day Brown died. “Dying, [he] made death divine.” The nation’s leading
white abolitionist, the pacifist William Lloyd Garrison, was not as impressed
by Brown’s effort to wreak justice by the shedding of blood. He dismissed the
raid on Harper’s Ferry as “misguided, wild, and apparently insane.”
John Brown’s quixotic raid marked the point of no return: it set in motion
a series of events that would lead to rebellion and war. Brown’s martyrdom
embodied the South’s greatest fear: that armed slaves would revolt. Another
effect of Brown’s raid was to encourage pro-slavery southerners to equate
the militant abolitionism of John Brown with the Republican party. All
through the fall and winter of 1859–1860, overheated rumors of abolitionist
conspiracies and slave insurrections swept through the slave states. Dozens
of new militia companies were organized and began training to thwart an
uprising. Every northern visitor, commercial traveler, or schoolteacher came
under suspicion, and many were driven out. “We regard every man in our
midst an enemy to the institutions of the South,” said the Atlanta Confeder-
acy, “who does not boldly declare that he believes African slavery to be a
social, moral, and political blessing.”

T H E C E N T E R C O M E S A PA R T

T H E D E M O C R AT S D I V I D EAmid such emotional hysteria, the nation

ushered in another presidential election, destined to be the most fateful in
its history. In April 1860, the Democrats gathered for their presidential
638 • T HE G ATHERING S TORM (CH. 15)

convention in the hotbed of secession talk, Charleston, South Carolina. The

convention proved to be a disaster. Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas’s
supporters tried to straddle the slavery issue by promising southerners to
defend the institution in their region while assuring northerners that slavery
would not spread to new states. Southern firebrands, however, demanded
federal protection for slavery in the territories. The platform debate reached
a heady climax when the Alabama hothead William Yancey informed the
northern Democrats that their error had been the failure to defend slavery as
a positive good. An Ohio senator offered a blunt reply: “Gentlemen of the
South,” he said, “you mistake us—you mistake us. We will not do it.”
When the pro-slavery planks lost, Alabama’s delegates walked out of the
convention, followed by those representing most of the other southern
states. “We say, go your way,” exclaimed a Mississippi delegate to Douglas’s
supporters, “and we will go ours.” The remaining Democrats finally nomi-
nated Stephen A. Douglas and reaffirmed the 1856 platform. The Charleston
seceders met first in Richmond and then in Baltimore, where they adopted
the pro-slavery platform defeated in Charleston and named Vice President
John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky as their candidate for president. Thus
another cord of union had snapped: the last remaining national party had
fragmented.

“Prospect of a Smash Up” (1860)

This cartoon shows the Democratic party—the last remaining national party—
about to be split by sectional differences and the onrush of Republicans, led by
Abraham Lincoln.
 The Center Comes Apart • 639

LINCOLN’S ELECTION The Republicans, having become the domi-

nant force in northern politics by combining alienated Democrats, former
Whigs, and members of the nativist American Party (“Know-Nothings”),
gathered in May in Chicago for their presidential convention. The splinter-
ing of the Democratic party gave them their chance to win the presidency. At
the convention, everything suddenly came together for Abraham Lincoln,
the uncommon common man who remained an obscure figure in terms
of the national political landscape. He had emerged on the national scene
during his unsuccessful Illinois senatorial campaign two years before and
had since taken a stance designed to make him available for the nomination.
He was strong enough on the containment of slavery to satisfy the abolition-
ists yet moderate enough to seem less threatening than they were. In 1860, he
had gone east to address an audience of influential Republicans at Cooper
Union, a newly established art and engineering college in New York City,
where he emphasized his view of slavery “as an evil, not to be extended, but
to be tolerated and protected only because of and so far as its actual presence
among us makes that toleration and protection a necessity.”
At the Chicago Republican Convention, an overconfident New York sena-
tor, William H. Seward, was the early leader among the presidential nomi-
nees, but he had been tagged as an extremist for his earlier statements about
a looming “irrepressible conflict” over slavery. On the first ballot, Lincoln
finished in second place. On the next ballot, he drew almost even with
Seward. Pandemonium erupted among the ten thousand delegates as they
saw the momentum shifting toward the dark horse Lincoln. When a third
ballot pushed Lincoln within one and a half votes of a majority, the Ohio
delegation dramatically switched four votes to put him over the top. The
resulting cheer, wrote one journalist, was “like the rush of a great wind.”
Inside the convention building, the “wildest excitement and enthusiasm”
swelled to a “perfect roar.”
The Republican party platform denounced both the Supreme Court’s
Dred Scott decision allowing slavery in all federal territories and John
Brown’s raid as “among the gravest of crimes.” It also promised “the right of
each state to order and control its own domestic institutions.” The party
reaffirmed its resistance to the extension of slavery and, in an effort to gain
broader support, endorsed a series of measures promoting national eco-
nomic expansion: a higher protective tariff for manufacturers, free home-
steads on federal lands, a more liberal naturalization law for immigrants,
and federally financed internal improvements, including a transcontinental
railroad. With this platform, Republicans made a strong appeal to eastern
businessmen, western farmers, and the large immigrant population. The
640 • T HE G ATHERING S TORM (CH. 15)

Republican platform also frightened

southern cotton planters, who pre-
sumed that their slave-based agricul-
ture was doomed if the Republicans
won the presidential election.
Both major presidential nominat-
ing conventions revealed that opin-
ions tended to become more radical
in the Upper North and the Deep
South. Attitude followed latitude. In
the border states, a sense of modera-
tion aroused the die-hard former
Whigs to make one more try at recon-
ciliation. Meeting in Baltimore a week
before the Republicans met in Chi-
Abraham Lincoln cago, they reorganized as the Consti-
Republican candidate for president, tutional Union party and nominated
June 1860. John Bell of Tennessee for president.
Their platform centered on a vague
statement promoting “the Constitution of the Country, the Union of the
States, and the Enforcement of the Laws.”
None of the four candidates generated a national following, and the bitterly
contested six-month-long campaign devolved into a choice between Lincoln
and Douglas in the North (Lincoln was not even on the ballot in the South),
and Breckinridge and Bell in the South. One consequence of the separate cam-
paigns was that each section gained a false impression of the other. The South
never learned to distinguish Lincoln from the militant abolitionists; the
North, and especially Lincoln, failed to gauge the force of southern intransi-
gence. A few days before the election, the Charleston Mercury spoke for most
South Carolinians when it declared that “the existence of slavery is at stake” in
the balloting. The editor called for secession in “each and all of the southern
states” should the “abolitionist white man” capture the White House. For his
part, Lincoln stubbornly refused to offer the South assurances or to clarify his
position on slavery, which he said was a matter of public record.
The one man who attempted to penetrate the veil that was falling between
the North and the South was Douglas, who tried to mount the first nationwide
campaign tour. Only forty-seven years old but weakened by excessive drink, ill
health, and disappointments, he wore himself out in one final, glorious cam-
paign. Early in October 1860, at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he learned of Republican
victories in the Pennsylvania and Indiana state legislatures. “Mr. Lincoln is the
 The Center Comes Apart • 641

next President,” he said. “We must try to save the Union. I will go South.”
Down through the hostile states of Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama, Douglas
carried appeals on behalf of the Union. “I do not believe that every Breckin-
ridge man is a disunionist,” he said, “but I do believe that every disunionist is a
Breckinridge man.” Douglas promised voters that he would “make war boldly
against Northern abolitionists and Southern disunionists.”
By midnight on November 6, Lincoln’s victory was clear. In the final
count he had 39 percent of the total popular vote, the smallest plurality ever,
but he won a clear majority (180 votes) in the Electoral College. He carried
every one of the eighteen free states, and by a margin wide enough to elect
him even if the votes for the other candidates had been combined. But
hidden in the balloting was an ominous development: for the first time,
a president had been elected by a clear sectional vote. Among the four candi-
dates, only Douglas had won electoral votes from both slave and free states,
but his total of 12 was but a pitiful remnant of Democratic unionism. Bell
took Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee for 39 votes, and Breckinridge swept
the other slave states to come in second with 72.

T H E R E S P O N S E I N T H E S O U T H Lincoln’s election convinced many

white southerners that their only choice was secession, which would likely
lead to war. In their view, the “Black Republican,” as they called Lincoln, was
determined to end slavery. Many slaves believed the same thing. News of the
election circulated “like a whirlwind” throughout the African American
community. Some interpreted the election results as ensuring their freedom.
On a plantation near Petersburg, Virginia, south of Richmond, seventeen
slaves responded to the news of Lincoln’s election by declaring their inde-
pendence and walking to freedom. A slave in Louisiana who did the same
told his captors in late May 1861 that “the North was fighting for the
Negroes now and that he was as free as his master.” Some slave owners
viewed such efforts by slaves to seize their freedom as pathetic evidence of
their misreading of the political process. A Louisiana planter reported that
“the Negroes have gotten a confused idea of Lincoln’s Congress meeting and
of the war; they think it is all to help them and they expected for ‘something
to turn up.’”

S E C E S S I O N O F T H E D E E P S O U T H S TAT E S Between November 8,

1860, when Lincoln was elected, and March 4, 1861, when he was inaugu-
rated, the United States of America disintegrated. Soon after Lincoln’s elec-
tion, the South Carolina legislature called for a state secession convention to
meet in December to remove the slave state from the Union. The coastal
642 • T HE G ATHERING S TORM (CH. 15)

state had a higher percentage of slaves in its population (60 percent) than
any other state, and its political leadership was dominated by firebrands. It
had been a one-party state for decades, and it was the only state of the then
thirty-three states that did not allow its citizens to vote in presidential elec-
tions; the state legislature did the balloting. Meeting in Charleston on
December 20, 1860, the special state convention, most of whose 169 dele-
gates were slave owners, unanimously endorsed an Ordinance of Secession,
explaining that a purely sectional (Republican) party had elected to the pres-
idency a man “whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery,” who had
declared “government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free” and
that slavery “is in the course of ultimate extinction.” In a letter to a
friend, South Carolina U.S. Sena-
tor James H. Hammond declared
that his beloved state did “not
wish to create a Republican
Nationality for herself indepen-
dent of her southern sister states.
What she desires is a Slaveholding
Confederacy and to exemplify to
the world the perfection of our
civilization. . . .” Two days after
South Carolina seceded, President
Lincoln told Georgian Alexander
Stephens, soon to become the vice
president of the Confederacy, that
southerners had no need to worry
that he would interfere with slav-
ery in the South: he was opposed
to slavery, but he was not an abo-
litionist. But many southerners
were not convinced by such presi-
dential promises.
By February 1, 1861, Missis-
sippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia,
Louisiana, and Texas had also
seceded. Three days later, represen-
tatives of the seven seceding states
“The Union Is Dissolved!” met in Montgomery, Alabama,
A handbill announcing South Carolina’s where they adopted a provisional
secession from the Union. constitution for the Confederate
 The Center Comes Apart • 643

WASHINGTON
TERRITORY NH 5
ME
UNORG. VT 5 8
OR TERR. MN
3 4 NY MA 13
NEBRASKA WI MI
TERRITORY 5 6 35
RI 4
IA PA 3 CT 6
UTAH 4 27
OH 4 NJ
TERRITORY IL IN 23
CA 11 13 DE 3
4 KANSAS VA MD 8
MO 15
TERRITORY 9 KY 12
NC
NEW MEXICO UNORG. TN 12 10
TERR. AR SC
TERRITORY 4 8
MS AL GA
7 9 10
TX
4 LA
6
FL
3

THE ELECTION OF 1860 Electoral Vote Popular Vote

Abraham Lincoln 180 1,866,000
(Republican)
Stephen A. Douglas 12 1,383,000
(Democrat—northern)
John C. Breckinridge 72 848,000
(Democrat—southern)
John Bell 39 593,000
(Constitutional Union)

What caused the division in the Democratic party? How did Abraham Lincoln posi-
tion himself to win the Republican nomination? What were the major factors that
led to Lincoln’s electoral victory?

States of America, and two days later they elected Mississippi’s Jefferson Davis
as president. He was inaugurated on February 18, with Alexander H. Stephens
of Georgia as vice president. Stephens left no doubt about why the Confederacy
was formed. “Our new government,” he declared, “is founded upon . . . the great
truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination
to the superior [white] race, is his natural and normal condition.”
In all seven Deep South states, a solid majority had voted for secessionist
delegates, but their combined vote would not have been a majority of the
presidential vote in November. What happened was what often happens in
644 • T HE G ATHERING S TORM (CH. 15)

revolutionary situations: a determined group of secessionists acted quickly

in an emotionally charged climate and carried out its program over the weak
objections of a confused, indecisive opposition.

B U C H A NA N ’ S WA I T I N G G A M E History is full of might-have-beens.

A bold stroke, even a bold statement, by the lame-duck president at this
point might have changed the course of events by slowing the momentum
of secession. But James Buchanan lacked boldness. He was weary and irres-
olute. Besides, he feared that a bold stroke might have hastened the conflict. No
bold stroke came from Lincoln either, nor would he consult with the Buchanan
administration during the months before his inauguration on March 4. He
inclined all too strongly to the belief that the secessionists were bluffing. In
public he maintained a stately silence about the secession crisis.
In his annual message on December 3, President Buchanan criticized
northern agitators for trying to interfere with “slavery in the southern
states.” He then declared that secession was illegal but that he lacked the con-
stitutional authority to coerce a state to rejoin the Union. The president reaf-
firmed his duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” insofar as
he was able. If the president could enforce the law upon all citizens, he would
have no need to “coerce” a state. Indeed, his position became the policy of
the Lincoln administration, which ended up fighting a civil war on the the-
ory that individuals, but not states, were in rebellion.
The feckless Buchanan held firm to his timidity as 1860 came to a close.
Meanwhile, the secessionists seized federal property, arsenals, and forts. And
many southerners holding federal government posts in the South resigned.
Fort Sumter, guarding the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina, was
commanded by Major Robert Anderson, a Kentucky Unionist, when South
Carolina secessionists demanded withdrawal of all federal forces. President
Buchanan rejected South Carolina’s ultimatum. He dispatched a steamer,
Star of the West, to Fort Sumter with reinforcements and provisions. As the
ship approached Charleston Harbor, Confederate cannons opened fire on
January 9, 1861, and drove it away. It was in fact an act of war, but Buchanan
chose to ignore the challenge. He decided instead to hunker down and ride
out the remaining weeks of his term, hoping against hope that one of several
compromise efforts would prevail.

F I N A L E F F O R T S AT C O M P R O M I S E Amid the confusion and tur-

moil of the secession fever, members of Congress made desperate efforts at a
compromise that would avoid a civil war. On December 18, 1860, Senator
John J. Crittenden of Kentucky had proposed a series of amendments and
 The Center Comes Apart • 645

resolutions that allowed for slavery in the territories south of the 36°30′ par-
allel and guaranteed the maintenance of slavery where it already existed.
Meanwhile, a peace conference met at Willard’s Hotel in Washington, D.C.,
in February 1861. Twenty-one states sent delegates. Former president John
Tyler presided, but the convention’s proposal, substantially the same as the
Crittenden Compromise, failed to win the support of either house of Con-
gress. The only proposal that met with any success was a constitutional
amendment guaranteeing slavery where it existed. Many Republicans,
including Lincoln, were prepared to go that far to save the Union, but they
were unwilling to repudiate their principled stand against extending slavery
into the western territories. As it happened, after passing the House, the slav-
ery amendment passed the Senate without a vote to spare, by 24 to 12, on the
dawn of Lincoln’s inauguration day. It would have become the Thirteenth
Amendment, with the first use of the word slavery in the Constitution, but
the states never ratified it. When a Thirteenth Amendment was ratified, in
1865, it did not guarantee slavery—it abolished it.
As President Lincoln officially assumed his presidential duties in March
1861, the United States was a nation teetering on the edge of self-destruction,
hurtling toward civil war and hobbled by the burden of slavery, an institution
in which the South had invested its future and tied its fate. The irony was
tragic, for southerners refused to see that slavery was invested with both
horrific evils and likely extinction.
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Free-Soil Coalition David Wilmot’s declaration that the Mexican territories

had been free and therefore should remain so attracted a broad coalition of
Americans, including many northern Democrats and anti-slavery Whigs, as well
as members of the new Liberty party. Like the Wilmot Proviso, the Free-Soil
party demanded that slavery not be expanded to the territories.
• California Statehood Californians wanted their territory to enter the Union as
a free state. Southerners feared that they would lose federal protection of their
“peculiar institution” if more free states than slave states emerged. Whereas
Senator John C. Calhoun maintained that slavery could not constitutionally
be banned in any of the territories, anti-slavery forces demanded that all the
territories remain free.
• Compromise of 1850 It had been agreed that popular sovereignty would settle
the status of the territories, but when the territories applied for statehood, the
debate over slavery was renewed. The Compromise of 1850 was the result of the
impassioned debate over whether to allow slavery in the territories gained from
Mexico, which had banned slavery. By the Compromise of 1850, California
entered the Union as a free state, the territories of Texas, New Mexico, and Utah
were established without direct reference to slavery, the slave trade (but not
slavery itself) was banned in Washington, D.C., and a new, stronger Fugitive
Slave Act was passed.
• Kansas-Nebraska Act The proposal to overturn the Missouri Compromise by
opening to slavery the territories north of 36°30′ outraged the nation’s growing
anti-slavery faction. The Kansas-Nebraska Act destroyed the Whig party, limited
the influence of the Democrats, and led to the creation of the Republican party,
which absorbed many Free-Soilers and Know-Nothings.
• Southern Secession The Democrats’ split into northern and southern factions
contributed to the success of Abraham Lincoln and the new Republican party in
the election of 1860. The Republicans’ victory was the immediate cause of
secession. Southerners, reeling from John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry,
equated anti-slavery violence with the Republican party. More important, the
Republican victory showed that the South no longer had enough votes in
Congress to protect its “peculiar institution.”
 CHRONOLOGY

1848

1853
Free-Soil party is organized
California gold rush begins
With the Gadsden Purchase, the United States acquires
thirty thousand square miles from Mexico
1854 Congress passes the Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Republican party is founded
1856 A pro-slavery mob sacks Lawrence, Kansas; John Brown
stages the Pottawatomie Massacre in retaliation
Charles Sumner of Massachusetts is caned and seriously
injured by a pro-slavery congressman in the U.S. Senate
1857 U.S. Supreme Court issues the Dred Scott decision
Lecompton Constitution declares that slavery will be
allowed in Kansas
1858 Abraham Lincoln debates Stephen A. Douglas during the
1858 Illinois Senate race
October 1859 John Brown and his followers stage raid at Harpers Ferry,
Virginia, in an attempt to incite a massive slave insurrection
December 1860 South Carolina secedes from the Union
Crittenden Compromise is proposed

KEY TERMS & NAMES

Wilmot Proviso p. 601 Stephen A. Douglas p. 612 Dred Scott v. Sandford
p. 628
secession p. 602 Fugitive Slave Act p. 614
Abraham Lincoln p. 633
popular sovereignty p. 603 Kansas-Nebraska Act p. 618
Lincoln-Douglas debates
Free-Soil party p. 604 John Brown p. 624 p. 633
Compromise of 1850 p. 609 Pottawatomie Massacre Freeport Doctrine p. 634
p. 624

16
THE WAR OF THE UNION

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• What events led to the firing of the first shots of the Civil War?
• What were the major strategies of the Civil War?
• How did the war affect the home front in both the North and
the South?
• What were the reasons for the Emancipation Proclamation?
• How did most enslaved people become free in the United States?

I n mid-February 1861, Abraham Lincoln boarded a train in

Springfield, Illinois, for a long, roundabout trip to Washington,
D.C., for his presidential inauguration. Along the way, he told
the New Jersey legislature that he was “devoted to peace” but warned that
“it may be necessary to put the foot down.” At the end of the weeklong jour-
ney, Lincoln reluctantly yielded to threats against his life. Accompanied by
his bodyguards, he passed unnoticed on a night train through Baltimore and
slipped into Washington, D.C., before daybreak on February 23, 1861.

THE END OF THE WA I T I N G G A M E

In early 1861, as the possibility of civil war captured the attention of a

divided nation, no one imagined that a prolonged conflict of horrendous
scope and intensity lay ahead. On both sides, people mistakenly assumed
that if fighting erupted, it would be over quickly and that their daily lives
would go on as usual. The new president of the United States still sought
peace.
 The End of the Waiting Game • 649

L I N C O L N ’ S I N AU G U R AT I O N In his March 4 inaugural address, the

fifty-two-year-old Lincoln repeated his pledge not “to interfere with the
institution of slavery in the states where it exists.” But the immediate ques-
tion facing the nation and the new president had shifted from slavery to
secession. Most of the speech emphasized Lincoln’s view that “the Union of
these States is perpetual.” No state, Lincoln insisted, “can lawfully get out of
the Union.” He pledged to defend federal forts in the South, collect taxes,
and deliver the mail unless repelled, but beyond that “there will be no inva-
sion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere.” In the final
paragraph of the speech, Lincoln appealed for regional harmony:

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be

enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of
affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield
and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad
land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely
they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Southerners were not impressed with Lincoln’s eloquence. The next day a
North Carolina newspaper warned that Lincoln’s inauguration made civil
war “inevitable.”
Lincoln not only entered the White House amid the gravest crisis yet faced
by a president, but he also confronted unusual problems of transition. The
new president displayed his remarkable magnanimity in making his cabinet
appointments. Four of the seven cabinet members had been his rivals for the
presidency: William H. Seward at the State Department, Salmon P. Chase at
the Treasury Department, Simon Cameron at the War Department, and
Edward Bates as attorney general. Four were former Democrats, and three
were former Whigs. They formed a group of better-than-average ability,
though most were so strong-minded they thought themselves better quali-
fied to lead than Lincoln. Only later did they acknowledge with Seward that
Lincoln “is the best man among us.” Throughout the Civil War, the leaders of
the young Republican party remained a fragile coalition of former Whigs,
Democrats, immigrants, conservatives, moderates, and radicals. One of Lin-
coln’s greatest challenges was to hold such a diverse coalition together amid
the pressures of a ghastly civil war.

T H E FA L L O F F O R T S U M T E R On March 5, 1861, President Lincoln

began his first day in office by reading a letter from South Carolina revealing
that time was running out for the federal troops at Fort Sumter in
650 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

War begins
An interior view of the ruins of Fort Sumter.

Charleston Harbor. Major Robert Anderson, the commander, reported that

they had enough supplies for only a month to six weeks, and Confederates
were encircling the fort with a “ring of fire.” On April 4, 1861, Lincoln faced
his first major crisis as president. Most of his cabinet members and senior
military officers urged him to withdraw the troops from Fort Sumter to pre-
serve peace. Lincoln, however, believed that giving up Fort Sumter would
mean giving up the Union. So he ordered that ships be sent to Charleston to
resupply the sixty-nine federal soldiers at Fort Sumter. On April 9, President
Jefferson Davis and his Confederate cabinet in Montgomery, Alabama,
decided to oppose Lincoln’s effort to resupply the fort.
On April 11 the Confederate general Pierre G. T. Beauregard, a dapper
Louisiana native who had studied the use of artillery under Robert Anderson
at West Point, repeated the demand that Fort Sumter surrender. Anderson,
his former professor, refused. At four-thirty on the morning of April 12, the
Confederate shelling of Fort Sumter began. After some thirty-four hours, his
ammunition exhausted, the outgunned Anderson lowered the flag on April 13.
The fall of Fort Sumter started the Civil War and ignited a wave of bravado
across the Confederate states. A southern woman prayed that God would
“give us strength to conquer them, to exterminate them, to lay waste every
Northern city, town and village, to destroy them utterly.”
The guns of Charleston signaled the end of the waiting game. The
New York poet Walt Whitman wrote that the Confederate “firing on the flag”
at Fort Sumter generated a “volcanic upheaval” in the North. On April 15,
Lincoln called upon the loyal states to supply seventy-five thousand mili-
 The End of the Waiting Game • 651

tiamen to subdue the rebellious states. Volunteers flocked to military

recruiting stations on both sides. On April 19, Lincoln ordered a naval
blockade of southern ports, which, as the Supreme Court later ruled, con-
firmed the existence of war. Federal ships closed the Mississippi River to
commerce while naval squadrons cordoned off the southern ports along the
Atlantic coast and Gulf of Mexico. The massive naval operation quickly
choked off southern commercial activity. Shortages of basic commodities
generated a dramatic inflation in the prices of foodstuffs in the Confederacy.
By the spring of 1863, prices for food were rising 10 percent a month.

T H E C AU S E S O F WA R Many southerners, then and since, have argued

that the Civil War was fought on behalf of states’ rights rather than slavery. In
this view, South Carolina and the other states had a constitutional right to
secede from the Union to protect their sovereign rights, including the right to
own slaves and to transport them into the western territories. To be sure,
southerners had many grievances against the North. Southerners had long
claimed that federal tariffs and taxes discriminated against their region. With
the election of the Republican Lincoln, they were convinced that the federal
government would continue to “oppress” them and abridge their “states’
rights.” One of those “rights” was the right to secede from the Union. Southern
leaders argued that the 1787 federal constitution created a “compact” among
the original thirteen states, all of which thereafter retained their sovereign
rights, including the right to leave the Union.
To argue that the Civil War was primarily a defense of liberty and the right
of self-government, however, ignores the actual reasons that southern lead-
ers used in 1860–1861 to justify secession and war. In 1860, for example,
William Preston, a prominent South Carolina leader, declared: “Cotton is
not our king—slavery is our king. Slavery is our truth. Slavery is our divine
right.” The South Carolina Declaration on the Immediate Causes of Seces-
sion highlighted “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding
states to the institution of slavery.” Yes, southerners asserted their constitu-
tional right to secede from the Union, but it was the passionate desire to
preserve slavery that led southern leaders to make such constitutional argu-
ments. It is inconceivable that the South would have seceded from the Union
in 1860–1861 had there been no institution of slavery. As Abraham Lincoln
noted in his second inaugural address, everyone knew that slavery “was
somehow the cause of the war.”

TA K I N G S I D E S The fall of Fort Sumter prompted four more southern

states to join the Confederacy. Virginia acted first. Its convention passed an
 652 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

PA NJ
IN OHIO MD
ILLINOIS DE
KANSAS WV VA
TERRITORY MISSOURI April 17,
1861
KENTUCKY
NC
TENNESSEE May 20,
UNORGANIZED May 7, 1861 1861
TERRITORY AR
May 6, SC
1861 Dec. 20,
AL 1860
MS GEORGIA
Jan. 11, Jan. 19, 1861
Jan. 9, 1861
TEXAS 1861
Feb. 1, 1861
LOUISIANA
Jan. 26, 1861
FLORIDA
Jan. 10, 1861

SECESSION, 1860–1861
States seceding before Fort
Sumter’s surrender
MEXICO States seceding after Fort
Sumter’s surrender
Slave states adhering to the Union
0 100 200 Miles Free states and territories adhering
to the Union
0 100 200 Kilometers

Why did South Carolina and six other states secede from the Union before the siege
at Fort Sumter? Why did secession not win unanimous approval in Tennessee and
Virginia? How did Lincoln keep Missouri and Kentucky in the Union?

Ordinance of Secession on April 17. The following month, the Confederate

Congress in Montgomery voted to move the new nation’s capital from
Montgomery, Alabama, to much larger Richmond, Virginia (Alabama,
Mississippi, and South Carolina voted against the move). Three other states
quickly followed Virginia in seceding: Arkansas on May 6, Tennessee on
May 7, and North Carolina on May 20. All four of the holdout states, espe-
cially Tennessee and Virginia, had areas (mainly in the mountains) where
slaves were scarce and Union support ran strong. In east Tennessee, the
mountain counties would supply more volunteers to the Union than to the
Confederate cause. Unionists in western Virginia, bolstered by a Union army
from Ohio, organized a loyal government of Virginia that formed a new
state. In 1863, Congress admitted West Virginia to the Union with a consti-
tution that provided for gradual emancipation of the few slaves there.
 The End of the Waiting Game • 653

Of the other “border” slave states, Delaware remained firmly in the

Union, but Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri went through bitter struggles
to decide which side to support. The secession of Maryland would have iso-
lated Washington, D.C., within the Confederacy. To hold on to that crucial
state, Lincoln took drastic measures of dubious legality: he suspended the
writ of habeas corpus (under which judges can require arresting officers to
produce their prisoners and justify their arrest) and ordered federal troops
to arrest pro-Confederate leaders, including Baltimore’s mayor and chief
of police, as well as state legislators. The fall elections ended the threat of
Maryland’s secession by returning a solidly Unionist majority in the state.
Kentucky, native state of both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, har-
bored divided loyalties. Its fragile neutrality lasted until September 3, when a
Confederate force occupied several towns. General Ulysses S. Grant then
moved Union soldiers into Paducah. Thereafter, Kentucky, though divided
in allegiance, for the most part remained with the Union. It joined the Con-
federacy, some have said, only after the war.
Lincoln’s effort to hold a middle course in the border state of Missouri
ran afoul of the maneuvers of less patient men in the state. Elections for a
statewide convention brought an overwhelming Unionist victory, while a
pro-Confederate militia under the slaveholding state governor gathered near
St. Louis, a bustling city at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi
Rivers. St. Louis hosted a large ethnic population of Americans born in
Germany and Central Europe, most of whom were Roman Catholics
intensely opposed to slavery and the Confederacy. Many of the Germans
were refugees from the failed 1848 revolution against the monarchs of the
German Confederation. One of several German-language newspapers in St.
Louis said that the “great goal of mankind—the demand for freedom—will
rise ever more glorious and flow like gold in the heat from the fire of battle.”
When news that the Civil War had begun reached Missouri, 4,200 men vol-
unteered to joined the Union army; all but one hundred of them were German
Americans. One of them pledged that they were “eager to teach the German-
haters a never-to-be-forgotten lesson.” The combative, pro-secession governor
promised to “stand by the South.” Missouri’s secessionist militia, “the
grimmest of German-haters,” hoped to gain control of the federal arsenal in
St. Louis, which contained sixty thousand muskets and massive amounts of
gunpowder and cartridges. On May 10, however, the German-born Unionists
surprised and disarmed the outnumbered rebel militia. They then pursued the
governor, most of the state legislators, and the pro-Confederate forces into the
southwestern part of the state, finally breaking their resistance at the Battle of
Pea Ridge (March 6–8, 1862), just over the state line in Arkansas. Thereafter, a
654 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

ceaseless, brutal civil war continued in Missouri, pitting against each other
rival bands of gunslingers who kept up their vengeful guerrilla feuding, ban-
ditry, and atrocities for years after the war was over.

C H O O S I N G S I D E S The Civil War affected everyone—men and women,

white and black, immigrants and Native Americans, free and enslaved. In
1861 the philosopher-poet Ralph Waldo Emerson said that the Civil War “has
assumed such huge proportions that it threatens to engulf us all—no preoc-
cupation can exclude it, & no hermitage hide us.” Those already serving in the
U.S. Army faced an agonizing choice: which side to support. Virginian
Robert E. Lee’s decision to join the Confederacy epitomized the choice. The
son of Light-Horse Harry Lee, a Revolutionary War hero, and married to a
descendant of Martha Washington’s, Lee had served in the U.S. Army for
thirty years. When Fort Sumter was attacked, he was summoned by General
Winfield Scott, another Virginian, and offered command of the federal
forces. After a sleepless night spent pacing the floor, Lee told Scott that he
could not go against his “country,” meaning Virginia. Although the slavehold-
ing Lee failed to “see the good of secession,” he could not “raise my hand
against my birthplace, my home, my children.” So Lee resigned his U.S. Army
commission, retired to his slave-dependent Arlington estate across the
Potomac River from Washington, D.C., and soon answered a call to the
Virginia—later the Confederate—army.
On the eve of the Civil War, the U.S. Army was small, comprising only 16,400
men, about 1,000 of whom were officers. Of these, about 25 percent, like
Robert E. Lee, resigned to join the Confederate army. On the other hand, many
southerners made great sacrifices to remain loyal to the Union. Some left their
native region once the fighting began; others remained in the South but found
ways to support the Union. In every Confederate state except South Carolina,
whole regiments were organized to fight for the Union. Some 100,000 men
from the southern states fought against the Confederacy. One out of every five
soldiers from Arkansas killed in the war fought on the Union side.

THE BALANCE OF FORCE

Shrouded in an ever-thickening mist of larger-than-life mythology, the

Union triumph in the Civil War has acquired an aura of inevitability.
The Confederacy’s fight for independence, on the other hand, has taken on the
aura of a romantic lost cause, doomed from the start by the region’s sparse
industrial development, smaller pool of able-bodied men, paucity of gold
 The Balance of Force • 655

and warships, and spotty transportation network. But in 1861, the military
situation did not seem so clear-cut by any means. For all of the South’s obvious
disadvantages, it initially enjoyed a huge captive labor force (slaves) and the
benefits of fighting a defensive campaign on familiar territory. Jefferson Davis
and other Confederate leaders were confident that their cause would prevail.
The outcome of the Civil War was not inevitable: it was determined as much
by human decisions and human willpower as by physical resources.

R E G I O N A L A D VA N TA G E S The South seceded in part out of a grow-

ing awareness of its minority status in the nation; a balance sheet of the
regions in 1861 shows the accuracy of that perception. The Union held
twenty-three states, including four border slave states, while the Confeder-
acy included eleven states. The population count was about 22 million in the
Union to 9 million in the Confederacy, and about 4 million of the latter were
enslaved African Americans. The Union therefore had an edge of about four
to one in human resources. To help redress the imbalance, the Confederacy
mobilized 80 percent of its military-age white men, a third of whom would
die during the prolonged war.
An even greater advantage for the North was its industrial development.
The southern states that formed the Confederacy produced just 7 percent of
the nation’s manufactured goods on the eve of the war. The Union states

The U.S. Watervliet Arsenal in Watervliet, New York

The North had an advantage in industrial development, and its foundries turned
out most of the nation’s firearms.
656 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

produced 97 percent of the firearms and 96 percent of the railroad equip-

ment. The North’s advantage in transportation weighed heavily as the war
went on. The Union had more wagons, horses, and ships than the Confeder-
acy and an impressive edge in the number of railroad locomotives.
As the Civil War began, the Confederacy enjoyed a major geographic
advantage: it could fight a defensive war on its own territory. In addition, the
South had more experienced military leaders. Some of those advantages
were soon countered, however, by the Union navy’s blockade of the major
southern ports. On the inland waters, Federal gunboats and transports
played an even more direct role in securing the Union’s control of the
Mississippi River and its larger tributaries, which provided easy invasion
routes into the center of the Confederacy.

T H E W A R ’ S E A R LY C O U R S E

After the fall of Fort Sumter, partisans on both sides hoped that the war
might end with one sudden bold stroke, the capture of Washington or the fall of
Richmond. Nowhere was this naive optimism more clearly displayed than at
the First Battle of Bull Run (or Manassas).* An overeager public pressured
both sides to strike quickly. Jefferson Davis allowed the battle-hungry General
Beauregard to hurry the main Confederate army to the railroad center at
Manassas Junction, Virginia, about twenty-five miles southwest of Washington.
Lincoln decided that General Irvin McDowell’s hastily assembled Union army
of some 37,000 might overrun the outnumbered Confederates and quickly
march on to Richmond, the Confederate capital.
It was a hot, dry day on July 21, 1861, when McDowell’s raw Union recruits
encountered Beauregard’s army dug in behind a meandering stream called
Bull Run. The two generals, former classmates at West Point, adopted
markedly similar battle plans: each would try to turn the other’s left flank.
The Federals almost achieved their purpose early in the afternoon, but Con-
federate reinforcements, led by General Joseph E. Johnston, poured in to
check the Union offensive. Amid the fury a South Carolina officer rallied his
men by pointing to Thomas Jackson’s brigade: “Look! there is Jackson with
his Virginians, standing like a stone wall!” The reference thereafter served as
“Stonewall” Jackson’s nickname.

*The Federals most often named battles for natural features; the Confederates, for nearby
towns—thus Bull Run (Manassas), Antietam (Sharpsburg), Stones River (Murfreesboro),
and the like.
 The War’s Early Course • 657

0 5 10 Miles M
0 5 10 Kilometers A
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Washington

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Bull Run
Arlington

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THE FIRST BATTLE OF

BULL RUN, JULY 21, 1861
Confederate advance
r
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Union advance
c
ma

Area of map
Union retreat
to
Po

Battle site

Why did the Confederate and Union armies rush to battle before they were ready?
How did General Beauregard win the First Battle of Bull Run? Why did General
Jackson not pursue the Union army?

After McDowell’s last assault faltered, the Union army’s frantic retreat
turned into a panic as fleeing soldiers and terrified civilians clogged the road
to Washington, D.C. An Ohio congressman and several colleagues tried to
rally the frenzied soldiers. “We called them cowards, denounced them in the
most offensive terms, pulled out our heavy revolvers and threatened to shoot
them, but in vain; a cruel, crazy, mad, hopeless panic possessed them.” But the
Confederates were about as disorganized and exhausted by the battle as the
Yankees were, and they failed to give chase.
The Battle of Bull Run was a sobering experience for both sides, each of
which had underrated the other’s strength and tenacity. Much of the
romance—the splendid uniforms, bright flags, rousing songs—gave way to
the agonizing realization that this would be a long, costly struggle. Harper’s
Weekly bluntly warned: “From the fearful day at Bull Run dates war. Not
polite war, not incredulous war, but war that breaks hearts and blights
658 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

homes.” Northerners were quick to blame the inexperienced Lincoln for the
Union defeat. The president’s own secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton, in a
letter to former President Buchanan, declared that the “dreadful disaster” at
Bull Run was the result of Lincoln’s “imbecility.”

T H E WA R ’ S E A R LY P H A S E The Battle of Bull Run demonstrated that

the war would not be decided with one sudden stroke. General Winfield
Scott, the seasoned seventy-five-year-old commander of the Union armies,
had predicted as much, and now Lincoln, a self-taught military strategist with
no military experience, fell back upon Scott’s three-pronged “anaconda”
strategy. It called first for the Union Army of the Potomac to defend Wash-
ington, D.C., and to exert constant pressure on the Confederate capital at
Richmond. At the same time, the Federal navy would blockade the southern
ports and cut off the Confederacy’s access to foreign goods and weapons. The
final component of the plan would divide the Confederacy by invading
the South along the main water routes running from north to south: the
Mississippi, Tennessee, and Cumberland Rivers. This strategy would slowly
entwine and crush the southern resistance, like an anaconda snake strangling
its prey.
The Confederate strategy was simpler. Jefferson Davis was better prepared
than Lincoln at the start of the war to guide military strategy. A graduate of
the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, he had commanded a regiment
during the Mexican War and had served as secretary of war in the Franklin
Pierce administration from 1853 to 1857. If the Union forces could be stale-
mated, Davis and others hoped, then the cotton-hungry British or French
might be persuaded to join their cause, or perhaps public sentiment in the
North would force Lincoln to seek a negotiated settlement. So while armies
were forming in the South, Confederate diplomats were seeking assistance in
London and Paris, and Confederate sympathizers in the North were urging
an end to the Union’s war effort.

C O N F E D E R AT E D I P L O M A C Y While the Union and the Confederate

armies mobilized, Confederate agents in Europe focused on gaining foreign
supplies, diplomatic recognition for their new nation, and perhaps even
European military intervention on their behalf. The “war between the states”
generated intense interest in Great Britain and in Europe. The Civil War
directly affected the British and French economies, created intense political
debates, and inspired many Englishmen to volunteer as soldiers on either
side. The outbreak of the Civil War placed the British government in
a quandary. Confederate leaders threatened to cut off access to southern
 The War’s Early Course • 659

cotton if Britain did not support the rebel cause, while Lincoln, on the other
hand, warned that official recognition of the Confederacy would lead to war
with Britain.
Both the Union and the Confederacy sent agents to influence opinion in
Britain and Europe. The first Confederate emissaries to England and France
were pleased when the British foreign minister agreed to meet with them
after their arrival in London in 1861; they even won a promise from France
to recognize the Confederacy if Britain would lead the way. But the British
foreign minister refused to see the Confederates again, partly in response to
Union pressure and partly out of British self-interest.
One incident early in the war threatened to upset British neutrality. In
November 1861, a Union warship near Cuba stopped a British steamship,
the Trent, and took into custody two Confederate agents, James M. Mason
and John Slidell, who were on their way to London and Paris to seek foreign
assistance. The Trent affair roused a storm of protest in Britain. The British
government condemned the violation of neutral rights and threatened war
with the United States if Mason and Slidell were not freed. Lincoln reluc-
tantly decided to release the two agents. Mason and Slidell were more useful
as martyrs to their own cause than they could ever have been as diplomats in
London and Paris.
Confederate agents in Europe were far more successful in getting sup-
plies than in gaining official recognition of the Confederacy as a sovereign
nation. The most spectacular feat was the purchase of fast warships
designed to attack Union vessels around the world. Although British law
forbade the sale of warships built in Britain to belligerents, a Confederate
commissioner arranged for warships to be built in England and then
armed with cannons in other countries. In all, eighteen such British-built
Confederate warships saw action in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian
Oceans, where they sank hundreds of Union merchant and whaling ships
and terrified the rest.

FORMING ARMIES Once the fighting began, the Federal Congress

recruited five hundred thousand more men and after the Battle of Bull Run
added another five hundred thousand. The nineteenth-century U.S. army
often organized its units along community and ethnic lines. The Union army,
for example, included a Scandinavian regiment (the 15th Wisconsin Infantry),
a Highland Scots unit (the 79th New York Infantry), a French regiment (the
55th New York Infantry), a Polish Legion (the 58th New York Infantry), and a
mixed unit of Poles, Hungarians, Germans, Spaniards, and Italians (the 39th
New York Infantry).
660 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

The U.S. Army recruiting office in City Hall Park, New York City
The sign advertises the money offered to those willing to serve: $677 to new
recruits, $777 to veteran soldiers, and $15 to anyone who brought in a recruit.

In the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis initially called up one hundred thou-

sand twelve-month volunteers. Once the fighting started, he was authorized to
enlist up to four hundred thousand three-year volunteers. Thus, by early 1862
most of the veteran Confederate soldiers were nearing the end of their enlist-
ment without having encountered much significant action. They were also
resisting bonuses and furloughs offered as incentives for reenlistment. The
Confederate government thus turned to conscription. By an act passed on
April 16, 1862, all white male citizens aged eighteen to thirty-five were declared
members of the army for three years, and those already in service were
required to serve out three years. In 1862 the upper age was raised to forty-five,
and in 1864 the age range was further extended from seventeen to fifty.
The Confederate conscription law included two loopholes, however. First, a
draftee might escape service either by providing an able-bodied substitute who
was not of draft age or by paying $500 in cash. Second, exemptions, designed to
protect key civilian work, were subject to abuse by men seeking “bombproof ”
jobs. The exemption from the draft of planters with twenty or more slaves led
to bitter complaints about “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” Equally
galling to many Confederate soldiers was the behavior of wealthy officers who
brought their enslaved servants with them to army camps.
 The War’s Early Course • 661

The Union took nearly another

year to force men into service. In 1863
the government began to draft men
aged twenty to forty-five. Exemptions
were granted to specified federal and
state officeholders and to others on
medical or compassionate grounds.
For $300, one could avoid service.
Widespread public opposition to the
draft impeded its enforcement in both
the North and the South. In New York
City, the announcement of a draft lot-
tery on July 11, 1863, incited a week of
rioting. Roving bands of working-
class toughs, many of them Irish-
Catholic immigrants, took control of
the streets. Although provoked by
feelings that the draft loopholes
catered to the wealthy, the riots also
exposed racial and ethnic tensions. Draft riots
The mobs directed their wrath most This broadside called upon store
furiously at African Americans. They owners to defend their shops during
blamed blacks for causing the war and the New York draft riots of 1863.
for threatening to take their own
unskilled jobs. The violence ran completely out of control; over a hundred
people were killed before five regiments of battle-weary soldiers brought
from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, restored order.

B L AC K S I N T H E S O U T H The outbreak of the Civil War disrupted

everyday life, especially in the South. The white planter-merchant elite
struggled to maintain the traditional social system that sustained the power
of whites over blacks, free people over the enslaved, rich over poor, and men
over women. Initially, most slaves bided their time. Some free blacks, espe-
cially those who had prospered in the Old South, diplomatically volunteered
to assist the Confederate war effort. As the war grew in scope and duration,
however, enslaved African Americans took advantage of the turmoil created
by the war to run away, engage in sabotage, join the Union war effort, or pur-
sue their own interests. A white owner of three plantations in war-ravaged
Tennessee was disgusted by the war’s effect on his slaves, as he confessed in
his diary: “My Negroes all at home, but working only as they see fit, doing
662 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

little.” Some of them had reported that they had “rather serve the federals
rather than work on the farm.” Later, he revealed that with the arrival of
Union armies in the vicinity, his slaves had “stampeded” to join: “Many of
my servants have run away and most of those left had [just] as well be gone,
they being totally demoralized and ungovernable.” Some enslaved blacks
served as spies or guides for Union forces; others escaped to join the Union
army or navy. Union generals whose armies took control of Confederate
areas enlisted escaped slaves to serve as laborers in the camps. In Corinth,
Mississippi, General Grenville Dodge armed a thousand escaped male slaves
to form the 1st Alabama Infantry Regiment of African Descent. The rebel-
lion of southern whites against the Union’s efforts to constrain slavery had
spawned a rebellion of slaves against their white masters.

T H E W E S T A N D T H E C I V I L WA R During the Civil War, western set-

tlement continued. New discoveries of gold and silver in eastern California
and in Montana and Colorado lured thousands of prospectors and their sup-
pliers. New transportation and communication networks emerged to serve
the growing population in the West. Telegraph lines sprouted above the
plains, and stagecoach lines fanned out to serve the new communities.
Dakota, Colorado, and Nevada gained territorial status in 1861, Idaho and
Arizona in 1863, and Montana in 1864. Silver-rich Nevada gained statehood
in 1864.
Once the Civil War began, many of the regular U.S. Army units assigned
to frontier outposts in the West headed east to meet the Confederate threat.
For the most part, the federal government maintained its control of the
western territories during the war. But it was not easy. Fighting in Kansas
and the Indian Territory was widespread. By 1862, Lincoln was forced to
dispatch new units to the West. He had two primary concerns: to protect the
shipments of gold and silver and to win over western political support for
the war and his presidency.
The most intense fighting in the West occurred along the Kansas-
Missouri border. There the disputes between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery
settlers of the 1850s turned into brutal guerrilla warfare. The most prominent
pro-Confederate leader in the area was William Quantrill. He and his pro-
slavery followers, mostly teenagers, fought under a black flag, meaning that
they would kill anyone who surrendered. In destroying Lawrence, Kansas, in
1863, Quantrill ordered his forces to “kill every male and burn every house.”
By the end of the day, 182 boys and men had been killed. Their opponents,
the Jayhawkers, responded in kind. They tortured and hanged pro-Confederate
prisoners, burned houses, and destroyed livestock.
 The War’s Early Course • 663

Many Indian tribes found themselves caught up in the Civil War. Indian
regiments fought on both sides, and in Oklahoma they fought against each
other. Indians among the “Five Civilized Tribes” held African American
slaves and felt a natural bond with southern whites. Oklahoma’s proximity
to Texas influenced the Choctaws and Chickasaws to support the Confeder-
acy. The Cherokees, Creeks, and Seminoles were more divided in their loyal-
ties. For those tribes the Civil War served as a wedge that fractured their
unity. The Cherokees, for example, split in two, some supporting the Union
and others supporting the South.

F I G H T I N G I N T H E W E S T E R N T H E AT E R Little happened of mili-

tary significance in the eastern theater (east of the Appalachians) before
May 1862. On the other hand, the western theater (from the Appalachians to
the Mississippi River) flared up with several encounters and an important
penetration of the Confederate states. In western Kentucky, the Confederate
general Albert Sidney Johnston had perhaps forty thousand men stretched
over some 150 miles. Early in 1862, General Ulysses S. Grant made the first
Union thrust against the weak center of Johnston’s overextended lines. Mov-
ing out of Cairo, Illinois, and Paducah, Kentucky, with a gunboat flotilla, he
swung southward up the Tennessee River and captured Fort Henry in north-
ern Tennessee on February 6. Grant then moved quickly overland to attack
nearby Fort Donelson, where on February 16 a force of twelve thousand
Confederates surrendered. It was the first major Union victory of the war,
and it touched off wild celebrations throughout the North. President
Lincoln’s elation was tempered by the death of his eleven-year-old son
Willie, who succumbed to typhoid fever. The tragedy in the White House
“overwhelmed” the president. It “showed me my weakness as I had never felt
it before,” a grieving Lincoln confessed to a friend.

SHILOH After suffering defeats in Kentucky and Tennessee, the Confed-

erate forces in the western theater regrouped at Corinth, in northern
Mississippi, near the Tennessee border. Ulysses Grant, meanwhile, moved
his Union army southward along the Tennessee River during the early
spring of 1862. Grant then made a costly mistake. While planning his attack
on Corinth, he exposed his forty-two thousand troops on a rolling plateau
between two creeks flowing into the Tennessee River and failed to dig
defensive trenches. General Albert Sidney Johnston shrewdly recognized
Grant’s oversight, and on the morning of April 6 the Kentuckian ordered an
attack on the vulnerable Federals, urging his men to be “worthy of your race
and lineage; worthy of the women of the South.”
 664 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

0 25 50 Miles
CAMPAIGNS IN THE WEST,
FEBRUARY–APRIL 1862 0 25 50 Kilometers

Confederate advance Area of map

Confederate retreat
Union advance
Battle site
Louisville
Main railroad lines INDIANA
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Why was General Grant’s campaign in Kentucky a significant victory for the Union
army? Describe the events at Shiloh. What were the costs to the Union as a result of
the Battle of Shiloh?

The forty-four thousand Confederates struck suddenly at Shiloh, the site

of a log church in the center of the Union camp in southwestern Tennessee.
They found most of Grant’s troops still sleeping or eating breakfast; many
died in their bedrolls. After a day of carnage and confusion, the Union
soldiers were pinned against the river. The Union army might well have been
defeated had General Johnston not been mortally wounded at the peak of
the battle; his second in command called off the attack. Bolstered by rein-
forcements, Grant took the offensive the next day, and the Confederates
glumly withdrew to Corinth, leaving the Union army too battered to pursue.
Casualties on both sides totaled over twenty thousand.
 The War’s Early Course • 665

Shiloh, a Hebrew word meaning “Place of Peace,” was the costliest battle
in which Americans had ever engaged, although worse was yet to come.
Grant observed that the ground was “so covered with dead one could walk
across the field without touching the ground.” Like so many battles there-
after, Shiloh was a story of missed opportunities and debated turning points
punctuated by lucky incidents and accidents. Throughout the Civil War,
winning armies would fail to pursue their retreating foes, thus allowing the
wounded opponent to slip away and fight again.
After the battle at Shiloh, Union General Henry Halleck, already jealous of
Grant’s success, spread the false rumor that Grant had been drinking during
the battle. Some called upon Lincoln to fire Grant, but the president refused:
“I can’t spare this man; he fights.” Halleck, however, took Grant’s place as
field commander, and as a result the Union thrust southward ground to a
halt. For the remainder of 1862, the chief action in the western theater was a
series of inconclusive maneuvers.

MC CLELLAN’S P E N I N S U L A R C A M PA I G N The eastern theater

remained fairly quiet for nine months after the Battle of Bull Run. In the
wake of the Union defeat, Lincoln had replaced McDowell with General
George B. McClellan, Stonewall Jackson’s classmate at West Point. As head of
the Army of the Potomac, the thirty-four-year-old McClellan, handsome and
imperious, set about building a powerful, well-trained army that would be
ready for its next battle. When General Winfield Scott retired in November,
Lincoln appointed McClellan general in chief, inflating his already oversized
ego. McClellan exuded confidence and poise. Yet for all his organizational
ability and dramatic flair, his innate caution would prove crippling. Months
passed while McClellan remained in a state of perpetual preparation, build-
ing and training his massive army to meet the superior numbers he claimed
the Confederates were deploying. Lincoln wanted the army to move directly
toward Richmond, but McClellan, who dismissed the president as a “well-
meaning baboon,” sought to enter Richmond by the side door, so to speak,
up the neck of land between the York and James Rivers, site of Jamestown,
Williamsburg, and Yorktown. Worried that the Union was running out
of money, Lincoln finally lost his vaunted patience and ordered the
timid McClellan to attack: “[You] must strike a blow,” he told his reluctant
commander.
In mid-March 1862, McClellan finally moved his army down the
Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay to the Virginia peninsula southeast
of Richmond. This bold move put the Union forces within sixty miles of the
Confederate capital. Thousands of Richmond residents fled the city in
666 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

Camp Winfield Scott

General George B. McClellan’s headquarters during the siege of Yorktown, 1862.

panic, but McClellan waited to strike, failing to capitalize on his advantages.

As Lincoln told McClellan, the war could be won only by engaging the rebel
army, not by endless maneuvers and efforts to occupy Confederate terri-
tory. “Once more,” Lincoln told his commanding general, “let me tell you, it
is indispensable to you that you strike a blow.”
President Jefferson Davis, at the urging of his adviser Robert E. Lee, sent
Stonewall Jackson’s army into the Shenandoah Valley in western Virginia on
what proved to be a brilliant diversionary action. From March 23 to June 9,
Jackson’s eighteen thousand men pinned down two separate Union armies
with more than twice their numbers in the western Virginia mountains.
While the Union army under General McDowell braced to defend Washing-
ton, D.C., Jackson hastened back to defend Richmond against McClellan’s
advancing army.
On May 31, the Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston struck at
McClellan’s forces along the Chickahominy River. In the Battle of Seven
Pines (Fair Oaks), only the arrival of Federal reinforcements, who somehow
crossed the swollen river, prevented a disastrous Union defeat. Both sides
took heavy casualties, and General Johnston was severely wounded.
At this point, Robert E. Lee assumed command of the Army of Northern
Virginia, a development that changed the course of the war. Tall, erect, and
 The War’s Early Course • 667

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THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN, xR

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1862
Confederate advance
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Union advance Merrimack
Union retreat
0 25 50 Miles Norfolk
Battle site
0 25 50 Kilometers

What was General McClellan’s strategy for attacking Richmond? How did General
Jackson divert the attention of the Union army? Why did President Lincoln demote
McClellan after the Peninsular campaign?

broad shouldered, Lee projected a commanding presence. At the start of the

Civil War, the West Point graduate was considered the most promising army
officer in the United States. Dignified yet fiery, Lee was an audacious com-
mander. He led by example, and his men loved him. Unlike Joseph E. John-
ston, Lee enjoyed Jefferson Davis’s trust. More important, he knew how to
use the talents of his superb field commanders: Thomas “Stonewall” Jack-
son, the pious, fearless mathematics professor from the Virginia Military
668 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

Institute; James Longstreet, Lee’s deliberate but tireless “warhorse”; sharp-

tongued D. H. Hill, the former engineering professor at Davidson College;
Ambrose P. Hill, the consummate fighter who challenged one commander to
a duel and feuded with Stonewall Jackson; and J.E.B. Stuart, the colorful
young cavalryman who once said, “All I ask of fate is that I may be killed
leading a cavalry charge.” He would get his wish.
Once in command, Lee attacked the Union lines east of Richmond but
failed to dislodge them. McClellan’s army remained a threat to Richmond.
On July 9, when Lincoln visited McClellan’s headquarters, the general com-
plained that the administration had failed to support him and instructed the
president at length on military strategy. Such insubordination was ample
reason to remove McClellan. After returning to Washington, Lincoln called
Henry Halleck from the West to take charge as general in chief. Miffed at his
demotion, McClellan angrily dismissed Halleck as an officer “whom I know
to be my inferior.”

S E C O N D B U L L R U N Lincoln and Halleck ordered McClellan to leave

the Virginia peninsula and join the Washington defense force, now under the
command of the bombastic John Pope, who had been called back from
the West for a new overland assault on Richmond. In a letter to his wife,
McClellan predicted that “Pope will be thrashed and disposed of ” by Lee. As
McClellan’s Army of the Potomac began to pull out, Lee moved northward
to strike Pope’s army before McClellan’s troops arrived. Dividing his forces,
Lee sent Jackson’s “foot cavalry” around Pope’s right flank to attack his sup-
ply lines in the rear. At the Second Battle of Bull Run (or Manassas), fought
on almost the same site as the earlier battle, Pope assumed that he faced only
Jackson, but Lee’s main army by that time had joined in. On August 30, a
crushing Confederate attack on Pope’s flank drove the Federals from the
field. After learning about the disaster by telegram, Lincoln told his secre-
tary: “Well John we are whipped again, I am afraid.” In the next few days the
Union forces pulled back to Washington, D.C., where McClellan once again
took command and reorganized. He displayed his unflagging egotism in a
letter to his wife: “Again I have been called upon to save the country.” The
disgraced General Pope was dispatched to Minnesota to fight Indians.

S L AV E S I N T H E WA R The Confederate victories in 1862 devastated

Northern morale and convinced Lincoln that bolder steps would be required
to win the war over an enemy fighting for and aided by enslaved labor. Now
the North had to assault slavery itself. Once fighting began in 1861, the
Union’s need to hold the border slave states dictated caution on the volatile
 The War’s Early Course • 669

issue of emancipation. Beyond that, several other considerations deterred

action. For one, Lincoln had to contend with a deep-seated racial prejudice
in the North. While most abolitionists promoted both complete emancipa-
tion and the social integration of the races, many anti-slavery activists
wanted slavery prohibited only in the new western territories and states.
They were willing to allow slavery to continue in the South and were
opposed to racial integration. Though committed to the view that the rebel-
lious states remained legally in the Union, Lincoln himself harbored doubts
about his constitutional authority to emancipate slaves. The only way around
the problem would be to justify emancipation as a military necessity.
The expanding war forced the issue. As Federal forces pushed into the
Confederacy, fugitive slaves began to turn up in Union army camps, and the
army commanders did not know whether to declare them free. One Union
general designated the fugitive slaves “contraband of war,” and thereafter the
slaves who sought protection and freedom with Union forces were known as
“contrabands.” Some Union officers put the contrabands to work digging
trenches and building fortifications; others set them free. Lincoln, mean-
while, began to edge toward emancipation. On April 16, 1862, he signed an
act that abolished slavery in the District of Columbia; on June 19, another
act excluded slavery from the western territories, without offering owners
compensation. A Second Confiscation Act, passed on July 17, liberated slaves
held by anyone aiding the rebellion. Still another act forbade the army to
help return runaways to their border-state owners.
Lincoln’s paramount goal in conducting the Civil War was to preserve the
Union. Like most northerners, he was more determined to end secession
than to end slavery. But the course of the war changed Lincoln’s outlook.
During 1862, he decided that emancipation of slaves in the Confederate
states was necessary to win the war. Millions of enslaved laborers were being
used to bolster the Rebel war effort. Moreover, sagging morale in the North
needed the boost of a moral cause, and public opinion was swinging toward
emancipation as the war dragged on. Proclaiming a war on slavery, more-
over, would end forever any chance that France or Britain would support the
Confederacy. In July 1862, Lincoln confided to his cabinet that he had
decided to issue a proclamation freeing the slaves in Confederate-controlled
areas. “Decisive and extreme measures must be adopted,” he explained.
Emancipation was “a military necessity, absolutely necessary to the preserva-
tion of the Union. We must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued.” Secre-
tary of State William H. Seward concurred, but he advised Lincoln to delay
the announcement until after a Union victory on the battlefield in order to
avoid any semblance of desperation.
670 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

A N T I E TA M Robert E. Lee made a momentous decision in the summer of

1862: he would invade the North and perhaps thereby gain foreign recogni-
tion and military supplies for the Confederacy. In September 1862, he and his
battle-tested troops pushed north into western Maryland headed for Penn-
sylvania. The Rebel army encountered Union forces at Antietam Creek near
Sharpsburg, Maryland. On September 17, 1862, the Union and Confederate
armies commenced the furious Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg). Outnum-
bered more than two to one, the Confederates forced a standoff in the most
costly day of the Civil War. The next day the battered Confederates slipped
south across the Potomac River to the safety of Virginia. General Lee’s north-
ern invasion had failed. McClellan called the Battle of Antietam “the most
terrible battle of the age.” It was the bloodiest single day in American history.
Some 6,400 soldiers on both sides were killed, and another 17,000 were
wounded. A Union officer counted “hundreds of dead bodies lying in
rows and in piles.” The scene was “sickening, harrowing, horrible. O what a
terrible sight!”
President Lincoln was pleased that Lee’s army had been forced to retreat,
but he was disgusted by General McClellan’s failure to gain a truly decisive
victory by staying engaged with the retreating Confederates. The president
sent a curt message to the general: “I have just read your dispatch about sore-
tongued and fatigued horses. Will you pardon me for asking what the horses

The early campaigns

Abraham Lincoln and George B. McClellan confer at Antietam, October 4, 1862.
 The War’s Early Course • 671

of your army have done . . . that fatigues anything?” Failing to receive a satis-
factory answer, Lincoln relieved McClellan of his command of the Army of
the Potomac and assigned him to recruiting duty in New Jersey. Never again
would he command troops.

FREDERICKSBURG The Battle of Antietam was significant on many

levels. It revived sagging northern morale, emboldened Abraham Lincoln to
issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves in the Confed-
erate states, and dashed the Confederacy’s hopes of foreign recognition. Yet
the war was far from over. In his search for a fighting general, Lincoln now
made the worst choice of all. He turned to Ambrose E. Burnside, who had
twice before turned down the job on the grounds that he felt unfit for so
large a command. But if the White House wanted him to fight, he would
attack, even in the face of the oncoming winter. Burnside was an eager
fighter and a poor strategist. He was said to possess “ten times as much heart
as he has head.”
On December 13, 1862, Burnside foolishly sent the 122,000 men in the
Army of the Potomac west across the icy Rappahannock River to assault
Lee’s forces, who were well entrenched on ridges and behind stone walls west
of Fredericksburg, Virginia, between Richmond and Washington, D.C.
Confederate artillery and muskets chewed up the advancing blue columns as
they crossed a mile of open land outside the town. It was, a Federal general
sighed, “a great slaughter-pen.” The scene was both awful and awesome,
prompting Lee to remark, “It is well that war is so terrible—we should grow
too fond of it.” After taking more than twelve thousand casualties, compared
with fewer than six thousand for the Confederates, General Burnside wept as
he gave the order to withdraw.
The year 1862 ended with forces in the East deadlocked and the Union
advance in the West stalled since midyear. Union morale plummeted: northern
Democrats were calling for a negotiated peace. Republicans—even Lincoln’s
own cabinet members—grew increasingly fierce in their criticism of the presi-
dent. Lincoln referred to the mounting dissension as being a “fire in the rear.”
General Burnside, too, was under fire, with some of his own officers ready to
testify publicly to his shortcomings.
But amid the dissension, the deeper currents of the war were turning in favor
of the Union: in the lengthening war, the North’s superior resources turned the
tide. In both the eastern and the western theaters the Confederate counterat-
tack had been repulsed. And while the armies clashed, Lincoln, by the stroke of
a pen, changed the conflict from a war to restore the Union to a struggle to end
slavery. On January 1, 1863, he signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
672 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

CAMPAIGNS IN VIRGINIA
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How did the Confederate army defeat General Pope at the Second
Battle of Bull Run? Why was General Burnside’s decision to attack
at Fredericksburg a mistake?

E M A N C I PAT I O N

On September 22, 1862, five days after Lee’s Confederate army had
been forced to retreat from Maryland, Lincoln issued a proclamation in
which he repeated that his goal was mainly to restore the Union and that he
 Emancipation • 673

Contrabands
Former slaves on a farm in Cumberland Landing, Virginia, 1862.

favored proposals for paying slaveholders for their losses. He promised that
if the southern states abandoned secession and returned to the Union, they
could retain their slaves (none accepted the offer). But the essential message
of the document was his warning that on January 1, 1863, all slaves in the
Rebel states would be “forever free.” On January 1, 1863, Lincoln urged
blacks to abstain from violence except in self-defense, and he added that free
blacks would now be received into the armed services of the United States.
As he wrote his name on the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln said,
“I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing the right thing than
I do in signing this paper.”

R E A C T I O N S T O E M A N C I PAT I O N Among the Confederate states,

Tennessee and the Union-controlled parts of Virginia and Louisiana were
exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation. Thus no slaves who were
within Union lines at the time were freed. But many enslaved African
Americans living in those areas claimed their freedom anyway. The African
American abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass was overjoyed at Lincoln’s
“righteous decree.” By contrast, Democratic newspapers in the North sav-
agely attacked the proclamation, calling it dictatorial, unconstitutional, and
catastrophic.

B L AC K S I N T H E M I L I TA RY Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation

sparked new efforts to organize all-black Union military units. Frederick Doug-
lass stressed that military service was the best route for African Americans
674 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

Two views of the Emancipation Proclamation

The Union view (top) shows a thoughtful Lincoln composing the proclamation, the
Constitution and the Holy Bible in his lap. The Confederate view (bottom) shows a
demented Lincoln, his foot on the Constitution and his inkwell held by the devil.
 Emancipation • 675

to gain the rights of citizenship. Once a black man enlisted in the Union
army, he predicted, “there is no power on earth . . . which can deny that he has
earned the right to citizenship in the United States.” More than 180,000 blacks
responded to the government’s efforts to recruit African Americans into the
United States Colored Troops. Some 80 percent of the “colored troops”
were former slaves or free blacks from the South. Some 38,000 gave their
lives. In the navy, African Americans accounted for about a fourth of all
enlistments; of these, more than 2,800 died. Their courage under fire was
quite evident; once in battle, they fought tenaciously. A white Union army
private reported in the late spring of 1863 that the black troops “fight like the
Devil.”
To be sure, racism influenced the status of African Americans in the
Union military. Blacks were not allowed to be commissioned officers. They
were also paid less than whites (seven dollars per month for black privates
versus sixteen dollars for white privates), and black recruits were ineligible
for the enlistment bounty paid to white recruits. Still, as Douglass declared,
“this is no time for hesitation. . . . this is our chance, and woe betide us if we
fail to embrace it.” Service in the Union army provided former slaves with a
unique educational opportunity to grow in confidence, awareness, and
maturity. As soldiers they were able to mingle former slaves and free blacks
from North and South. Many of them also learned to read and write while in
the army camps. A northern social worker in the South Carolina Sea Islands
was “astonished” at the positive effects of “soldiering” on ex-slaves. “Some
who left here a month ago to join [the army were] cringing, dumpish, slow,”
but now they “are ready to look you in the eye—are wide awake and active.”
Massachusetts organized one of the first black army units, the 54th
Massachusetts Regiment, under the command of Colonel Robert Gould
Shaw. Rhode Island and other states soon followed suit. In May 1863, the
War Department authorized the general recruitment of African Americans
across the country. This was a momentous decision, for it confirmed the
shift from a war to preserve the Union to a revolution to transform the
social, economic, and racial status quo in the South.
By mid-1863, African American units were involved in significant action.
On July 18, 1863, Colonel Shaw, a Harvard graduate and the son of a promi-
nent abolitionist, led his troops in a ferocious assault against Fort Wagner, a
massive earthwork barrier guarding Charleston, South Carolina. During the
battle almost half the members of the 54th Regiment were wounded or killed,
including Colonel Shaw. The courageous performance of the 54th Regiment
did much to win acceptance for both black soldiers and emancipation. Com-
menting on Union victories at Port Hudson and Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana,
676 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

Lincoln reported that “some of our

commanders . . . believe that . . . the
use of colored troops constitutes the
heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebels.”
As the war entered its final months,
freedom for enslaved blacks emerged
more fully as a legal reality. Three
major steps occurred in January 1865,
when both Missouri and Tennessee
abolished slavery by state action
and the U.S. House of Representa-
tives passed an abolition amendment.
Upon ratification by three fourths of
the reunited states, the Thirteenth
Amendment became part of the Con-
stitution on December 18, 1865, and
removed any lingering doubts about
the legality of emancipation. By then,
in fact, slavery remained only in
the border states of Kentucky and
Delaware.

“Drummer” Jackson
T H E WA R B E H I N D
THE LINES
This photograph of a former slave
who served in the 79th U.S. Colored
Troops was used to encourage African The scale and scope of the Civil
Americans to enlist. War affected everyone—not simply
the combatants. Feeding, clothing,
and supplying the vast armies required tremendous sacrifices on the home
fronts. The fighting knew no boundaries, as farms and villages were trans-
formed into battlefields and churches became makeshift hospitals.

WO M E N A N D T H E WA R While breaking the bonds of slavery, the Civil

War also loosened traditional restraints on female activity. “No conflict in his-
tory,” a journalist wrote at the time, “was such a woman’s war as the Civil War.”
Women on both sides played prominent roles in the conflict. They worked in
factories, sewed uniforms, composed patriotic poems and songs, and raised
money and supplies. In Greenville, South Carolina, when T. G. Gower went off
 The War Behind the Lines • 677

to fight in the Confederate army, his

wife Elizabeth took over the family
business, converting their carriage fac-
tory to produce military wagons, cais-
sons for carrying artillery shells, and
ambulances. Thousands of northern
women worked with the U.S. Sanitary
Commission, a civilian agency that col-
lected enormous sums of donations to
provide organized medical relief and
other services for soldiers. Other women,
black and white, supported the freed-
men’s aid movement to help impover-
ished freed slaves.
In the North alone, some twenty
thousand women served as nurses or
other health-related volunteers. The
most famous nurses were Dorothea Nursing and the war
Lynde Dix and Clara Barton, both Clara Barton oversaw the distribution
untiring volunteers in service to the of medicines to Union troops. She
wounded and the dying. Dix, the later helped found the American Red
Cross of which she remained president
earnest reformer of the nation’s insane until the age of eighty-three.
asylums, became the Union army’s
first superintendent of women nurses.
She soon found herself flooded with applications from around the country.
Dix explained that nurses should be “sober, earnest, self-sacrificing, and self-
sustained” women between the ages of thirty-five and fifty who could “bear
the presence of suffering and exercise entire self control” and who could be
“calm, gentle, quiet, active, and steadfast in duty.”
In many southern towns and counties the home front became a world
of white women and children and African American slaves. A resident of
Lexington, Virginia, reported in 1862 that there were “no men left” in town
by mid-1862. Women suddenly found themselves farmers or plantation
managers, clerks, munitions-plant workers, and schoolteachers. Hundreds
of women disguised themselves as men and fought in the war; dozens served
as spies; others traveled with the armies, cooking meals, writing letters, and
assisting with amputations.
Besides altering gender roles, the war’s unrelenting carnage took a terrible
toll on the nation’s women. A North Carolina mother lost seven sons in the
fighting; another lost four. The number of widows, spinsters, and orphans
678 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

mushroomed. Many bereaved women on both sides came to look upon the
war with what the poet Emily Dickinson called a “chastened stare.”

R E L I G I O N A N D T H E C I V I L WA R Wars intensify religious convic-

tions (and vice versa), and this was certainly true of the Civil War. Religious
concerns pervaded the conflict. Both sides believed they were fighting a holy
war with God’s divine favor. The Confederate constitution, unlike the U.S.
Constitution, explicitly invoked the guidance of Almighty God. Southern
leaders thus asserted that the Confederacy was the only truly Christian
nation. Clergymen in the North and the South—Protestant, Catholic, and
Jewish—saw the war as a righteous crusade. They were among the most par-
tisan advocates of the war, in part because they were so certain that God was
on their side and would ensure victory.
During the war, both President Lincoln and President Davis proclaimed
numerous official days of fasting and prayer in the aftermath of important
battles. Such national rituals were a means of mourning the “martyrs” who
had given their lives for the righteous cause. Salmon P. Chase, the U.S. secre-
tary of the Treasury, added the motto “In God We Trust” to American coins
as a means of expressing the nation’s religious zeal. Many soldiers were
armed with piety as well as muskets. William Pendleton, the chief artillery
officer under Robert E. Lee, named his favorite four cannons after the four
Gospels of the Christian scriptures: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. His
orders revealed his faith: “While we will kill their bodies, may the Lord have
mercy on their sinful souls—FIRE!”
Every regiment on both sides had an ordained chaplain, and devotional
services in military camps were regularly held and widely attended. More
than 1,300 clergymen served in the military camps, with the Methodists pro-
viding the largest number. By late 1862, Christian religious revivals were
sweeping through both northern and southern armies. To facilitate such bat-
tlefield conversions, religious organizations distributed millions of Bibles and
religious tracts to soldiers and sailors. During the winter of 1863–1864, the
widespread conversions among the Union army camped in northern Virginia
led one reporter to claim that the soldiers’ martial piety might “win the whole
nation to Christ.” The revivals in the Confederate camps were even larger.
Mary Jones, the wife of a Confederate minister in Georgia whose son was a
soldier, reported the good news that “revivals in our army are certainly the
highest proofs we can possible desire or receive of the divine favor” shrouding
the Confederacy. Abraham Lincoln took keen interest in the religious fervor
among Confederate soldiers. He expressed concern that “rebel soldiers are
praying with a great deal more earnestness” than Union soldiers.
 Government during the War • 679

With so many ministers away at the front, lay people, especially women,
assumed even greater responsibility for religious activities in churches and
synagogues. The war also transformed the religious life of African Ameri-
cans, who saw the war as a recapitulation of the biblical Exodus: God’s
miraculous intervention in history on behalf of a chosen people. In those
areas of the South taken over by Union armies, freed slaves were able to cre-
ate their own churches for the first time.
In the end, the war revealed how important religion was in American life.
It also showed how problematic it is to claim that God is on any particular
side. Yes, Lincoln observed, both sides claimed providential sanction. In this
regard, he said, “Both may be, and one must be wrong. God can not be for
and against the same thing at the same time.” After all, Lincoln noted, God
could give victory to either side at any moment. “Yet the contest proceeds.”
Thus, Lincoln was one of the few Americans to suggest that God’s divine
purpose might be something other than simple victory or defeat.

G OV E R N M E N T DURING THE WA R

Freeing 4 million slaves and loosening the restraints on female activity

constituted a momentous social and economic revolution. But an even
broader revolution began as power in Congress shifted from South to North
during the Civil War. Before the war, southern congressmen exercised dispro-
portionate influence, but once the secessionists had abandoned Congress to
the Republicans, a dramatic change occurred. Several projects that had been
stalled by sectional controversy were adopted before the end of 1862. Con-
gress passed a higher tariff bill to deter imports and thereby “protect” Ameri-
can manufacturers. A transcontinental railroad was approved, to run through
Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacramento, California. A Homestead Act granted 160
acres to settlers who agreed to work the land for five years. The National
Banking Act followed in 1863. Two other key pieces of legislation were the
Morrill Land Grant Act (1862), which provided federal aid to state colleges
teaching “agriculture and mechanic arts,” and the Contract Labor Act (1864),
which encouraged the importation of immigrant labor. All of these had long-
term significance for the expansion of the national economy—and the fed-
eral government.

U N I O N F I N A N C E S In December 1860, as southern states announced

their plan to secede from the Union, the federal treasury was virtually
empty. There was not enough cash on hand to pay the salaries of Congress,
680 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

much less to fund a massive war. By the time the fighting started in April
1861, the federal budget was spending $172,000 per day; three months
later, war-related expenses alone were totaling over $1 million per day. To
meet such escalating expenses, Congress focused on three options: raising
taxes, printing paper money, and borrowing. The taxes came chiefly in the
form of the Morrill Tariff on imports and taxes on manufactures and
nearly every profession. A butcher, for example, had to pay thirty cents for
every head of beef he slaughtered, ten cents for every hog, and five cents
for every sheep. In 1862, Congress passed the Internal Revenue Act, which
created an Internal Revenue Service to implement a new income tax.
But federal tax revenues trickled in so slowly—in the end they would
meet only 21 percent of wartime expenditures—that Congress in 1862
resorted to printing paper money. Beginning with the Legal Tender Act of
1862, Congress ultimately authorized $450 million in paper currency, which
soon became known as greenbacks because of the color of the ink used to
print the bills. The congressional decision to allow the Treasury to print
paper money was a profoundly important development for the U.S. econ-
omy, then and since. Unlike previous paper currencies issued by local banks,
the federal greenbacks could not be exchanged for gold or silver. Instead,
their value relied upon public trust in the government. Many bankers were
outraged by the advent of the greenbacks. “Gold and silver are the only true
measure of value,” one financier declared. “These metals were prepared
by the Almighty.” But the crisis of the Union and the desperate need to
finance the expanding war demanded such a solution. As the months passed,
the greenbacks helped ease the Union’s financial crisis without causing the
ruinous inflation that the unlimited issue of paper money caused in the
Confederacy.
The federal government also relied upon the sale of bonds to help finance
the war effort. A Philadelphia banker named Jay Cooke (sometimes tagged
the Financier of the Civil War) mobilized a nationwide campaign to sell
$2 billion in government bonds to private investors.
For many businessmen, war-related ventures brought quick riches. Some
suppliers and financiers bilked the government or provided shoddy goods.
Not all the wartime fortunes were made dishonestly, however. And the war-
related expenditures by the Union helped promote the capital accumulation
with which businesses fueled later expansion. Wartime business thus laid the
groundwork for the postwar economic boom and for the fortunes of
tycoons such as J. Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew W. Mellon,
and Andrew Carnegie.
 Government during the War • 681

State currency
Banknotes were promissory notes. Generally, the better the art on the note, the
more it was trusted.

C O N F E D E R AT E F I N A N C E S Confederate finances were a disaster from

the start. The new Confederate government had to create a treasury and a
revenue-collecting bureaucracy from scratch. Moreover, the South’s agrarian
economy was land-rich but cash-poor when compared to the North. While
the Confederacy owned 30 percent of America’s assets in 1861, it contained
only 12 percent of the currency. In the first year of its existence, the Confeder-
acy enacted a tax of one half of 1 percent on most forms of property, which
should have yielded a hefty income, but the Confederacy farmed out its col-
lection of the taxes to the states. The result was chaos. In 1863, the desperate
Confederate Congress began taxing nearly everything, but enforcement of
the taxes was poor and evasion easy. Altogether, taxes covered no more than 5
percent of Confederate costs; bond issues accounted for less than 33 percent;
and treasury notes (paper money), for more than 66 percent. Over the course
of the Civil War, the Confederacy issued more than $1 billion in paper
money, which exacerbated the inflationary effect on consumer prices caused
by the Union naval blockade. By 1864 a turkey sold in the Richmond market
for $100, flour brought $425 a barrel, and bacon was $10 a pound. Such ram-
pant inflation caused great distress. Poverty drove some southerners to take
desperate measures. Dissent over the price of war increasingly erupted into
mass demonstrations, rioting, looting, burning of houses, and desertions
from the military.

On the home front,

U N I O N P O L I T I C S A N D C I V I L L I B E RT I E S
the crisis of war brought no moratorium on partisan politics, northern or
682 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

southern. Within his own party, Lincoln faced a radical wing in Congress
composed mainly of militant abolitionists. Led by House members such
as Thaddeus Stevens and George Washington Julian and senators such as
Charles Sumner, Benjamin Franklin Wade, and Zachariah Chandler, the
Radical Republicans pushed for confiscation of southern plantations,
immediate emancipation of slaves, and a more vigorous prosecution of
the war. The majority of Republicans, however, continued to back Lincoln’s
more cautious approach. The party was generally united on economic
policy.
The Democratic party suffered the loss of its southern wing and the death
of its leader, Stephen A. Douglas, in June 1861. By and large, northern
Democrats supported a war for the Union “as it was” before 1860, giving
reluctant support to Lincoln’s policies but opposing restraints on civil liber-
ties and the new economic legislation. “War Democrats,” such as Tennessee
senator Andrew Johnson and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, supported
Lincoln’s policies, while a peace wing of the party preferred an end to the
fighting, even if that meant risking the Union. An extreme fringe of the peace
wing even flirted with outright disloyalty. The Copperhead Democrats, as
they were called, were strongest in states such as Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.
They sympathized with the Confederacy and called for an end to the war.
Such open sympathy for the enemy led Lincoln to crack down hard. Like
all wartime leaders, he faced the challenge of balancing the needs of winning
a war with the protection of civil liberties. It did not help matters that Roger
B. Taney, the aging pro-slavery chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court,
resisted Lincoln’s every effort to use emergency powers to conduct the war
against secession and slavery. Early in the war, Lincoln had assumed emer-
gency powers, including the power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus,
which guarantees arrested citizens a speedy hearing. The Constitution states
that habeas corpus may be suspended only in cases of rebellion or invasion,
but congressional leaders argued that Congress alone had the authority to
take such action. By the Habeas Corpus Act of 1863, Congress authorized
the president to suspend the writ.
There were probably more than fourteen thousand arrests made without
recourse to a writ of habeas corpus. Most of those arrested were Confederate
citizens accused of slipping vessels through the Union blockade, or they
were foreign nationals. But Union citizens were also detained. One cele-
brated case arose in 1863 when Federal soldiers hustled the Democrat
Clement L. Vallandigham out of his home in Dayton, Ohio, and a military
court condemned Ohio’s most prominent Confederate sympathizer to con-
finement for the duration of the war. The muzzling of a political opponent
 Government during the War • 683

“Abraham’s Dream!”
This cartoon depicts President Lincoln having a nightmare about the election of
1864. Lady Liberty brandishes the severed head of a black man at the door of the
White House as General McClellan mounts the steps and Lincoln runs away.

proved such an embarrassment to Lincoln that he commuted the sentence,

but only by another irregular device: banishment behind Confederate lines.
Vallandigham eventually found his way to Canada.
At their 1864 national convention in Chicago, the Democrats called for an
immediate end to the war, to be followed by a national convention that
would restore the Union. They named General George B. McClellan as their
candidate, but McClellan distanced himself from the peace platform by
declaring that agreement on Union would have to precede peace.
Radical Republicans, who still regarded Lincoln as soft on treason, tried to
thwart his nomination for a second term, but he outmaneuvered them at
every turn. Lincoln promoted the vice-presidential nomination of Andrew
Johnson, a “war Democrat” from Tennessee, on the “National Union” ticket,
so named to promote bipartisanship. As the war dragged on through 1864,
however, with General Grant’s Union army taking heavy losses in Virginia,
Lincoln expected to lose the 1864 election. Then Admiral David Farragut’s
capture of Mobile, Alabama, in August and General William Tecumseh
Sherman’s timely capture of Atlanta on September 2, 1864, turned the tide.
684 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

As a Republican U.S. senator said, the Union conquest of Atlanta “created

the most extraordinary change in public opinion here [in the North] that
ever was known.” The South’s hope that northern discontent would lead to a
negotiated peace vanished. McClellan carried only New Jersey, Delaware,
and Kentucky, with 21 electoral votes to Lincoln’s 212, and he won only
1.8 million popular votes (45 percent) to Lincoln’s 2.2 million (55 percent).

C O N F E D E R AT E P O L I T I C SUnlike Lincoln, Jefferson Davis never had

to face a presidential contest. He and his vice president, Alexander Stephens,
were elected without opposition in 1861 for a six-year term. But discontent
flourished as the war dragged on. The growing cost of the war aroused class
tensions. More than ever before, poor white southerners expressed resent-
ment of the planter elite. Food grew scarce, and prices skyrocketed. A bread
riot in Richmond on April 2, 1863, ended only when Davis himself threat-
ened to shoot the protesters (mostly women). After the Confederate con-
gressional elections of 1863, about a third of the legislators were ardent
critics of Davis.
Davis’s greatest challenge came from the southern politicians who had
embraced secession and then guarded states’ rights against the authority of the
central government of the Confederacy as zealously as they had against that of
the Union. Georgia and, to a lesser
degree, North Carolina were strong-
holds of such sentiments. The states’
rights advocates challenged, among
other things, the legality of the military
draft, taxes on farm produce, and above
all the suspension of habeas corpus.
Vice President Stephens carried on a
running battle against Davis’s effort to
establish “military despotism,” and he
eventually left Richmond to sulk at his
Georgia home for eighteen months.
Robert Toombs, the former Confeder-
ate secretary of state, also turned
against “that scoundrel Jeff Davis.” He
accused Davis of pursuing “an illegal
and unconstitutional course” of actions
Jefferson Davis that “outraged justice” and brought a
President of the Confederacy. “tide of despotism” across the South.
 The Faltering Confederacy • 685

Among other fatal flaws, the Confederacy suffered from an excess of

dogma. Where Lincoln was the consummate pragmatist, Davis was a brittle
ideologue with a waspish temper. Once he made a decision, nothing could
change his mind. One southern politician said that Davis was “as stubborn
as a mule.” Davis could never admit a mistake. Such a personality was ill
suited to the chief executive of an infant—and fractious—nation.

T H E F A LT E R I N G C O N F E D E R A C Y

CHANCELLORSVILLE After the Union disaster at Fredericksburg at the

end of 1862, Lincoln’s search for a capable general had turned to one of Burn-
side’s disgruntled lieutenants, Joseph Hooker, whose pugnacity had earned
him the nickname “Fighting Joe.” With a force of 130,000 men, the largest
Union army yet gathered, and a brilliant plan, Hooker failed his leadership
test at Chancellorsville, Virginia, on May 1–5, 1863. Robert E. Lee, with per-
haps half that number of troops, staged what became a textbook example of
daring and maneuver. On May 2, the Confederates surprised the Federals at
the edge of a densely wooded area called the Wilderness, but the fighting
died out in confusion as darkness fell. General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson
rode out beyond the skirmish line to locate the Union forces. Shooting
erupted in the darkness, and nervous
Confederates mistakenly opened fire
on Jackson, who was struck by three
bullets that shattered his left arm and
right hand. The next day, a surgeon
amputated his arm. The indispens-
able Jackson seemed to be recovering
well, but he then contracted pneumo-
nia and died. Jackson had been a fear-
less general famous for leading rapid
marches, bold flanking movements,
and furious assaults. “I have lost my
right arm,” Lee lamented, and “I do
not know how to replace him.” The
next day, Lee forced Hooker’s Union
army to retreat. It was the peak of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson
Lee’s career, but Chancellorsville was Jackson was mortally wounded by his
his last significant victory. own men.
 686 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

VICKSBURG While Lee’s army held the Federals at bay in the East,
Ulysses S. Grant, his appointment as field commander reinstated, had been
inching his army down the Mississippi River toward the Confederate strong-
hold of Vicksburg, in western Mississippi. “As valuable as New Orleans will
be to us,” Lincoln had predicted in 1861, “Vicksburg will be more so.” If
Union forces could gain control of the Mississippi River, they could split the
Confederacy in two. While the Union navy ran gunboats and transports past
the Confederate cannons commanding the river at Vicksburg, Grant moved
his army eastward on a campaign that Lincoln later called “one of the most
brilliant in the world.” Grant captured Jackson, Mississippi, before pinning

Grant from
Memphis

LOUISIANA
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CHICKASAW
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Vicksburg Grant

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THE VICKSBURG
CAMPAIGN, 1863
Area of map
Union forces
Battle site

Why was the capture of Vicksburg an important strategic victory? Why was
Vicksburg difficult to seize from the Confederacy? How did General Lee hope
to save Vicksburg from the Union siege?
 The Faltering Confederacy • 687

the thirty thousand Confederates inside Vicksburg, a strategic city called the
“Gibraltar of the West” perched on bluffs two hundred feet above the
Mississippi River and its commercial traffic. Grant decided to wear down
the Confederates through constant bombardment and gradual starvation.
The Rebels and the city’s inhabitants were hopelessly trapped; they could
neither escape nor be reinforced or supplied. As the weeks passed, the
besieged Confederates ate their horses and mules, then dogs and cats, and,
finally, rats. Grant’s soldiers, meanwhile, lived off the surrounding country-
side, looting and burning farms and plantations as well as plundering
blankets, chickens, corn meal, and clothing from African Americans.

GET TYSBURG The plight of besieged Vicksburg put the Confederate

high command in a quandary. General Joseph E. Johnston, now in charge of
the western Confederate forces, wanted to lure Grant’s army into Tennessee
and thereby relieve the siege of Vicksburg. Lee had another idea for a diver-
sion. Once more he sought to win a major battle on northern soil, this time
in the hope of not just saving Vicksburg but also persuading northern public
opinion to end the war. In June he again moved his army northward across
Maryland.
Neither side chose Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, as the site for a major battle,
but Confederate troops entered the town in search of shoes and encountered
units of Union cavalry on June 30, 1863. The main forces quickly converged
on that point. On July 1, the Confederates pushed the Federals out of the
town, but into stronger positions on high ground to the south. The new
Union commander, General George Meade, hastened reinforcements to his
new lines along the heights. On July 2, Confederate units assaulted Meade’s
army, but in vain.
The next day, July 3, Lee staked everything on one final assault on the
Union center at Cemetery Ridge. At about two in the afternoon, General
George Pickett’s thirteen thousand Confederate troops emerged from the
woods into the brilliant sunlight, formed neat ranks, and began their suici-
dal advance uphill across open ground commanded by Union artillery. As a
participant recalled, the advancing Rebels were “enveloped in a dense cloud
of smoke and dust. Arms, heads, blankets, guns, and knapsacks were thrown
and tossed into the clear air. . . . A moan went up from the field, distinctly to
be heard amid the storm of battle.” The few Confederates who got within
range of hand-to-hand combat made a final desperate lunge at the center of
the Union line, but they were quickly overwhelmed. What Robert E. Lee had
called the “grand charge” was a grand failure. Among the Confederate troops
in the assault on Cemetery Ridge were the University Greys, thirty-one
688 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

CAMPAIGNS IN THE EAST,

P E N N S Y L VA N I A 1863

Chambersburg Confederate advance

Gettysburg Confederate retreat
Union advance
Hagerstown
Battle site
M A R Y L A N D
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Meade
Frederick
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Le
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Area of map
Ri
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Middletown
do
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V I R G I N I A
Hooker
Rapidan
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Chancellorsville Fredericksburg
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0 25 50 Miles
ATLANTIC
0 25 50 Kilometers OCEAN

Why was Gettysburg a major turning point of the war? What were
General Lee’s goals for marching north? Why did his plan at Cemetery
Ridge fail?

college students from Mississippi. Every one of them was killed or wounded.
As he watched the few survivors returning from the bloody field, General
Lee muttered, “All this has been my fault.” He then ordered Pickett to
regroup his division to repulse a possible counterattack, only to have Pickett
tartly reply, “General Lee, I have no division now.”
With nothing left to do but retreat, on July 4 Lee’s mangled army, with
about a third of its number gone, began to slog south through a driving rain.
They had failed in all their purposes, not the least being to relieve the pressure
on Vicksburg. On that same July 4, the Confederate commander at Vicksburg
surrendered his entire garrison after a forty-seven-day siege. A Union soldier
after entering the surrendered city said: “Not a dog barked at us, not a cat
shied around the corner. Poor things, they had all been eaten. . . .” The Con-
 The Faltering Confederacy • 689

“A Harvest of Death”
Timothy H. O’Sullivan’s grim photograph of the dead at Gettysburg.

federacy was now split in two. Had Meade pursued Lee, he might have ended
the war, but yet again the winning army failed to capitalize on its victory.
After the fighting at Gettysburg had ended, a group of northern states
funded a military cemetery for the six thousand soldiers killed in the battle.
On November 19, 1863, the new cemetery was officially dedicated. In his
brief remarks, since known as the Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln
eloquently expressed the pain and sorrow of the brutal civil war. The pro-
longed conflict was testing whether a nation “dedicated to the proposition
that all men are created equal . . . can long endure.” Lincoln declared that all
living Americans must ensure that the “honored dead” had not “died in
vain.” In stirring words that continue to inspire, Lincoln predicted that “this
nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government
of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the
earth.”

C H AT TA N O O G A The third great Union victory of 1863 occurred in

fighting around Chattanooga, the railhead of eastern Tennessee and gateway
to northern Georgia. In the late summer, a Union army led by General
William Rosecrans took Chattanooga and then rashly pursued General
Braxton Bragg’s Rebel forces into Georgia, where they met at Chickamauga.
690 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

The intense battle (September 19–20) had the makings of a Union disaster,
since it was one of the few times in the war that the Confederates had a
numerical advantage (about seventy thousand to fifty-six thousand). Only
the stubborn stand of Union troops under George H. Thomas (thenceforth
dubbed the “Rock of Chickamauga”) prevented a rout. The battered Union
forces fell back into Chattanooga, while Bragg held the city virtually under
siege from the heights to the south and the east. Rosecrans reported that “we
have met a serious disaster. Enemy overwhelmed us, drove our right, pierced
our center, and scattered troops there.”
Rosecrans seemed stunned and apathetic, but Lincoln urged him to hang
on: “If we can hold Chattanooga, and East Tennessee, I think rebellion must
dwindle and die.” The Union command rushed reinforcements to Tennessee
from Virginia. General Grant, given overall command of the western theater
of operations, replaced Rosecrans with Thomas. On November 24, the Fed-
eral troops took Lookout Mountain in what was mainly a feat of moun-
taineering aided by a dense fog that concealed their movements. The next
day Union forces dislodged the Rebels atop Missionary Ridge. The Union
victory at Missionary Ridge confirmed that Grant was a formidable com-
mander. Lincoln had at last found his fighting general. In early 1864, Grant
arrived in Washington to assume the role of general in chief.

T H E C O N F E D E R A C Y ’ S D E F E AT

The dramatic Union victories at Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and Chat-

tanooga turned the tide against the Confederacy. Yet Jefferson Davis and
other Confederate leaders still hoped for a “political victory” whereby simply
prolonging the war might convince war-weary northerners to defeat Lincoln
in the 1864 election and negotiate a peace settlement. Union leaders, sensing
the momentum swinging their way, stepped up their pressure on Confeder-
ate forces. The Union command’s main targets now were Robert E. Lee’s
army in Virginia and General Joseph E. Johnston’s forces in Georgia. Grant
personally would accompany George Meade, who retained direct command
over the Army of the Potomac; operations in Georgia were entrusted to
Grant’s longtime lieutenant, William Tecumseh Sherman. As Sherman put it
later, Grant “was to go for Lee, and I was to go for Joe Johnston.”
Grant hoped to force Lee’s army in Virginia into a climactic single battle,
but Lee’s evasive skills forced the Union commander to adopt a policy of
aggressive attrition. Only “complete conquest” would bring an end to the
long war. Grant’s unyielding faith that the Union armies were destined for
 The Confederacy’s Defeat • 691

victory enabled him to impose his

tenacious will upon his troops; his
unflappable calmness in the face
of adversity and danger inspired
his army. With the benefit of far
more soldiers and supplies than
Lee, Grant relentlessly attacked,
keeping the pressure on the Con-
federates, grinding down their
numbers and their will to fight. As
he ordered Meade, “Wherever Lee
goes, there you will go also.” Grant
would now wage total war, confis-
cating or destroying civilian prop-
erty of use to the military. It was a
brutal and costly—but effective—
Ulysses S. Grant
plan.
At his headquarters in City Point (now
Hopewell), Virginia.
GRANT’S PURSUIT OF LEE
In May 1864, the Union’s Army of
the Potomac, numbering about 115,000 to Lee’s 65,000, moved south across
the Rappahannock and Rapidan Rivers into the Wilderness of eastern
Virginia. In the nightmarish Battle of the Wilderness (May 5–6), the armies
fought blindly through the woods, the horror and suffering of the scene
heightened by crackling brushfires. Grant’s men suffered heavier casualties
than the Confederates, but the Rebels were running out of replacements.
Always before when bloodied by Lee’s troops, Union forces had pulled back
to nurse their wounds, but Grant slid off to his left and continued to push
southward, engaging Lee’s men near Spotsylvania Court House. “Whatever
happens,” he assured Lincoln, “we will not retreat.”
Again Grant’s forces slid off to the left of Lee’s army and kept moving. Along
the banks of the Chickahominy River, the two sides clashed again at Cold Harbor
(June 1–3), ten miles east of Richmond. Grant ordered his troops to assault the
heavily entrenched Confederate lines. As the Confederates had discovered at
Gettysburg, such a frontal assault was murder. The Union army was massacred at
Cold Harbor: in twenty minutes, almost seven thousand attacking Federals were
killed or wounded. Grant later admitted that the attack was his greatest mistake.
Critics called him “the Butcher” after Cold Harbor. Yet the relentless Grant bril-
liantly maneuvered his battered forces around Lee and headed for Petersburg,
south of Richmond, where the major railroads converged.
692 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

The two armies then dug in for a long siege along lines that extended for
twenty-five miles above and below Petersburg. Grant telegraphed Lincoln
that he intended “to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.” Lincoln
replied, “Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possi-
ble.” For nine months, the two armies faced each other down while Grant’s
troops tried to cut the railroad arteries that were Lee’s lifeline. During that
time, Grant’s troops, twice as numerous as the Confederate army, were gen-
erously supplied by Union vessels moving up the James River, while Lee’s
forces, beset by hunger, cold, and desertion, wasted away. Petersburg had
become Lee’s prison while disasters piled up for the Confederacy elsewhere.

SHERMAN’S MARCH When Grant’s army headed south from north-

ern Virginia, General William Tecumseh Sherman moved south from Ten-
nessee toward the railroad hub of Atlanta, with ninety thousand men against
Joseph E. Johnston’s sixty thousand. He sent a worrisome threat to Atlantans:
“prepare for my coming.” Johnston’s cautious evasive tactics caused an
impatient President Jefferson Davis to replace him with the reckless John B.
Hood, a natural fighter but an inept strategist who did not know the mean-
ing of retreat. Having had an arm crippled by a bullet at Gettysburg and
most of one leg shot off at Chickamauga, he had to be strapped to his horse.

The tattered colors of the 56th and 36th Massachusetts Regiments

Union soldiers march through Virginia in 1864.
 The Confederacy’s Defeat • 693

MARYLAND
Culpeper
Area of map Court HouseG
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GRANT IN VIRGINIA, 1864–1865 Ri

ve
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Confederate advance
Confederate retreat
Union advance
0 25 50 Miles
Battle site
0 25 50 Kilometers

How were General Grant’s tactics in the Battle of the Wilderness different from the
Union’s previous encounters with General Lee’s army? Why did Grant have the
advantage at Petersburg?

Three times in eight days, Hood’s Confederate army lashed out at the Union
lines, each time meeting a bloody rebuff. Sherman at first resorted to a siege
of Atlanta, then slid off to the right again, cutting the rail lines below the city.
Hood evacuated Atlanta on September 1 but kept his army intact. Now in
control of Atlanta, Sherman ordered its twenty thousand residents to leave.
When city officials protested the order, Sherman replied: “War is cruelty;
you cannot refine it.” His men thereupon set fire to the city’s infrastructure:
railroads, iron foundries, shops, mills, schools, hotels, and businesses.
Although Sherman denied that he intended to burn civilian property, only
four hundred houses were left standing.
694 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

Sherman now laid plans for a rapid

march south through central Georgia,
where no organized Confederate armies
remained. His intention was to “whip
the rebels, to humble their pride, to
follow them into their inmost recesses,
and make them fear and dread us.”
Hood, meanwhile, had hatched an
equally audacious plan: he would slip
out of Georgia into northern Alabama
and push northward into Tennessee,
forcing Sherman into pursuit. Sher-
man refused to take the bait, although
he did send a Union force, led by Gen-
William Tecumseh Sherman eral George H. Thomas, back to Ten-
Sherman’s campaign developed into a nessee to keep watch. So unfolded the
war of maneuver, but without the curious spectacle of the main armies’
pitched battles of Grant’s campaign.
moving off in opposite directions. But
it was a measure of the Confederates’
plight that Sherman could cut a swath of destruction across Georgia (the
“March to the Sea”) with impunity, while Hood’s army was soon outnum-
bered again, this time in Tennessee.
In the Battle of Franklin (November 30), near Nashville, Hood sent his
army across two miles of open ground defended by entrenched Union
troops backed by massed artillery. It was mass suicide. Six waves broke
against the Union lines, leaving the ground strewn with Confederate dead.
Six Confederate generals were killed at Franklin. A Confederate captain
from Texas, scarred by the battle’s senseless butchery, wrote that the “wails
and cries of the widows and orphans made at Franklin, Tennessee will heat
up the fires of the bottomless pit to burn the soul of General J. B. Hood for
murdering their husbands and fathers.” With only the remnant of an army,
Hood dared not attack Nashville, nor did he dare withdraw for fear of final
disintegration. Finally, in the Battle of Nashville (December 15–16), the Fed-
erals scattered what was left of the Confederate Army of Tennessee. The
Confederate front west of the Appalachians had collapsed.
Meanwhile, Sherman’s Union army was marching southward through
Georgia. He abandoned the conventional practice of long supply lines sup-
porting his advancing army and instead plundered his way across the state,
waging war against the people’s resources and their will to resist. In his effort
to demoralize the civilian populace, Sherman sought to “make Georgia howl.”
 The Confederacy’s Defeat • 695

“Ruins of Depot, Blown Up on Sherman’s Departure” (1864)

In the wake of Sherman’s march, burned depots, abandoned locomotives, and
twisted rails marked Atlanta’s destruction.

One of his aides explained that modern warfare must “make the innocent
suffer as well as the guilty; it must involve plundering, burning, killing.”
The Union army moved southeast from Atlanta, living off the land and
destroying any provisions that might serve Confederate forces. Foraging
“bummers” fanned out to ransack farms and burn corn cribs, cotton bales,
and barns. Bands of stragglers and deserters from both armies joined in
looting along the flanks while Union cavalry destroyed Rebel rail lines and
supplies to keep them out of enemy hands.
More than any other Civil War general, Sherman recognized the connec-
tions among the South’s economy, its morale, and its ability to wage war. He
explained that “we are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people”
who must be made to “feel the hard hand of war.” He wanted the Rebels to
“fear and dread us.” When, after a month of ravaging the Georgia country-
side, Sherman’s army arrived in Savannah, on the coast, his troops had freed
over forty thousand slaves and burned scores of plantations. A Macon,
Georgia, newspaper wrote that Sherman was a “demon” willing to plumb the
“depths of depravity” in wreaking his campaign of vengeance. Yet Sherman
scoffed at such criticism. Georgians, he said, had “made war on us, defied
and dared us to come south to their country, where they boasted they
would kill us and do all manner of terrible things. We accepted their challenge,
 696 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

and now for them to whine and complain of the natural and necessary
results is beneath contempt.” After the war, a Confederate officer acknowl-
edged that Sherman’s march through Georgia was in fact well conceived and
well managed. “I don’t think there was ever an army in the world that would
have behaved better, in a similar expedition, in an enemy country. Our army
certainly wouldn’t.”
After occupying Savannah, Sherman’s army crossed the Savannah River
into South Carolina, the “hell-hole of secession.” There the Union soldiers
wrought even greater destruction. As Sherman reported, his “whole army is
burning with an insatiable desire to wreak vengeance upon South Carolina.
I almost tremble at her fate, but feel she deserves all that seems in store for
her.” More than a dozen towns were burned in whole or part, including the
state capital of Columbia, which was captured on February 17, 1865 (recent
scholarship suggests that the fires were started by fleeing Confederates, how-
ever). Meanwhile, Charleston’s defenders abandoned the city and headed
north to join a ragtag Rebel army that Joseph E. Johnston was desperately

KENTUCKY VIRGINIA
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SHERMAN’S CAMPAIGNS, Macon rch t Charleston
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1864–1865 e se AT L A N T I C
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Confederate forces GEORGIA OCEAN
Savannah
Union forces
0 50 100 Miles
Battle site
0 50 100 Kilometers

What was General Sherman’s goal as he marched across Georgia? How much
damage did Sherman do in Georgia and South Carolina? How did it affect the
Confederate war effort?
 The Confederacy’s Defeat • 697

pulling together in North Carolina. Johnston mounted an attack on

Sherman’s army at Bentonville (March 19–20), but that would be his last
major battle.
During the late winter and early spring of 1865, the Confederacy found itself
besieged on all sides. Defeat was in the air. Some Rebel leaders wanted to nego-
tiate a peace settlement. Confederate secretary of war John C. Breckinridge, the
Kentuckian who had served as vice president under James Buchanan and had
run for president in 1860, urged Robert E. Lee to negotiate an honorable end to
the war. “This has been a magnificent epic,” he said. “In God’s name, let it not
terminate in a farce.” But Jefferson Davis dismissed any talk of surrender. If the
Confederate armies should be defeated, he wanted the soldiers to disperse and
fight a guerrilla war. “The war came and now it must go on,” he stubbornly
insisted, “till the last man of this generation falls in his tracks, and his children
seize his musket and fight our battle.”
While Confederate forces made their last stands, Abraham Lincoln pre-
pared for his second term as president. He was the first president since
Andrew Jackson to have been reelected. The weary commander in chief had
weathered constant criticism during his first term, but with the war nearing
its end, Lincoln now garnered deserved praise. The Chicago Tribune ob-
served that the president “has slowly and steadily risen in the respect, confi-
dence, and admiration of the people.”
On March 4, 1865, amid rumors of a Confederate attempt to abduct or
assassinate the president, the six-foot-four-inch, rawboned Lincoln, dressed
in a black suit and stovepipe hat, his face weathered by prairie wind and
political worry, delivered his eloquent second inaugural address on the East
Portico of the Capitol. Not a hundred feet away, looking down on Lincoln
from the Capitol porch, was a twenty-six-year-old actor named John Wilkes
Booth, who five weeks later would kill the president in a desperate attempt
to do something “heroic” for his beloved South.
The nation’s capital had long before become an armed camp and a mas-
sive military hospital. Sick and wounded soldiers were scattered everywhere:
in hotels, warehouses, schools, businesses, and private homes. Thousands of
Confederate deserters roamed the streets. After a morning of torrential
rains, the sun broke through the clouds just as Lincoln began to speak to the
mud-spattered audience of some thirty-five thousand, half of whom were
African Americans. While managing a terrible civil war, the president had
experienced personal tragedy (the loss of a second child and a wife plagued
by mental instability) and chronic depression. What had kept him from
unraveling were a principled pragmatism and a godly foundation that
endowed his life with a transcendent purpose.
698 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

Lincoln’s second inauguration

As Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address on the Capitol portico, John
Wilkes Booth was likely among those standing on the porch, overhead.

Lincoln’s second inaugural address was more a sermon than a speech, the
reflections of a somber statesman still struggling to understand the relation
between divine will and human endeavor. Rather than detailing the progress
of the war effort or indulging in self-congratulatory celebration, Lincoln
focused his remarks on the origins and paradoxes of the war. Slavery, he said,
had “somehow” caused the war, and everyone bore some guilt for the
national shame of racial injustice and the awful war to end it. Both sides had
known before the fighting began that war was to be avoided at all costs, but
“one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the
other would accept war rather than let it perish.”
The weary but resolute commander in chief longed for peace. “Fondly do
we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speed-
ily pass away.” He wondered aloud why the war had lasted so long and had
been so brutal. “The Almighty,” he acknowledged, “has His own purposes.”
Lincoln noted the paradoxical irony of both sides in the civil war reading the
 The Confederacy’s Defeat • 699

same Bible, praying to the same God, and appealing for divine support in its
fight against the other. The God of Judgment, however, would not be misled
or denied. If God willed that the war continue until “every drop of blood
drawn with the lash, shall be paid with another drawn by the sword, as was
said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the
Lord are true and righteous altogether.’” After four years of escalating com-
bat, the war had grown “incomprehensible” in its scope and horrors. Now
the president, looking gaunt and tired, urged the Union forces “to finish the
work we are in,” bolstered with “firmness in the right insofar as God gives us
to see the right.”
As Lincoln looked ahead to the end of the fighting and a “just and lasting
peace,” he stressed the need to “bind up the nation’s wounds” by exercising
the Christian virtues of forgiveness and mercy. Vengeance must be avoided
at all costs. Reconciliation must be pursued “with malice toward none; with
charity for all.” Those eight words captured Lincoln’s hopes for a restored
Union. Redemption was his goal, not vengeance. The sublime majesty of
Lincoln’s brief speech revealed how the rigors of war had transformed and
elevated him from the obscure congressman who had entered the White
House in 1861. The abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass proclaimed Lin-
coln’s second inaugural address “a sacred effort.”

A P P O M AT T OX During the spring of 1865, General Grant’s army kept

pushing, probing, and battering the Rebels defending Petersburg, Virginia,
twenty miles south of Richmond. The badly outnumbered Confederates were
slowly starving. On April 2, 1865, Lee’s army, its supply lines having been cut,
abandoned Richmond and Petersburg in a desperate flight southwest toward
Lynchburg and railroads leading south. President Jefferson Davis, exhausted
but still defiant, too stubborn and vain to concede, fled by train ahead of the
advancing Federals, only to be captured in Georgia by Union cavalry on May
10. He was imprisoned at Fortress Monroe, near Hampton Roads, Virginia.
By then the Confederacy was all but dead. On April 7, Grant sent a note to
Lee urging him to surrender to prevent “any further effusion of blood.” With
his army virtually surrounded, Lee recognized that there was no need to
prolong the inevitable. “There is nothing left for me to do but go and see
General Grant,” he told a Confederate general, “and I would rather die a
thousand deaths.” On April 9 (Palm Sunday) the tall, stately Lee, in his dress
uniform replete with a red silk sash, met the short, mud-spattered Grant in
the parlor of Wilmer McLean’s home at Appomattox Court House to tender
his surrender. Grant displayed extraordinary generosity in keeping with
Lincoln’s desire for a gracious rather than vengeful peace. At Lee’s request,
700 • T HE WAR OF THE U NION (CH. 16)

he let the Confederates keep their

pistols, horses, and mules. After
signing the surrender documents,
a distraught Lee mounted his
horse. As the Confederate general
prepared to ride back to his
once vaunted army, General
Grant walked out onto the front
porch and, in front of the Union
officers and soldiers, raised his
hat in salute to his noble foe. Lee
would later explain that “I surren-
dered as much to Lincoln’s good-
ness as I did to Grant’s armies.”
The next day, as the gaunt, hun-
gry Confederate troops formed
ranks for the last time, Joshua
Chamberlain, the Union general in
charge of the surrender ceremony,
ordered his troops to salute their
Robert E. Lee foes as they paraded past. His Con-
Mathew Brady took this photograph in
federate counterpart signaled his
Richmond eleven days after Lee’s surrender men to do likewise. General Cham-
at Appomattox. berlain remembered that there was
not a sound—no trumpets or
drums, no cheers or jeers, simply an “awed stillness . . . as if it were the passing of
the dead.” On April 18, General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered his Confederate
army to General William Tecumseh Sherman near Durham, North Carolina.
The remaining Confederate forces surrendered during May. The brutal war
was at last over. Upon learning of the surrender, John Wilkes Booth wrote in
his diary that “something decisive and great must be done” to avenge the
Confederate defeat.

A M O D E R N WA R

The Civil War was the most traumatic event in American history. It
shattered lives and destroyed property while preserving the Union, reshap-
ing institutions, expanding the power and scope of the federal government,
and giving freedom to four million slaves. In many respects, it was the
 A Modern War • 701

world’s first modern war. Its scope and scale were unprecedented, fought on
battlefields across the continent, from Pennsylvania to New Mexico and
from Florida to Kansas. Troops were moved by ships and railroads and com-
manded by telegraph messages. One out of every twelve men served in the
war, and few families were unaffected by the struggle. Over 620,000 soldiers
and sailors (37,000 of whom were blacks fighting for the Union side) died in
the conflict from wounds or disease, 50 percent more than died fighting in
World War II. The equivalent death toll today would be 6 million. Of the
surviving combatants, 50,000 returned home with one or more limbs ampu-
tated. Disease, however, was the greatest threat to soldiers, killing twice as
many as were lost in battle. Some 50,000 civilians were also killed during
the war.
The Civil War was also modern in that much of the warfare was distant,
impersonal, and mechanical. Men were killed at long distance, without
knowing who had fired the shot that felled them. The opposing forces used
an array of new weapons and instruments of war: artillery with “rifled,” or
grooved, barrels for greater accuracy, repeating rifles, ironclad ships, obser-
vation balloons, wire entanglements, and the widespread destruction of
civilian property. The Civil War was also modern in the sense that civilians
could monitor its activities by reading the large-circulation newspapers that
sent reporters to the front lines, and people could visit exhibitions of photo-
graphs taken at the battlefields and camps.
In some respects, the Civil War has not yet been resolved. Historians have
provided conflicting assessments of the reasons for the Union victory. Some
have focused on the inherent weaknesses of the Confederacy: its lack of
industry, the fractious relations between the states and the central govern-
ment in Richmond, poor political leadership, faulty coordination and com-
munication, the burden of maintaining the institution of slavery, and the
disparities in population and resources compared with those of the North.
Still others have highlighted the erosion of Confederate morale in the face of
chronic food shortages and unimaginable human losses. The debate over
why the North won and the South lost the Civil War will probably never end,
but as in other modern wars, firepower and manpower were essential fac-
tors. Robert E. Lee’s own explanation of the Confederate defeat retains an
enduring legitimacy: “After four years of arduous service marked by unsur-
passed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been com-
pelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.”
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Civil War Begins In his inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln made it clear that
secession was unconstitutional but that the North would not invade the South.
War came when the federal government attempted to resupply forts in the
South. When South Carolinians shelled Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor,
Lincoln issued his call to arms. Other southern states seceded at that point, and
the Civil War was under way.
• Civil War Strategies The Confederates had a geographic advantage in that they
were fighting to defend their own soil. They expected support from Britain and
France because of those nations’ dependence on southern cotton for their textile
industries. The Union quickly launched a campaign to seize the Confederate
capital, Richmond, Virginia. Initial hopes for a rapid victory died at the First
Battle of Bull Run. The Union then adopted the “anaconda plan,” which
involved imposing a naval blockade on southern ports and slowly crushing
resistance on all fronts. The Union’s industrial might was a deciding factor in a
long war of attrition.
• Wartime Home Fronts Both sides passed conscription laws drafting men into
military service. Most of the fighting took place in the South; thus, although the
North had more casualties, the impact on the South was greater. Its population
was smaller, and its civilians experienced local violence and food shortages. The
landscape, food supply, and wildlife were destroyed in many areas. In both the
North and the South, women played nontraditional roles on farms and even at
the battlefront.
• Emancipation Proclamation Initially, President Lincoln declared that the war’s
aim was to restore the Union and that slavery would be maintained where it
existed. Gradually, he came to see that the Emancipation Proclamation was justified
as a military necessity because it would deprive the South of its labor force. He
hoped that southern states would return to the Union before his January 1863
deadline, when all slaves under Confederate control were declared free.
• Freedom from Slavery Many slaves freed themselves by escaping to Union
Army camps. Although the Emancipation Proclamation announced the war
aim of abolishing slavery, it freed only those people enslaved in areas still under
Confederate control. The Thirteenth Amendment freed all enslaved people
throughout the United States.
 CHRONOLOGY

March 4, 1861
April 1861

July 1861
Abraham Lincoln is inaugurated president
Fort Sumter falls to Confederate forces; Lincoln issues call
to arms
First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas)
November 1861 The Trent affair commences when a Union warship stops a
British ship on the high seas and takes two Confederate
agents into custody
March–July 1862 Peninsular campaign
April, August, Battles of Shiloh, Second Bull Run, and Antietam
September 1862
January 1, 1863 Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation
May–July, Siege of Vicksburg, Battles of Gettysburg and Chattanooga
November 1863
April 9, 1865 Robert E. Lee surrenders at Appomattox Court House
1865 Thirteenth Amendment is ratified

KEY TERMS & NAMES

Fort Sumter p. 649 Robert E. Lee p. 666 Radical Republicans
p. 682
Jefferson Davis p. 650 Thomas “Stonewall”
Jackson p. 667 Battle of Gettysburg
Ulysses S. Grant p. 653 p. 687
Emancipation Proclamation
Battles of Bull Run (First and p. 671 William T. Sherman’s
Second Manassas) p. 656 “March to the Sea”
Thirteenth Amendment p. 694
anaconda strategy p. 658 p. 676
George B. McClellan p. 665

17
RECONSTRUCTION: NORTH
AND SOUTH

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• What were the different approaches to the Reconstruction of the

Confederate states?
• How did white southerners respond to the end of the old order in
the South?
• To what extent did blacks function as citizens in the reconstructed
South?
• What were the main issues in national politics in the 1870s?
• Why did Reconstruction end in 1877?

I n the spring of 1865, the Civil War was finally over. At a frightful
cost of 620,000 lives and the destruction of the southern econ-
omy and much of its landscape, the Union had emerged tri-
umphant, and some 4 million enslaved Americans had seized their freedom.
The ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865 abolished
slavery everywhere. Now the nation faced the daunting task of reuniting. A
civil war fought by the North to save the Union had become a transforming
social force. The abolition of slavery, the war-related disruptions to the
economy, and the horrifying human losses suffered during the war had
destroyed the plantation system and upended racial relations in the South.
The defeated Confederacy now had to come to terms with a new order as the
United States set about “reconstructing” a ravaged and often resentful South.
The era of Reconstruction, from 1865 to 1877, was a period of political com-
plexity and social turbulence that generated far-reaching implications for
American life. It witnessed a prolonged debate about issues of enduring signif-
icance, questions about the nature of freedom, equality, and opportunity. By
far the most important of those questions was the fate of African Americans.
 The War’s Aftermath • 705

The Union could not have been saved without the help of the blacks, but
what would be their status in the postwar era?

T H E W A R ’ S A F T E R M AT H

In the war’s aftermath the victors confronted difficult questions: How

should the United States be reunited? What was the status of the states that
had seceded? Should the Confederate leaders be tried for treason? Should for-
mer Confederates automatically have their U.S. citizenship restored? How
should new governments be formed in the South? How and at whose expense
was the South’s economy to be rebuilt? Should debts incurred by the Confed-
erate state governments be honored? Who should pay to rebuild the South’s
railroads and public buildings, dredge the clogged southern harbors, and
restore damaged levees? What was to be done for the freed slaves? Were they
to be given land? social equality? education? voting rights?
Such complex questions required sober reflection and careful planning,
but policy makers did not have the luxury of time or the benefit of consen-
sus. Some northerners wanted the former Confederate states returned to the
Union with little or no changes in the region’s social, political, and economic
life. Others wanted southern society punished and transformed. The editors
of the nation’s foremost magazine, Harper’s Weekly, expressed this vengeful
attitude when they declared at the end of 1865 that “the forgive-and-forget
policy . . . is mere political insanity and suicide.”

DEVELOPMENT IN THE NORTH To some Americans the Civil War had

been more truly a social revolution than the War of Independence, for it
reduced the once-dominant influence of the South’s planter elite in national
politics and elevated the power of the northern “captains of industry.” During
and after the Civil War, the U.S. government grew increasingly aligned with
the interests of corporate leaders. The wartime Republican Congress had
delivered on the party’s major platform promises of 1860. In the absence of
southern members, the wartime Congress had centralized national power
and enacted the Republican economic agenda. It passed the Morrill Tariff,
which doubled the average level of import duties. The National Banking Act
created a uniform system of banking and banknote currency and helped
finance the war. Congress also decided that the first transcontinental railroad
would run along a north-central route, from Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacra-
mento, California, and it donated public land and sold bonds to ensure its
financing. In the Homestead Act of 1862, moreover, Congress provided free
706 • R ECONSTRUCTION : N ORTH AND S OUTH (CH. 17)

federal homesteads of 160 acres to settlers, who had only to occupy the land
for five years to gain title. No cash was needed. The Morrill Land Grant Act of
the same year conveyed to each state 30,000 acres of federal land per member
of Congress from the state. The sale of some of the land provided funds to
create colleges of “agriculture and mechanic arts.” Such measures helped
stimulate the North’s economy in the years after the Civil War.

D E VA S TAT I O N I N T H E S O U T H The postwar South offered a sharp

contrast to the victorious North. Along the path of General William
Tecumseh Sherman’s Union army, one observer reported in 1866, the
countryside “looked for many miles like a broad black streak of ruin and
desolation.” Burned-out Columbia, South Carolina, said another witness,
was “a wilderness of ruins”; Charleston, a place of “vacant houses, of wid-
owed women, of rotting wharves, of deserted warehouses, of weed-wild
gardens, of miles of grass-grown streets, of acres of pitiful and voiceless
barrenness.”
Throughout the South, property values had collapsed. Confederate bonds
and paper money were worthless; most railroads were damaged or destroyed.
Cotton that had escaped destruction was seized by federal troops. Emancipation

A street in the “burned district”

Ruins of Richmond, Virginia, in the spring of 1865.
 The War’s Aftermath • 707

wiped out $4 billion invested in human flesh and left the labor system in dis-
array. The great age of expansion in the cotton market was over. Not until
1879 would the cotton crop again equal the record harvest of 1860; tobacco
production did not regain its prewar level until 1880; the sugar crop of
Louisiana did not recover until 1893; and the old rice industry along the coast
of South Carolina and Georgia never regained its prewar levels of production
or profit.
For many southerners, the emotional devastation caused by the war was
worse than the physical destruction. Many families had lost sons and hus-
bands; other war veterans returned with one or more limbs missing. Few
families were untouched by the war, and most Confederates resented the
humiliation of military occupation. The scars felt by a war-damaged, land-
proud South would take time to heal, a very long time.

A TRANSFORMED SOUTH The defeat of the Confederacy trans-

formed much of southern society. The freeing of slaves, the destruction of
property, and the collapse of land values left many planters destitute and
homeless. Amanda Worthington, a planter’s wife from Mississippi, saw her
whole world destroyed. In the fall of 1865, she assessed the damage: “None of
us can realize that we are no longer wealthy—yet thanks to the Yankees, the
cause of all unhappiness, such is the case.” Union soldiers who fanned out
across the defeated South to impose order were cursed and spat upon. A
Virginia woman expressed a spirited defiance common among her circle of
friends: “Every day, every hour, that I live increases my hatred and detesta-
tion, and loathing of that race. They [Yankees] disgrace our common
humanity. As a people I consider them vastly inferior to the better classes of
our slaves.” Fervent southern nationalists, both men and women, implanted
in their children a similar hatred of Yankees and a defiance of northern rule.
One mother said that she trained her children to “fear God, love the South,
and live to avenge her.”

L E G A L LY F R E E , S O C I A L LY B O U N D In the former Confederate

states, the newly freed slaves often suffered most of all. They were no longer
slaves, but were they citizens? After all, the U.S. Supreme Court in the Dred
Scott decision (1858) had declared that enslaved Africans and their descen-
dants were not eligible for citizenship. Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation
Proclamation of 1863 implied that former slaves would become U.S. citi-
zens, but citizenship was then defined and protected by state law, and the
southern states in 1865 did not have state governments. The process of
forming new state governments required first deciding the official status of
708 • R ECONSTRUCTION : N ORTH AND S OUTH (CH. 17)

the seceded states: Were they now conquered territories? If so, then the Con-
gress had the authority to recreate their state governments. But what if it
were decided, as Lincoln argued, that the former Confederate states had
never officially left the Union because the act of secession was itself illegal?
In that circumstance, the process of re-forming state governments would fall
within the jurisdiction of the executive branch and the citizens of the states.
Adding to the political confusion was the need to help the former slaves,
most of whom had no land, no home, and no food. A few northerners
argued that what the ex-slaves needed most was their own land. A New Eng-
lander traveling in the postwar South noted that the “sole ambition of the
freedman” was “. . . to become the owner of a little piece of land, there to
erect a humble home, and to dwell in peace and security at his own free will
and pleasure.” In coastal South Carolina and in Mississippi, former slaves
had been “given” land by Union armies after they had taken control of Con-
federate areas during the war. But such transfers of white-owned property to
former slaves were reversed during 1865. Even northern abolitionists balked
at proposals to confiscate white-owned land and distribute it to the freed
slaves. Citizenship and legal rights were one thing, wholesale confiscation of
property and land redistribution quite another. Nonetheless, discussions of
land distribution fueled false rumors that freed slaves would get “forty acres
and a mule,” a slogan that swept across the South at the end of the war.
Instead of land or material help, the freed slaves more often got advice about
proper behavior.
In July 1865, hundreds of freed blacks gathered near an old church on
St. Helena Island off the South Carolina coast. There, Martin Delaney, a
major in the 104th U.S. Colored Troops, addressed them. Before the Civil
War, he had been a free black and a prominent abolitionist in the North.
Now he was speaking to former slaves about their future. He began by
assuring the gathering that slavery had indeed been “absolutely abolished.”
But abolition, he stressed, was less the result of Abraham Lincoln’s leader-
ship than it was the outcome of former slaves and free blacks like him
deciding to resist and undermine the Confederacy. “We would not have
become free,” Delaney insisted, “had we not armed ourselves and fought for
our independence.” He then turned to the economic plight of the freed
slaves, noting that many of the white planters were claiming that former
slaves were lazy and “have not the intelligence to get on for yourselves with-
out being guided and driven to the work by overseers.” Delaney dismissed
such assumptions as lies intended to restore a system of forced labor. He
then told the freed slaves that their best hope was to become self-sustaining
farmers: “Get a community and get all the lands you can—if you cannot get
 The War’s Aftermath • 709

any singly.” Then “grow as much

vegetables etc., as you want for
your families; on the other part of
land you cultivate rice and cotton.”
Doing so would free the former
slaves from continuing depen-
dence on whites. If they could not
find enough money to buy land,
he suggested, then they should
work out an arrangement to culti-
vate land owned by others in
exchange for a share of the crop.
Whatever method they chose,
Delaney stressed, they must find
Major Martin Delaney
ways to become economically self-
Delaney exhorted former slaves to
reliant. Otherwise, they would find achieve self-sufficiency.
themselves slaves again.
When Major Delaney concluded his remarks, the crowd’s “excitement was
immense,” said an observer. The former slaves cheered his emphasis on their
gaining economic independence. One of them said that Delaney “was the
only man who ever told [us] the truth.” Another freedman pledged that he
and the others were determined to “get rid of the Yankee employer”—men
who were being paid by the federal government to cultivate cotton on aban-
doned plantations during the Civil War. Most of the former slaves at the
gathering shared the determination of another freedman who declared that
the white planters would “have to work themselves or starve or leave the
country—we will not work for them anymore.” Several white planters were
in the audience when Major Delaney spoke, and an army officer at the scene
reported that they “listened with horror depicted in their faces” when
Delaney urged the former slaves to rid themselves of their dependence on
their former white owners. The planters predicted that such speeches would
incite “open rebellion” among the southern blacks. Equally concerned were
two white federal army officers sent to monitor Major Delaney’s remarks.
One of them observed that Delaney struck him as “a thorough hater of the
White race” who urged the former slaves “not to work for any man, but for
themselves.” According to the officer’s report, Delaney’s message contra-
dicted the federal government’s official policy that “all the [freed]men
should be employed by their former masters as far as possible.” Even more
worrisome was that Delaney seemed to encourage the possible use of force
by African Americans in the postwar South. His “mention of having two
710 • R ECONSTRUCTION : N ORTH AND S OUTH (CH. 17)

hundred thousands [of black] men [in the federal army] well drilled in
arms—does he not hint to them what to do? If they should be compelled to
work for [white] employers?”

THE F R E E D M E N ’ S B U R E AU The gathering at St. Helena Island

revealed the complexity and volatility of the uncertain situation facing former
slaves. Would the freed blacks work for white planters? What would happen to
the cotton economy if the former slaves focused on subsistence farming, grow-
ing corn and beans for food rather than cotton for profit? How would the for-
mer slaves gain access to any cash if they could hardly grow enough food to
subsist on? It fell to the federal government to provide answers to such thorny
questions.
On March 3, 1865, while the war was still raging, Congress created within
the War Department the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned
Lands to provide “such issues of provisions, clothing, and fuel” as might be
needed to relieve “destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their
wives and children.” It was the first federal experiment in social welfare,
albeit temporary. In May 1865, General Oliver O. Howard, commissioner of
what came to be called the Freedmen’s Bureau, declared that freed slaves
“must be free to choose their own employers, and be paid for their labor.” He
sent Freedmen’s Bureau agents to the South to negotiate labor contracts
(something new for both blacks and white planters), provide medical care,
distribute food, and set up schools. The bureau organized its own courts to
deal with labor disputes and land titles, and its agents were authorized to
supervise trials involving blacks in other courts.
The intensity of racial prejudice in the South often thwarted the efforts of
Freedmen’s Bureau agents—as well as federal troops—to protect and assist
the former slaves. In late June 1865, for example, a white planter in the low
country of South Carolina, near Charleston, signed a contract with sixty-five
of his former slaves calling for them to “attend & cultivate” his fields
“according to the usual system of planting rice & provision lands, and to
conform to all reasonable rules & regulations as may be prescribed” by the
white owner. In exchange, the workers would receive “half of the crop raised
after having deducted the seed of rice, corn, peas & potatoes.” Any workers
who violated the terms of the contract could be evicted from the plantation,
leaving them jobless and homeless. A federal army officer who witnessed the
contract reported that he expected “more trouble on this place than any
other on the river.” Another officer objected to the contract’s provision that
the owner could require workers to cut wood or dig ditches without com-
pensation. But most worrisome was that the contract essentially enslaved the
 The Battle over Political Reconstruction • 711

Freedmen’s school in Virginia

Throughout the former Confederate states, the Freedmen’s Bureau set up schools
for former slaves, such as this one.

workers because no matter “how much they are abused, they cannot leave
without permission of the owner.” If they chose to leave, they would forfeit
any right to a portion of the crop. Across the former Confederacy at the end
of the war, it was evident that the former white economic elite was deter-
mined to continue to control and constrain African Americans.

T H E B AT T L E OV E R P O L I T I C A L R E C O N S T RU C T I O N

The question of how to reconstruct the South’s political structure cen-

tered on deciding which governments would constitute authority in the
defeated states. As Union forces advanced into the Confederacy during the
Civil War, President Lincoln in 1862 had named military governors for con-
quered Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana. By the end of the following year,
he had formulated a plan for regular governments in those states and any
others that might be liberated from Confederate rule.
712 • R ECONSTRUCTION : N ORTH AND S OUTH (CH. 17)

LINCOLN’S PLAN AND CONGRESS’S RESPONSE In late 1863,

President Lincoln had issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction,
under which any former Rebel state could form a Union government whenever
a number equal to 10 percent of those who had voted in 1860 took an oath of
allegiance to the Constitution and the Union and had received a presidential
pardon. Participants also had to swear support for laws and proclamations
dealing with emancipation. Certain groups, however, were excluded from the
pardon: Confederate officials; senior officers of the Confederate army and
navy; judges, congressmen, and military officers of the United States who had
left their federal posts to aid the rebellion; and those accused of failure to treat
captured African American soldiers and their officers as prisoners of war.
Under this plan, governments loyal to the Union appeared in Tennessee,
Arkansas, and Louisiana during the war, but Congress recognized neither their
representatives nor their electoral votes in the 1864 presidential election. In the
absence of specific provisions for Reconstruction in the Constitution, politi-
cians disagreed as to where authority to restore Rebel states properly rested.
Lincoln claimed the right to direct Reconstruction under the clause that set
forth the presidential power to grant pardons and under the constitutional
obligation of the United States to guarantee each state a republican form of gov-
ernment. Many Republican congressmen, however, argued that this obligation
implied that Congress, not the president, should supervise Reconstruction.
A few conservative and most moderate Republicans supported Lincoln’s
program of immediate restoration. The small but influential group of Radi-
cal Republicans, however, favored a sweeping transformation of southern
society based upon granting freed slaves full-fledged citizenship. The Radi-
cals hoped to reconstruct southern society so as to dismantle the planter
elite and the Democratic party.
The Radical Republicans were talented, earnest legislators who insisted
that Congress control the Reconstruction program. To this end, in 1864 they
helped pass the Wade-Davis Bill, sponsored by Senator Benjamin Franklin
Wade of Ohio and Representative Henry Winter Davis of Maryland. In con-
trast to Lincoln’s 10 percent plan, the Wade-Davis Bill would have required
that a majority of white male citizens declare their allegiance and that only
those who could take an “ironclad” oath (required of federal officials since
1862) attesting to their past loyalty could vote or serve in the state constitu-
tional conventions. The conventions, moreover, would have to abolish slav-
ery, exclude from political rights high-ranking civil and military officers of
the Confederacy, and repudiate debts incurred during the conflict.
Passed during the closing day of the session, the Wade-Davis Bill never
became law: Lincoln vetoed it. In retaliation, furious Republicans penned
 The Assassination of Lincoln • 713

the Wade-Davis Manifesto, which accused the president of exceeding his

constitutional authority. Lincoln offered his last view of Reconstruction in
his final public address, on April 11, 1865. Speaking from the White House
balcony, he pronounced that the Confederate states had never left the Union.
Those states were simply “out of their proper practical relation with the
Union,” and the object was to get them back “into their proper practical rela-
tion.” At a cabinet meeting, Lincoln proposed the creation of new southern
state governments before Congress met in December. He shunned the vin-
dictiveness of the Radicals. He wanted “no persecution, no bloody work,” no
radical restructuring of southern social and economic life.

T H E A S S A S S I N AT I O N OF LINCOLN

On the evening of April 14, 1865, less than a week after Robert E. Lee
surrendered his Confederate army, Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary
went to see a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. With his trusted
bodyguard called away to Richmond and the policeman assigned to his the-
ater box away from his post, Lincoln was defenseless as John Wilkes Booth
slipped into the unguarded presidential box. Booth, a prominent actor and
Confederate sympathizer, fired his pistol point-blank at the back of the
president’s head. As the president slumped forward, Booth pulled out a
knife, stabbed Lincoln’s aide, and jumped from the box to the stage, break-
ing his leg in the process. He then mounted a waiting horse and fled the
city. The president died the following morning. Accomplices of Booth had
simultaneously targeted Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of
State William H. Seward. Seward and four others, including his son, were
victims of severe knife wounds. Johnson escaped injury, however, because
his would-be assassin got cold feet and wound up tipsy in the barroom of
the vice president’s hotel. Booth was pursued into Virginia and killed in a
burning barn. Three of his collaborators were convicted by a military court
and hanged, along with Mary Surratt, at whose boardinghouse they had
plotted.
Lincoln’s death stunned the nation. The outpouring of grief was over-
whelming. General Ulysses S. Grant observed that Lincoln “was incon-
testably the greatest man I ever knew.” Lincoln’s body lay in state for several
days in Washington, D.C., before being transported by train on April 21 for
burial in Springfield, Illinois. Along the way, the coffin was made available
for people to view. In Philadelphia, three hundred thousand mourners paid
their last respects. In New York City, the coffin was placed in the City Hall
714 • R ECONSTRUCTION : N ORTH AND S OUTH (CH. 17)

rotunda, visited by five hundred

thousand people. The coffin was
then paraded through Manhattan
to the Hudson River Railway Ter-
minal. One of the spectators was
six-year-old Theodore Roosevelt.
On May 4, Lincoln was laid to rest
in Springfield.

JOHNSON’S PLAN Lincoln’s

death elevated to the White House
Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, a
combative man who lacked most
presidential virtues. Johnson was
provincial and bigoted—he har-
Paying respect bored fierce prejudices. He was
The only photograph of the late Lincoln in also short-tempered and impetu-
his coffin, displayed here in New York’s ous. At the inaugural ceremonies
City Hall rotunda. in early 1865, he had delivered his
vice-presidential address in a state
of slurring drunkenness that embarrassed Lincoln and the nation. Johnson
was a war (pro-Union) Democrat who had been put on the National Union
ticket in 1864 as a gesture of unity. Of origins as humble as Lincoln’s, Johnson
was an orphan who had moved as a youth from his birthplace in Raleigh,
North Carolina, to Greeneville, Tennessee, where he became the proprietor of
a tailor shop. Self-educated with the help of his wife, he had served as mayor,
congressman, governor, and senator, then as the Unionist military governor of
Tennessee before he became vice president. In the process, he had become
an advocate of the small farmers in opposition to the privileges of the
large planters—“a bloated, corrupted aristocracy.” He also shared the racist
attitudes of most white yeomen. “Damn the negroes,” he exclaimed to
a friend during the war, “I am fighting those traitorous aristocrats, their
masters.”
Some Radicals at first thought Johnson, unlike Lincoln, to be one of them.
Johnson had, for example, once asserted that treason “must be made infa-
mous and traitors must be impoverished.” Senator Benjamin Wade loved
such vengeful language. “Johnson, we have faith in you,” he promised. “By
the gods, there will be no trouble now in running this government.” But
Wade would soon find Johnson as unsympathetic as Lincoln, if for different
reasons.
 The Assassination of Lincoln • 715

Johnson’s loyalty to the Union

sprang from a strict adherence to the
Constitution and a fervent belief in
limited government. When discussing
what to do with the former Confeder-
ate states, Johnson preferred the term
restoration to reconstruction. In 1865,
he declared that “there is no such
thing as reconstruction. Those States
have not gone out of the Union.
Therefore reconstruction is unneces-
sary.” Like many other whites, he also
opposed the growing Radical senti-
ment to grant the vote to African
Americans.
Andrew Johnson
Johnson’s plan to restore the Union
A pro-Union Democrat from
thus closely resembled Lincoln’s. A Tennessee.
new Proclamation of Amnesty, issued
in May 1865, excluded not only those Lincoln had barred from pardon but
also everybody with taxable property worth more than $20,000. Those
wealthy planters, bankers, and merchants were the people Johnson believed
had led the South to secede. They were allowed to make special applications
for pardon directly to the president, and before the year was out Johnson
had issued some thirteen thousand pardons.
Johnson followed up his amnesty proclamation with his own plan for read-
mitting the former Confederate states. In each state, a native Unionist became
provisional governor, with authority to call a convention of men elected by
loyal voters. Lincoln’s 10 percent requirement was omitted. Johnson called
upon the state conventions to invalidate the secession ordinances, abolish
slavery, and repudiate all debts incurred to aid the Confederacy. Each state,
moreover, had to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment ending slavery. In his final
public address, Lincoln had endorsed a limited black suffrage. Johnson
repeated Lincoln’s advice. He reminded the provisional governor of Missis-
sippi, for example, that the state conventions might “with perfect safety”
extend suffrage to African Americans with education or with military service
so as to “disarm the adversary,” the adversary being “radicals who are wild
upon” giving all African Americans the right to vote.
The state conventions for the most part met Johnson’s requirements. But
Carl Schurz, a German immigrant and war hero who became a prominent
Missouri politician, found during a visit to the South “an utter absence of
716 • R ECONSTRUCTION : N ORTH AND S OUTH (CH. 17)

national feeling . . . and a desire to preserve slavery . . . as much and as long as

possible.” Southern whites had accepted the situation because they thought
so little had changed after all. Emboldened by Johnson’s indulgence, they
ignored his pleas for moderation and conciliation. Suggestions of black suf-
frage were scarcely raised in the state conventions and promptly squelched
when they were.

S O U T H E R N I N T R A N S I G E N C E When Congress met in December

1865, for the first time since the end of the war it faced the fact that the new
state governments in the postwar South were remarkably like the old Con-
federate ones. Southern voters had acted with extreme disregard for north-
ern feelings. Among the new members presenting themselves to Congress
were Georgia’s Alexander Stephens, former vice president of the Confeder-
acy, now claiming a seat in the Senate; four Confederate generals; eight
colonels; and six cabinet members. Congress forthwith denied seats to all
such officials. It was too much to expect, after four bloody years, that the
Unionists in Congress would welcome back ex-Confederate leaders.
Furthermore, the new all-white southern state legislatures, in passing
repressive “black codes” designed to restrict the freedom of African Ameri-
cans, demonstrated that they intended to preserve slavery as nearly as possible.
As one white southerner stressed, “The ex-slave was not a free man; he was a
free Negro,” and the black codes were intended to highlight the distinction.
The black codes varied from state to state, but some provisions were com-
mon in many of them. Existing marriages, including common-law mar-
riages, were recognized (although interracial marriages were prohibited),
and testimony of blacks was accepted in legal cases involving blacks—and in
six states in all cases. Blacks could own property. They could sue and be sued
in the courts. On the other hand, they could not own farmland in Missis-
sippi or city lots in South Carolina; they were required to buy special licenses
to practice certain trades in Mississippi. Only a few states allowed blacks to
serve on juries. Blacks who worked for whites were required to enter into
labor contracts with their employers, to be renewed annually. Unemployed
(“vagrant”) blacks were often arrested and punished with severe fines, and if
unable to pay they were forced to labor in the fields of those who paid the
courts for this source of cheap labor. In other words, aspects of slavery were
simply being restored in another guise. When a freedman in South Carolina
told a white employer that he wanted to get a federal army officer to review
his labor contract, the employer killed him.
Faced with such blatant evidence of southern intransigence, moderate
Republicans in Congress drifted toward the Radicals’ views. The new Con-
 The Assassination of Lincoln • 717

(?) “Slavery Is Dead” (?)

Thomas Nast’s cartoon suggests that slavery was not dead in the postwar south.

gress set up a Joint Committee on Reconstruction, with nine members from

the House and six from the Senate, to gather evidence of southern efforts to
thwart Reconstruction. Initiative fell to determined Radical Republicans
who knew what they wanted: Benjamin Wade of Ohio, George Washington
Julian of Indiana, and—most conspicuously of all—Thaddeus Stevens of
Pennsylvania and Charles Sumner of Massachusetts.

THE RADICAL REPUBLICANS Most Radical Republicans had been

connected with the anti-slavery cause for decades. In addition, few could
escape the bitterness bred by the long war or remain unaware of the partisan
advantage that would come to the Republican party from black suffrage. The
Republicans needed African American votes to maintain their control of
Congress and the White House. They also needed to disenfranchise former
Confederates to keep them from helping to elect Democrats eager to restore
the old southern ruling class to power. In public, however, the Radical Repub-
licans rarely disclosed such partisan self-interest. Instead, they asserted that
the Republicans, the party of Union and freedom, could best guarantee the
fruits of victory and that extending voting rights to African Americans would
be the best way to promote their welfare.
718 • R ECONSTRUCTION : N ORTH AND S OUTH (CH. 17)

The growing conflict of opinion over Reconstruction policy brought

about an inversion in constitutional reasoning. Secessionists—and Andrew
Johnson—were now arguing that the Rebel states had in fact remained in the
Union, and some Radical Republicans were contriving arguments that they
had left the Union after all. Thaddeus Stevens argued that the Confederate
states should be viewed as conquered provinces, subject to the absolute will
of the victors, and that the “whole fabric of southern society must be
changed.” Most Republicans, however, held that the Confederate states con-
tinued to exist as entities, but by the acts of secession and war they had for-
feited “all civil and political rights under the Constitution.” And Congress,
not the president, was the proper authority to determine how and when
such rights might be restored.

J O H N S O N ’ S B AT T L E W I T H C O N G R E S S A long year of political

battling remained, however, before this idea triumphed. By the end of 1865,
the Radical Republicans’ views had gained a majority in Congress, if one not
yet large enough to override presidential vetoes. But the critical year of 1866
saw the gradual waning of Andrew Johnson’s power and influence, much of
which was self-induced. Johnson first challenged Congress in 1866, when he
vetoed a bill to extend the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau. The measure, he
said, violated the Constitution in several ways: it made the federal govern-
ment responsible for the care of poor blacks, it was passed by a Congress in
which eleven ex-Confederate states had been denied seats, and it used vague
language in defining the “civil rights and immunities” of African Americans.
For the time being, Johnson’s prestige remained sufficiently intact that the
Senate upheld his veto.
Three days after the veto, however, during an impromptu speech, Johnson
undermined his already weakening authority with a fiery assault upon the
Radical Republican leaders. From that point forward, moderate Republicans
deserted a president who had opened himself to counterattack. The Radical
Republicans took the offensive. Johnson was “an alien enemy of a foreign
state,” Stevens declared. Sumner called him “an insolent drunken brute,” a
charge Johnson was open to because of his behavior at the 1865 inauguration.
In mid-March 1866 the Radical-led Congress passed the Civil Rights Act,
written by Illinois senator Lyman Trumbull (who also drafted the Thir-
teenth Amendment). A response to the black codes and the neo-slavery sys-
tem created by unrepentant southern state legislatures, it declared that “all
persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power,
excluding Indians not taxed,” were citizens entitled to “full and equal benefit
of all laws.” The granting of citizenship to native-born blacks, Johnson
 The Assassination of Lincoln • 719

fumed, exceeded the scope of federal power. It would, moreover, “foment

discord among the races.” Johnson vetoed the bill, but this time, on April 9,
Congress overrode the presidential veto. On July 16, it enacted a revised
Freedmen’s Bureau Bill, again overriding a veto. From that point on, John-
son steadily lost both public and political support.

T H E F O U RT E E N T H A M E N D M E N T To remove all doubt about the

legality of the new Civil Rights Act, the joint committee recommended a
new constitutional amendment, which passed Congress on June 16, 1866,
and was ratified by the states two years later, on July 28, 1868. The Four-
teenth Amendment went far beyond the Civil Rights Act, however. It estab-
lished a constitutional guarantee of basic citizenship for all Americans,
including African Americans. The amendment reaffirms the state and fed-
eral citizenship of persons born or naturalized in the United States, and it
forbids any state (the word state would be important in later litigation) to
“abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens,” to deprive any person
(again an important term) “of life, liberty, or property, without due process
of law,” or to “deny any person . . . the equal protection of the laws.” These
three clauses have been the subject of many lawsuits, resulting in applica-
tions not widely, if at all, foreseen at the time. The “due-process clause” has
come to mean that state as well as federal power is subject to the Bill of
Rights, and it has been used to protect corporations, as legal “persons,” from
“unreasonable” regulation by the states. Other provisions of the amendment
have had less far-reaching effects. One section specified that the debt of the
United States “shall not be questioned” by the former Confederate states and
declared “illegal and void” all debts contracted in aid of the rebellion. The
Fourteenth Amendment also prohibited the president from granting par-
dons to former Confederate leaders.
President Andrew Johnson’s home state was among the first to ratify the
Fourteenth Amendment. In Tennessee, which had more Unionists than any
other Confederate state, the government had fallen under Radical Republican
control. The state’s governor, in reporting the results to the secretary of the
Senate, added, “Give my respects to the dead dog of the White House.” His
words illustrate the growing acrimony on both sides of the Reconstruction
debates. In May and July, race riots in Memphis and New Orleans added fuel to
the flames. Both incidents involved indiscriminate massacres of blacks by local
police and white mobs. The carnage, Radical Republicans argued, was the nat-
ural fruit of Andrew Johnson’s lenient policy toward white supremacists. “Wit-
ness Memphis, witness New Orleans,” Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner
cried. “Who can doubt that the President is the author of these tragedies?”
720 • R ECONSTRUCTION : N ORTH AND S OUTH (CH. 17)

R E C O N S T RU C T I N G THE SOUTH

T H E T R I U M P H O F C O N G R E S S I O N A L R E C O N S T RU C T I O N As
1866 drew to an end, the congressional elections promised to be a referendum
on the growing split between President Andrew Johnson and the Radical
Republicans. To win votes, Johnson went on a speaking tour of the Midwest.
But his efforts backfired when several of his speeches turned into undignified
shouting contests between him and his critics. In Cleveland, Johnson described
the Radical Republicans as “factious, domineering, tyrannical” men, and he
foolishly exchanged hot-tempered insults with a heckler. At another stop, while
Johnson was speaking from the back of a railway car, the engineer mistakenly
pulled the train out of the station, making the president appear quite the fool.
Such incidents tended to confirm Johnson’s image as a “ludicrous boor” and a
“drunken imbecile,” an image that Radical Republicans promoted. The 1866
congressional elections were a devastating defeat for Johnson; Republicans won
more than a two-thirds majority in each house, a comfortable margin with
which to override presidential vetoes.
The Republican-controlled Congress in fact enacted several important
provisions even before the new members took office. Two acts passed in
1867 extended voting rights to African Americans in the District of Colum-
bia and the territories. Another law provided that the new Congress would
convene on March 4 instead of the following December, depriving Johnson
of a breathing spell. On March 2, 1867, two days before the old Congress
expired, it passed, over Johnson’s vetoes, three crucial laws promoting what
came to be called “Congressional Reconstruction”: the Military Reconstruc-
tion Act, the Command of the Army Act (an amendment to an army appro-
priation), and the Tenure of Office Act.
Congressional Reconstruction was designed to prevent white southerners
from manipulating the reconstruction process. The Command of the Army
Act required that all orders from the commander in chief go through the
headquarters of the general of the army, a post then held by Ulysses S. Grant.
The Radical Republicans distrusted President Johnson and trusted General
Grant, who was already leaning their way. The Tenure of Office Act required
Senate permission for the president to remove any federal officeholder
whose appointment the Senate had confirmed. The purpose of at least some
congressmen was to retain Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, the one Radical
Republican sympathizer in Johnson’s cabinet.
The Military Reconstruction Act was hailed—or denounced—as the tri-
umphant victory of Radical Reconstruction, for it set a precedent among
former slave societies in providing voting rights to freed slaves almost
immediately after emancipation. It also represented the nation’s first effort
 Reconstructing the South • 721

in military-enforced nation building. The North’s effort to “reconstruct”

the South by force after the Civil War set a precedent for future American
military occupations and attempted social transformations. The act declared
that “no legal state governments or adequate protection for life and prop-
erty now exists in the rebel States.” One state, Tennessee, was exempted
from the application of the new act because it had already ratified the Four-
teenth Amendment. The other ten southern states were divided into five
military districts, and the commanding officer of each was authorized to
keep order and protect the “rights of persons and property.” The Military
Reconstruction Act then stipulated that new constitutions in each of the for-
mer Confederate states were to be framed by conventions elected by male
citizens aged twenty-one and older “of whatever race, color, or previous con-
dition.” Each state constitution had to guarantee the right of African Ameri-
can males to vote. Once the constitution was ratified by a majority of voters
and accepted by Congress, other criteria had to be met. The new state legisla-
ture had to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, and once the amendment
became part of the Constitution, any given state would be entitled to repre-
sentation in Congress.
Several hundred African American delegates participated in the statewide
political conventions. Most had been selected by local political meetings or
churches, fraternal societies, Union Leagues, or black army units from the
North, although a few simply appointed themselves. The African American
delegates “ranged [across] all colors and apparently all conditions,” but free
mulattoes from the cities played the most prominent roles. At Louisiana’s
Republican state convention, for instance, nineteen of the twenty black dele-
gates had been born free.
President Johnson reluctantly appointed military commanders under the
new Military Reconstruction Act, but the situation remained uncertain for a
time. Some people expected the Supreme Court to strike down the act, and
no process existed for the new elections. Congress quickly remedied that on
March 23, 1867, with the Second Reconstruction Act, which directed the
army commanders to register all adult men who swore they were qualified.
Before the end of 1867, new elections had been held in all the states but
Texas, and blacks participated in high numbers, giving virtually all of their
votes to Republican candidates.
Having clipped the president’s wings, the Republican Congress moved a
year later to safeguard its Reconstruction program from possible interfer-
ence by the Supreme Court. On March 27, 1868, Congress simply removed
the power of the Supreme Court to review cases arising under the Military
Reconstruction Act, which Congress clearly had the right to do under its
power to define the Court’s jurisdiction. The Court accepted this curtailment
722 • R ECONSTRUCTION : N ORTH AND S OUTH (CH. 17)

of its authority on the same day it affirmed the principle of an “indestruc-

tible Union” in Texas v. White (1869). In that case the Court also asserted the
right of Congress to reframe state governments, thus endorsing the Radical
Republican point of view.

T H E I M P E AC H M E N T A N D T R I A L O F J O H N S O N By 1868, Radi-
cal Republicans had decided that Andrew Johnson must be removed from
office. The Republicans had unsuccessfully tried to impeach Johnson early
in 1867, alleging a variety of flimsy charges, none of which represented an
indictable crime. Then Johnson himself provided the occasion for impeach-
ment when he deliberately violated the Tenure of Office Act in order to test
its constitutionality. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton had become a thorn in
Johnson’s side, refusing to resign despite his disagreements with the presi-
dent’s Reconstruction policy. On August 12, 1867, during a congressional
recess, Johnson suspended Stanton and named General Ulysses S. Grant in
his place. When the Senate refused to confirm Johnson’s action, however,
Grant returned the office to Stanton.
The Radical Republicans now saw their chance to remove the president.
On February 24, 1868, the Republican-dominated House passed eleven arti-
cles of impeachment by a party-line vote of 126 to 47. Most of the articles

The trial of Andrew Johnson

House of Representatives managers of the impeachment proceedings. Among
them were Benjamin Franklin Butler (Republican of Massachusetts, seated left)
and Thaddeus Stevens (Republican of Pennsylvania, seated with cane).
 Reconstructing the South • 723

focused on the charge that Johnson had unlawfully removed Secretary of

War Stanton.
The Senate trial began on March 5, 1868, and continued until May 26,
with Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase presiding. It was a great spectacle before
a packed gallery. The five-week trial ended in May 1868, and the Senate
voted 35 to 19 for conviction, only one vote short of the two thirds needed
for removal from office. Although the Senate failed to remove Johnson, the
trial crippled his already weakened presidency. During the remaining ten
months of his term, he initiated no other clashes with Congress. In 1868,
Johnson sought the Democratic presidential nomination but lost to New
York governor Horatio Seymour, who then lost to the Republican, Ulysses S.
Grant, in the general election. The impeachment of Johnson was in the end a
great political mistake, for the failure to remove the president damaged Rad-
ical Republican morale and support. Nevertheless, the Radical cause did
gain something: to stave off impeachment, Johnson agreed not to obstruct
the process of Congressional-led Reconstruction.

R E P U B L I C A N RU L E I N T H E S O U T H In June 1868, Congress

agreed that eight southern states—all but Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas—
had met the more stringent conditions for readmission. Congress rescinded
Georgia’s admission, however, when the state legislature expelled twenty-
eight African American members and seated former Confederate leaders. The
federal military commander in Georgia then forced the legislature to reseat
the black members and remove the Confederates, and the state was com-
pelled to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment before being admitted in July 1870.
Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia had returned earlier in 1870, under the added
requirement that they, too, ratify the Fifteenth Amendment. That amend-
ment, submitted to the states in 1869 and ratified in 1870, forbids the states to
deny any person the vote on grounds of “race, color, or previous condition of
servitude.” Kentucky, the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, was the only state in
the nation that failed to ratify all three of the constitutional amendments
related to ending slavery—the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth.
Long before the new governments were established, groups promoting
the Republican party had begun to spring up in the South, chiefly sponsored
by the Union League, founded in Philadelphia in 1862 to support the Union.
League recruiters in the South enrolled African Americans and loyal whites,
initiated them into the secrets and rituals of the order, and instructed them
“in their rights and duties.” Their recruiting efforts were so successful that in
1867, on the eve of South Carolina’s choice of convention delegates, the
league reported eighty-eight chapters, which claimed to have enrolled
almost every adult black male in the state.
724 • R ECONSTRUCTION : N ORTH AND S OUTH (CH. 17)

T H E R E C O N S T RU C T E D S O U T H

T H E F R E E D S L AV E S African Americans in the postwar South were

active agents in affecting the course of Reconstruction, though it was not an
easy process. During the era of Reconstruction, whites, both northern and
southern, harbored racist views of blacks. A northern journalist traveling in
the South after the war reported that the “whites seem wholly unable to
comprehend that freedom for the negro means the same thing as freedom
for them.” Many whites presumed that the freed slaves would not be willing
to work. Federal troops often tried to convince—or force—freedmen to
return to plantations to work as wage laborers. Local planters conspired
together to control the wages paid to freedmen. White southerners also used
terror, intimidation, and violence to suppress black efforts to gain social
and economic equality. In Texas, a white farmer told a former slave that his
freedom would do him “damned little good . . . as I intend to shoot you”—
and he did. In July 1866, a black woman in Clinch County, Georgia, was
arrested and whipped sixty-five times for “using abusive language” during
an encounter with a white woman. The Civil War had brought freedom to
enslaved African Americans, but it did not bring them protection against
exploitation or abuse.
After emancipation, Union soldiers and northern observers in the South
often commented that freed slaves did not go far away from where they had
been enslaved. But why would they leave what they knew so well? As a group of
African Americans explained, they did not want to abandon “land they had
laid their fathers’ bones upon.” A Union officer noted that southern blacks
seemed “more attached to familiar places” than any other group in the nation.
Participation in the Union army or navy had provided many freedmen
with training in leadership. Black military veterans would form the core of
the first generation of African American political leaders in the postwar
South. Military service gave many former slaves their first opportunities to
learn to read and write. Army life also alerted them to new opportunities for
economic advancement, social respectability, and civic leadership. Fighting
for the Union cause also instilled a fervent sense of nationalism. A Virginia
freedman explained that the United States was “now our country—made
emphatically so by the blood of our brethren.”
Former slaves established churches after the war, which quickly formed
the foundation of African American community life. Many blacks preferred
the Baptist denomination, in part because its decentralized structure
allowed each congregation to worship in its own way. By 1890, over 1.3 mil-
lion African Americans in the South had become Baptists, nearly three times
 The Reconstructed South • 725

as many as had joined any other black denomination. In addition to forming

viable new congregations, freed African Americans organized thousands of
fraternal, benevolent, and mutual-aid societies, as well as clubs, lodges, and
associations. Memphis, for example, had over two hundred such organiza-
tions; Richmond boasted twice that number.
Freed blacks also hastened to reestablish their families. Marriages that had
been prohibited during slavery were now legitimized through the assistance
of the Freedmen’s Bureau. By 1870, a preponderant majority of former
slaves were living in two-parent households. With little money or technical
training, freed blacks faced the prospect of becoming wage laborers. Because
there were so few banks left in the South, it was virtually impossible for for-
mer slaves to get loans to buy farmland. For many freed blacks (and poor
whites) the primary vocational option after the war was sharecropping, in
which the crop produced was divided between the tenant farmer and the
landowner. Sharecropping enabled mothers and wives to contribute directly
to the family’s income.
African American communities in the postwar South also sought to
establish schools. Planters had denied education to blacks in part because

The First African Church

On the eve of its move to a new building, the First African Church of Richmond,
Virginia, was featured in a short article, including illustrations such as the one
above, in Harper’s Weekly, in June 1874.
726 • R ECONSTRUCTION : N ORTH AND S OUTH (CH. 17)

they feared that literate slaves would read abolitionist literature and organize
uprisings. After the war, the white elite worried that formal education would
encourage poor whites and poor blacks to leave the South in search of better
social and economic opportunities. Economic leaders wanted to protect the
competitive advantage afforded by the region’s low-wage labor market.
“They didn’t want us to learn nothin’,” one former slave recalled. “The only
thing we had to learn was how to work.” White opposition to education for
blacks made education all the more important to African Americans. South
Carolina’s Mary McLeod Bethune, the fifteenth child of former slaves, rev-
eled in the opportunity to gain an education: “The whole world opened to
me when I learned to read.” She walked five miles to school as a child, earned
a scholarship to college, and went on to become the first black woman to
found a school that became a four-year college, Bethune-Cookman, in Day-
tona Beach, Florida. African American churches and individuals helped raise
the money and often built the schools and paid the teachers. Soldiers who
had acquired some literacy skills often served as the teachers, and the students
included adults as well as children.

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN SOUTHERN POLITICS In the post-

war South, the new role of African Americans in politics caused the most
controversy. If largely uneducated and inexperienced in the rudiments of
politics, southern blacks were little different from the millions of newly
enfranchised propertyless whites in the age of Andrew Jackson’s political
reforms or immigrants in postwar cities. Some freedmen frankly confessed
their disadvantages. Beverly Nash, an African American delegate to the
South Carolina convention of 1868, told his colleagues: “I believe, my friends
and fellow-citizens, we are not prepared for this suffrage. But we can learn.
Give a man tools and let him commence to use them, and in time he will
learn a trade. So it is with voting.”
By 1867, however, former slaves had begun to gain political influence and
vote in large numbers, and this development revealed emerging tensions
within the African American community. Some southern blacks resented the
presence of northern brethren who moved south after the war, while others
complained that few ex-slaves were represented in leadership positions.
There developed real tensions in the black community between the few who
owned property and the many who did not. In North Carolina by 1870, for
example, less than 7 percent of blacks owned land, and most of them owned
only a few acres; half of black property owners had less than twenty acres.
Northern blacks and the southern free black elite, most of whom were urban
dwellers and many of whom were mulattoes, often opposed efforts to redis-
tribute land to the freedmen, and many insisted that political equality did
 The Reconstructed South • 727

Freedmen voting in New Orleans

The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, guaranteed at the federal level
the right of citizens to vote regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of
servitude.” But former slaves had been registering to vote—and voting in large
numbers—in state elections since 1867, as in this scene.

not mean social equality. As a black Alabama leader stressed, “We do not ask
that the ignorant and degraded shall be put on a social equality with the
refined and intelligent.” In general, however, unity rather than dissension
prevailed, and African Americans focused on common concerns such as full
equality under the law.
Brought suddenly into politics in times that tried the most skilled of
statesmen, many African Americans served with distinction. Nonetheless,
the derisive label “black Reconstruction,” used by later critics, exaggerates
African American political influence, which was limited mainly to voting.
Such criticism also overlooks the political clout of the large number of
white Republicans, especially in the mountain areas of the Upper South,
who also favored the Radical plan for Reconstruction. Only one of the new
state conventions, South Carolina’s, had a black majority, seventy-six to
forty-one. Louisiana’s was evenly divided racially, and in only two other
conventions were more than 20 percent of the members black: Florida’s,
with 40 percent, and Virginia’s, with 24 percent. The Texas convention was
only 10 percent black, and North Carolina’s was 11 percent—but that did
not stop a white newspaper from calling it a body consisting of “baboons,
monkeys, mules . . . and other jackasses.”
728 • R ECONSTRUCTION : N ORTH AND S OUTH (CH. 17)

African American political figures of Reconstruction

Blanche K. Bruce (left) and Hiram Revels (right) served in the U.S. Senate.
Frederick Douglass (center) was a major figure in the abolitionist movement.

In the new state governments any African American participation was a

novelty. Although some six hundred blacks—most of them former slaves—
served as state legislators, no black man was ever elected governor, and only
a few served as judges. In Louisiana, however, Pinckney Pinchback, a north-
ern black and former Union soldier, won the office of lieutenant governor
and served as acting governor when the white governor was indicted for cor-
ruption. Several African Americans were elected lieutenant governor, state
treasurer, or secretary of state. There were two black senators in Congress,
Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce, both Mississippi natives who had been
educated in the North, and fourteen black members of the House of Repre-
sentatives during Reconstruction.

“ C A R P E T BAG G E R S ”A N D “ S C A L AWA G S ” The top positions in

postwar southern state governments went for the most part to white Republi-
cans, whom the opposition whites labeled “carpetbaggers” and “scalawags,”
depending upon their place of birth. Northerners who allegedly rushed
South with all their belongings in carpetbags to grab the political spoils were
more often than not Union veterans who had arrived as early as 1865 or 1866,
drawn South by the hope of economic opportunity and other attractions that
 The Reconstructed South • 729

many of them had seen in their Union service. Many other so-called carpet-
baggers were teachers, social workers, or preachers animated by a sincere
missionary impulse.
The scalawags, or native white Republicans, were even more reviled and
misrepresented. A Nashville newspaper editor called them the “merest
trash.” Most scalawags had opposed secession, forming a Unionist majority
in many mountain counties as far south as Georgia and Alabama and espe-
cially in the hills of eastern Tennessee. Among the scalawags were several
distinguished figures, including the former Confederate general James
Longstreet, who decided after Appomattox that the Old South must change
its ways. He became a successful cotton broker in New Orleans, joined the
Republican party, and supported the Radical Reconstruction program.
Other so-called scalawags were former Whigs attracted by the Republican
party’s economic program of industrial and commercial expansion.

THE R A D I C A L R E P U B L I C A N R E C O R D Former Confederates

resented the new state constitutions because of their provisions allowing for
black voting and civil rights. Yet most of those constitutions remained in
effect for some years after the end of Radical Republican control, and later
constitutions incorporated many of their features. Conspicuous among the
Radical innovations were such steps toward greater democracy as requiring
universal manhood suffrage, reapportioning legislatures more nearly accord-
ing to population, and making more state offices elective. In South Carolina,
former Confederate leaders opposed the Radical state legislature not simply
because of its black members but also because lower-class whites were enjoy-
ing unprecedented political power too.
Given the hostile circumstances under which the Radical governments
operated, their achievements were remarkable. They constructed an exten-
sive railroad network and established state-supported public school systems.
Some six hundred thousand black pupils were enrolled in southern schools
by 1877. State governments under the Radicals also gave more attention to
the poor and to orphanages, asylums, and institutions for the deaf and the
blind of both races. Public roads, bridges, and buildings were repaired or
rebuilt. African Americans achieved rights and opportunities that would
never again be taken away, at least in principle: equality before the law and the
rights to own property, carry on business, enter professions, attend schools,
and learn to read and write.
Yet several of these Republican state regimes also engaged in corrupt
practices. Bids for state government contracts were accepted at absurdly
high prices, and public officials took their cut. Public money and public
credit were often awarded to privately owned corporations, notably rail-
 730 • R ECONSTRUCTION : N ORTH AND S OUTH (CH. 17)

PA NJ
OHIO MD
ILLINOIS IN
 DE
WV
VA
1870

KANSAS
MISSOURI  1869
 KENTUCKY 1 
 NC 
TN  1868 1870
INDIAN AR 1866 1869 2
TERRITORY 1868 SC
1874 1868
 4 MS AL GA 1876
1870 1868 1870 
1876 1874 1871
TEXAS 5 LA
1868   
1870 1877 3
1873 
 FL
1868
1877

RECONSTRUCTION, 1865–1877
States with Reconstruction governments
1868 Date of readmission to the Union
1870 Date of reestablishment of conservative rule
MEXICO 2 Military districts set up by the Reconstruction Act of 1867
Means by Which Slavery Was Abolished
Emancipation Proclamation, 1863
0 100 200 Miles State action
Thirteenth Amendment, 1865
0 100 200 Kilometers

How did the Military Reconstruction Act reorganize governments in the South in
the late 1860s and 1870s? What did the former Confederate states have to do to be
readmitted to the Union? Why did “Conservative” parties gradually regain control
of the South from the Republicans in the 1870s?

roads, under conditions that invited influence peddling. Corruption was not
invented by the Radical Republican regimes, nor did it die with them.
Louisiana’s “carpetbag” governor recognized as much. “Why,” he said, “down
here everybody is demoralized. Corruption is the fashion.”

RELIGION AND R E C O N S T R U C T I O N The religious community

played a critical role in the implementation and ultimate failure of Radical
Reconstruction, and religious commentators offered quite different interpre-
tations of what should be done with the defeated South. Thaddeus Stevens
and many other Radical Republican leaders who had spent their careers pro-
moting the abolition of slavery and racial equality were motivated primarily
by religious ideals and moral fervor. They wanted no compromise with
racism. Likewise, most of the Christian missionaries who headed south after
 The Reconstructed South • 731

the Civil War brought with them a progressive vision of a biracial “beloved
community” emerging in the reconstructed South, and they strove to pro-
mote social and political equality for freed slaves. For these crusaders, civil
rights was a sacred cause. They used Christian principles to challenge the pre-
vailing theological and “scientific” justifications for racial inferiority. They
also promoted Christian solidarity across racial and regional lines.
At the same time, the Protestant denominations, all of which had split into
northern and southern branches over the issues of slavery and secession, strug-
gled to reunite after the war. A growing number of northern ministers pro-
moted reconciliation between the warring regions after the Civil War. These
“apostles of forgiveness” prized white unity over racial equality. For example,
the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, the powerful New York minister whose sis-
ter Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, wanted white southern
planters—rather than federal officials or African Americans themselves—
to oversee Reconstruction. Not surprisingly, Beecher’s views gained widespread
support among evangelical ministers in the South.
The collapse of the Confederacy did not prompt southern whites to aban-
don their belief that God was on their side. In the wake of defeat and emanci-
pation, white southern ministers reassured their congregations that they had
no reason to question the moral foundations of their region or their defense of
white racial superiority. For African
Americans, however, the Civil War and
emancipation demonstrated that God
was on their side. Emancipation was in
their view a redemptive act through
which God wrought national regener-
ation. African American ministers
were convinced that the United States
was indeed a divinely inspired nation
and that blacks had a providential role
to play in its future. Yet neither black
nor idealistic white northern ministers
could stem the growing chorus of
whites who were willing to abandon
goals of racial equality in exchange for
national religious reconciliation. By
the end of the nineteenth century,
mainstream American Protestantism
promoted the image of a “white The “white republic”
republic” that conflated whiteness, This cartoon illustrates white unity
godliness, and nationalism. against racial equality.
732 • R ECONSTRUCTION : N ORTH AND S OUTH (CH. 17)

THE GRANT YEARS

Ulysses S. Grant, who served as president during the collapse of Repub-

lican rule in the South, brought to the White House little political experience.
But in 1868 northern voters supported the “Lion of Vicksburg” because of
his record as the Union army commander. He was the most popular man in
the nation. Both parties wooed him, but his falling-out with President Andrew
Johnson had pushed him toward the Republicans. They were, as Thaddeus
Stevens said, ready to “let him into the church.”

THE ELECTION OF 1868 The Republican party platform of 1868

endorsed congressional Reconstruction. One plank cautiously defended
black suffrage as a necessity in the South but a matter each northern state
should settle for itself. Another urged payment of the national debt “in the
utmost good faith to all creditors,” which meant in gold. More important
than the platform were the great
expectations of a heroic soldier-
president and his slogan, “Let us
have peace.”
The Democrats took opposite
positions on both Reconstruction
and the debt. The Republican
Congress, the Democratic party
platform charged, instead of
restoring the Union had “so far
as in its power, dissolved it, and
subjected ten states, in the time
of profound peace, to military
despotism and Negro supremacy.”
As for the federal debt, the party
endorsed Representative George
H. Pendleton’s “Ohio idea” that,
since most war bonds had been
bought with depreciated green-
backs, they should be paid off in
“The Working-Man’s Banner” greenbacks rather than in gold.
This campaign banner makes reference With no conspicuously available
to the working-class origins of Ulysses S. candidate in sight, the Democra-
Grant and his vice-presidential candidate,
Henry Wilson, by depicting Grant as a tic Convention turned to Horatio
tanner of hides and Wilson as a shoemaker. Seymour, wartime governor of
 The Grant Years • 733

New York. Seymour neither sought nor embraced the nomination, leading
opponents to call him the Great Decliner. Yet the Democrats made a closer
race of it than the electoral vote revealed. While Grant swept the Electoral
College by 214 to 80, his popular majority was only 307,000 out of a total of
over 5.7 million votes. More than 500,000 African American voters accounted
for Grant’s margin of victory.
Grant had proved himself a great military leader, but as the youngest pres-
ident ever (forty-six years old at the time of his inauguration), he was often
blind to the political forces and influence peddlers around him. He was
awestruck by men of wealth and unaccountably loyal to some who betrayed
his trust, and he passively followed the lead of Congress. This approach at
first endeared him to Republican party leaders, but at last it left him ineffec-
tive and others grew disillusioned with his leadership.
At the outset, Grant consulted nobody on his seven cabinet appoint-
ments. Some of his choices indulged personal whims; others simply dis-
played bad judgment. In some cases, appointees learned of their nomination
from the newspapers. As time went by, Grant betrayed a fatal gift for losing
men of talent and integrity from his cabinet. Secretary of State Hamilton
Fish of New York turned out to be a happy exception; he guided foreign pol-
icy throughout the Grant presidency. Other than Fish, however, the Grant
cabinet overflowed with incompetents.

T H E G OV E R N M E N T D E BT Financial issues dominated Grant’s presi-

dency. After the war, the Treasury had assumed that the $432 million worth
of greenbacks issued during the conflict would be retired from circulation
and that the nation would revert to a “hard-money” currency—gold coins.
But many agrarian and debtor groups resisted any contraction of the money
supply resulting from the elimination of greenbacks, believing that it would
mean lower prices for their crops and more difficulty repaying long-term
debts. They were joined by a large number of Radical Republicans who
thought that a combination of high tariffs and inflation would generate
more rapid economic growth. As Senator John Sherman explained, “I prefer
gold to paper money. But there is no other resort. We must have money or a
fractured government.” In 1868 congressional supporters of such a “soft-
money” policy halted the withdrawal of greenbacks from circulation. There
matters stood when Grant took office.
The “sound-money” (or hard-money) advocates, mostly bankers and
merchants, claimed that Grant’s election was a mandate to save the country
from the Democrats’ “Ohio idea” of using greenbacks to repay government
bonds. Quite influential in Republican circles, the hard-money advocates
also reflected the deeply ingrained popular assumption that gold coins were
734 • R ECONSTRUCTION : N ORTH AND S OUTH (CH. 17)

morally preferable to paper currency. Grant agreed as well. On March 18,

1869, the Public Credit Act, which said that the federal debt must be paid in
gold, became the first act of Congress that Grant signed.

S C A N DA L S The complexities of the “money question” exasperated

Grant, but that was the least of his worries, for his administration soon fell
into a cesspool of scandal. In the summer of 1869, two unscrupulous finan-
cial buccaneers, Jay Gould and James Fisk, connived with the president’s
brother-in-law to corner the nation’s gold market. That is, they would create
a public craze for gold by purchasing massive quantities of the precious yel-
low metal. As more buyers joined the frenzy, the value of gold would soar.
The only danger to the scheme lay in the possibility that the federal Treasury
would burst the bubble by selling large amounts of gold, which would
deflate its value.
Grant apparently smelled a rat from the start, but he was seen in public
with the speculators, leading people to think that he supported the run on
gold. As the rumor spread on Wall Street that the president was pro-gold, the
value of gold rose from $132 to $163 an ounce. Finally, on Black Friday, Sep-
tember 24, 1869, Grant ordered the Treasury to sell a large quantity of gold,
and the bubble burst. Fisk got out by repudiating his agreements and hiring
thugs to intimidate his creditors. “Nothing is lost save honor,” he said.
The plot to corner the gold market was only the first of several scandals
that rocked the Grant administration. During the presidential campaign of
1872, the public learned about the financial crookery of the Crédit Mobilier
of America, a sham construction company run by of directors of the Union
Pacific Railroad who had milked the Union Pacific for exorbitant fees in
order to line the pockets of the insiders who controlled both firms. Union
Pacific shareholders were left holding the bag. The schemers bought political
support by giving congressmen shares of stock in the enterprise. This chi-
canery had transpired before Grant’s election in 1868, but it now touched a
number of prominent Republicans. The beneficiaries of the scheme in-
cluded Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax, later vice president, and Rep-
resentative James A. Garfield, later president. Of the thirteen members of
Congress involved, only two were censured.
Even more odious disclosures soon followed, some involving the presi-
dent’s cabinet. The secretary of war, it turned out, had accepted bribes from
merchants who traded with Indians at army posts in the West. He was
impeached, but he resigned in time to elude a Senate trial. At the same time,
post-office contracts, it was revealed, went to carriers who offered the high-
est kickbacks. The secretary of the Treasury had awarded a political friend a
commission of 50 percent for the collection of overdue taxes. In St. Louis, a
 The Grant Years • 735

“whiskey ring” bribed tax collectors to bilk the government out of millions
of dollars in revenue. Grant’s private secretary was enmeshed in that
scheme, taking large sums of money and other valuables in return for inside
information. There is no evidence that Grant himself was ever involved in,
or personally profited from, any of the fraud, but his poor choice of associ-
ates and his gullibility earned him widespread criticism. Democrats casti-
gated Republicans for their “monstrous corruption and extravagance.”

W H I T E T E R R O R President Grant initially fought hard to enforce the

federal efforts to reconstruct the postwar South. But southern resistance
to “Radical rule” increased and turned violent. In Grayson County, Texas,
three whites murdered three former slaves because they felt the need to “thin
the niggers out and drive them to their holes.”
The prototype of all the terrorist groups was the Ku Klux Klan (KKK),
organized in 1866 by some young men of Pulaski, Tennessee, as a social club,
with the costumes and secret rituals common to fraternal groups. At first a
group of pranksters, its members soon turned to intimidation of blacks and
white Republicans. The KKK and its imitators, like Louisiana’s Knights of the
White Camelia and Mississippi’s White Line, spread rapidly across the South
in answer to the Republican party’s. Klansmen rode about the countryside,
hiding behind masks and under robes, spreading horrendous rumors, issuing
threats, harassing African Americans, and wreaking violence and destruction.
“We are going to kill all the
Negroes,” a white supremacist
declared during one massacre.
Klansmen focused their terror
on prominent Republicans, black
and white. In Mississippi they
killed a black Republican leader in
front of his family. Three white
“scalawag” Republicans were mur-
dered in Georgia in 1870. That
same year an armed mob of whites
assaulted a Republican political
rally in Alabama, killing four
blacks and wounding fifty-four. In
South Carolina white suprema-
“Worse Than Slavery”
cists were especially active—and
This Thomas Nast cartoon chides the Ku
violent. Virtually the entire white Klux Klan for promoting conditions
male population of York County “worse than slavery” for southern blacks
joined the KKK, and they were after the Civil War.
736 • R ECONSTRUCTION : N ORTH AND S OUTH (CH. 17)

responsible for eleven murders and hundreds of whippings. In 1871, some five
hundred masked men laid siege to the Union County jail and eventually
lynched eight black prisoners.
At the urging of President Grant, who showed true moral courage in trying
to protect southern blacks, the Republican-dominated Congress struck back
with three Enforcement Acts (1870–1871) to protect black voters. The first of
these measures levied penalties on anyone who interfered with any citizen’s
right to vote. A second placed the election of congressmen under surveillance
by federal election supervisors and marshals. The third (the Ku Klux Klan
Act) outlawed the characteristic activities of the KKK—forming conspiracies,
wearing disguises, resisting officers, and intimidating officials—and autho-
rized the president to suspend habeas corpus where necessary to suppress
“armed combinations.”
In 1871, the federal government singled out nine counties in upcountry
South Carolina as an example, suspended habeas corpus, and pursued mass
prosecutions. In general, however, the Enforcement Acts suffered from
weak and inconsistent execution. As time passed, President Grant vacil-
lated between clamping down on the Klan and capitulating to racial intim-
idation. The strong tradition of states’ rights and local autonomy in the
South, as well as pervasive racial prejudice, resisted federal force. The unre-
lenting efforts of whites to use violence to thwart Reconstruction contin-
ued into the 1870s. On Easter Sunday in 1873 in Colfax, Louisiana, a mob
of white vigilantes disappointed by local election results attacked a group
of black Republicans, slaughtering eighty-one. It was the bloodiest racial
incident during the Reconstruction period. White southerners had lost the
war, but during the 1870s they won the peace with their reactionary vio-
lence. In the process, the goals of racial justice and civil rights were
blunted. In 1876, the U.S. Supreme Court gave implied sanction to the Col-
fax Massacre when it ruled in United States v. Cruikshank (1876) that states’
rights trumped federal authority when it came to protecting freed blacks
from white terrorists.

REFORM AND THE ELECTION OF 1872 Long before President

Grant’s first term ended, a reaction against Radical Reconstruction and
incompetence and corruption in the administration had incited mutiny
within the Republican ranks. A new faction, called Liberal Republicans,
favored free trade rather than tariffs, the redemption of greenbacks with
gold, a stable currency, an end to federal Reconstruction efforts in the South,
the restoration of the rights of former Confederates, and civil service
reform. In 1872 the Liberal Republicans held their own national convention,
in which they produced a compromise platform condemning the Republi-
 The Grant Years • 737

“What I Know about Raising the Devil”

With the tail and cloven hoof of the devil, Horace Greeley (center) leads a small
band of Liberal Republicans in pursuit of incumbent president Ulysses S. Grant and
his supporters in this 1872 cartoon.

cans’ Radical Reconstruction policy as well as government corruption, but

they remained silent on the protective tariff. The delegates embraced a
quixotic presidential candidate: Horace Greeley, the prominent editor of
the New York Tribune and a longtime champion of just about every reform
available. Greeley had promoted vegetarianism, socialism, and spiritualism.
His image as an eccentric was complemented by his record of hostility to the
Democrats, whose support the Liberals needed. The Democrats nevertheless
swallowed the pill and gave their nomination to Greeley as the only hope of
beating Grant.
The result was a foregone conclusion. Republican regulars duly endorsed
Grant, Radical Reconstruction, and the protective tariff. Greeley carried only
six southern and border states and none in the North. Grant won by
3,598,235 votes to Greeley’s 2,834,761.

C O N S E R VAT I V E R E S U R G E N C E The KKK’s impact on southern

politics varied from state to state. In the Upper South, it played only a
modest role in facilitating a Democratic resurgence in local elections. But
in the Deep South, Klan violence and intimidation had more substantial
effects. In overwhelmingly black Yazoo County, Mississippi, vengeful
whites used terrorism to reverse the political balance of power. In the 1873
elections the Republicans cast 2,449 votes and the Democrats 638; two years
later the Democrats polled 4,049 votes, the Republicans 7. Throughout the
738 • R ECONSTRUCTION : N ORTH AND S OUTH (CH. 17)

South the activities of the Klan and other white supremacists weakened
black and Republican morale, and in the North they encouraged a growing
weariness with efforts to reconstruct the South and protect civil rights.
“The plain truth is,” noted The New York Herald, “the North has got tired
of the Negro.”
The erosion of northern interest in civil rights resulted from more than
weariness, however. Western expansion, Indian wars, new economic oppor-
tunities, and political controversy over the tariff and the currency distracted
attention from southern outrages against Republican rule and black rights.
Given the violent efforts of reactionary whites to resist Reconstruction, it
would have required far more patience and conviction to protect the civil
rights of blacks than the North possessed, and far more resources than the
pro-Reconstruction southerners could employ. In addition, after a devastat-
ing business panic that occurred in 1873 followed by a prolonged depres-
sion, desperate economic circumstances in the North and the South created
new racial tensions that helped undermine federal efforts to promote racial
justice in the former Confederacy. Republican control in the South gradually
loosened as “Conservative” parties—a name used by Democrats to mollify
former Whigs—mobilized the white vote. Prewar political leaders reemerged
to promote the antebellum Democratic goals of limited government, states’
rights, and free trade. They politicized the race issue to excite the white elec-
torate and intimidate black voters. The Republicans in the South became
increasingly an organization limited to African Americans and federal offi-
cials. Many “scalawags” and “carpetbaggers” drifted away from the Radical
Republican ranks under pressure from their white neighbors. Few of them
had joined the Republicans out of concern for black rights in the first place.
And where persuasion failed to work, Democrats were willing to use chicanery.
As one enthusiastic Democrat boasted, “The white and black Republicans
may outvote us, but we can outcount them.”
The diminishing commitment of the North to the ideals of Reconstruc-
tion reached a crisis when federal troops occupied the Louisiana legislature
in January 1875 to quell a riot occasioned by the appearance of several white
Democrats who tried to claim seats despite their not being officially elected.
The incident backfired. Many northern Republicans were aghast at the idea
of soldiers taking control of a state legislative session. Although President
Grant defended the army’s action, the widespread newspaper coverage of the
incident helped accelerate the decline in public support for Reconstruction.
Later that year, when the Mississippi governor appealed to Grant to provide
federal troops to ensure an honest state election, Grant refused.
Republican political control collapsed in Virginia and Tennessee as early
as 1869; in Georgia and North Carolina it collapsed in 1870, although North
 The Grant Years • 739

Carolina had a Republican governor until 1876. Reconstruction lasted

longest in the Deep South states with the largest black population, where
whites abandoned Klan masks for barefaced intimidation in paramilitary
groups such as the Mississippi Rifle Club and the South Carolina Red Shirts.
By 1876, Radical Republican regimes survived only in Louisiana, South Car-
olina, and Florida, and those collapsed after the elections of that year.

PA N I C A N D R E D E M P T I O N Economic distress followed close upon

the public scandals besetting the Grant administration. Such developments
help explain why northerners lost interest in Reconstruction. A contraction
of the nation’s money supply resulting from the withdrawal of greenbacks
and investments in new railroads helped precipitate a financial crisis. In 1873,
the market for railroad bonds turned sour as some twenty-five railroads
defaulted on their interest payments. The prestigious investment bank of Jay
Cooke and Company went bankrupt on September 18, 1873, and the ensuing
stampede of investors eager to exchange securities for cash forced the stock
market to close for ten days. The panic of 1873 set off a depression that lasted
six years, the longest and most severe that Americans had yet suffered. Thou-
sands of businesses went bankrupt, millions of people lost their jobs, and as
usually occurs, voters blamed the party in power for their economic woes.
Hard times and political scandals hurt Republicans in the midterm elec-
tions of 1874. The Democrats won control of the House of Representatives
and gained seats in the Senate. The new Democratic House launched
inquiries into the scandals and unearthed further evidence of corruption in
high places. The financial panic, meanwhile, focused attention once more on
greenback currency.
Since the value of greenbacks was lower than that of gold, greenbacks had
become the chief circulating medium. Most people spent greenbacks first
and held their gold or used it to settle foreign accounts, thereby draining
much gold out of the country. The postwar reduction of greenbacks in cir-
culation, from $432 million to $356 million, had made for tight money. To
relieve the currency shortage and stimulate business expansion, the Treasury
issued more greenbacks. As usually happened during economic hard times
in the nineteenth century, debtors, the people hurt most by depression,
called upon the federal government to inflate the money supply so as to
make it easier for them to pay their obligations.
For a time the advocates of paper money were riding high. But in 1874,
Grant vetoed a bill to issue more greenbacks. Then, in his annual message, he
called for the redemption of greenbacks in gold, making greenbacks “good as
gold” and raising their value to a par with that of the gold dollar. Congress
obliged by passing the Specie Resumption Act of 1875. The payment in gold
740 • R ECONSTRUCTION : N ORTH AND S OUTH (CH. 17)

Anti-Greenback cartoon
This cartoon features a “paper jackass” to criticize “countrymen” for fueling infla-
tion through the printing of paper money.

to people who turned in their paper money began on January 1, 1879,

after the Treasury had built a gold reserve for that purpose and reduced the
value of the greenbacks in circulation. This act infuriated those promoting an
inflationary monetary policy and prompted the formation of the Greenback
party, which elected fourteen congressmen in 1878. The much-debated and
very complex “money question” was destined to remain one of the most divi-
sive issues in American politics.

T H E C O M P R O M I S E O F 1 8 7 7 President Grant, despite the contro-

versies swirling around him, wanted to run again in 1876, but many Repub-
licans balked at the prospect of the nation’s first three-term president. After
all, the Democrats had devastated the Republicans in the 1874 congressional
elections: the decisive Republican majority in the House had evaporated,
 The Grant Years • 741

and the Democrats had taken control. In the summer of 1875, Grant
acknowledged the growing opposition to his renomination and announced
his retirement. James Gillespie Blaine of Maine, former Speaker of the
House and one of the nation’s favorite orators, emerged as the Republican
front-runner, but he, too, bore the taint of scandal. Letters in the possession
of James Mulligan of Boston linked Blaine to dubious railroad dealings, and
the “Mulligan letters” found their way into print.
The Republican Convention therefore eliminated Blaine and several other
hopefuls in favor of Ohio’s favorite son, Rutherford B. Hayes. Elected gover-
nor of Ohio three times, most recently as an advocate of gold rather than
greenbacks, Hayes had also made a name for himself as a civil service
reformer. But his chief virtue was that he offended neither Radicals nor
reformers. As a journalist put it, he was “a third rate nonentity, whose only
recommendation is that he is obnoxious to no one.”
The Democratic Convention was abnormally harmonious from the start.
The nomination went on the second ballot to Samuel J. Tilden, a wealthy
corporation lawyer and reform governor of New York who had directed a
campaign to overthrow the notorious Tweed ring controlling New York City
politics.
The 1876 campaign raised no burning issues. Both candidates favored the
trend toward relaxing federal authority and restoring white conservative rule

The Compromise of 1877

This illustration represents the compromise between Republicans and southern
Democrats that ended Radical Reconstruction.
 742 • R ECONSTRUCTION : N ORTH AND S OUTH (CH. 17)

in the South. In the absence of strong differences, Democrats aired the Repub-
licans’ dirty linen. In response, Republicans waved “the bloody shirt,” which is
to say that they linked the Democratic party to secession, civil war, and the
outrages committed against Republicans in the South. As one Republican
speaker insisted, “The man that assassinated Abraham Lincoln was a Demo-
crat. . . . Soldiers, every scar you have on your heroic bodies was given you by a
Democrat!”
Despite the lack of major issues, the 1876 election generated the most votes
in American history up to that point. Early election returns pointed to a
Tilden victory. Tilden enjoyed a 254,000-vote edge in the balloting and had
won 184 electoral votes, just one short of a majority. Hayes had only 165 elec-
toral votes, but the Republicans also claimed 19 doubtful votes from Florida,

WA
TERR. NH 5
MT ME
TERR. VT 5 7
OR
2 1 ID DAKOTA MN
TERR. 5 WI NY MA 13
TERR. MI
WY 10 11 35
TERR. RI 4
IA PA CT 6
NV NE 11
3 OH 29 NJ 9
3 UT IL IN
CA TERR. CO 22 WV DE 3
21 15 VA
6 3 KS MO 5 11 MD 8
5 15 KY 12
NC
AZ NM INDIAN TN 12 10
TERR. TERR. AR SC
TERR. 6
MS AL GA 7
8 10 11
TX
8 LA
8
FL
4

THE ELECTION OF 1876 Electoral Vote Popular Vote

Rutherford B. Hayes 185 4,036,000
(Republican)
Disputed; assigned to Hayes by
the Electoral Commission
Samuel J. Tilden 184 4,301,000
(Democrat)

Why did the Republicans pick Rutherford Hayes as their presidential candidate?
Why were the electoral votes of several states disputed? What was the Compromise
of 1877?
 The Grant Years • 743

Louisiana, and South Carolina. The Democrats laid a counterclaim to 1 of

Oregon’s 3 electoral votes, but the Republicans had clearly carried that state. In
the South, the outcome was less certain, and given the fraud and intimidation
perpetrated on both sides, nobody will ever know what might have happened
if, to use a slogan of the day, “a free ballot and a fair count” had prevailed.
In all three of the disputed southern states, rival election boards sent in dif-
ferent returns. The Constitution offered no guidance in this unprecedented
situation. Finally, on January 29, 1877, the Congress decided to set up a spe-
cial Electoral Commission with fifteen members, five each from the House,
the Senate, and the Supreme Court. The commission’s decision went by a
vote of 8 to 7 along party lines, in favor of Hayes. After much bluster and the
threat of a filibuster by the Democrats, the House voted on March 2 to accept
the report and declared Hayes elected by an electoral vote of 185 to 184.
Critical to this outcome was the defection of southern Democrats, who had
made several informal agreements with the Republicans. On February 26,
1877, prominent Ohio Republicans (including future president James A.
Garfield) and powerful southern Democrats struck a secret bargain at Worm-
ley’s Hotel in Washington, D.C. The Republicans promised that if Hayes were
elected, he would withdraw the last federal troops from Louisiana and South
Carolina, letting the Republican governments there collapse. In return, the
Democrats promised to withdraw their opposition to Hayes, accept in good
faith the Reconstruction amendments (including civil rights for blacks), and
refrain from partisan reprisals against Republicans in the South.

T H E E N D O F R E C O N S T RU C T I O N In 1877, new president Hayes

withdrew federal troops from Louisiana and South Carolina, and those
states’ Republican governments collapsed soon thereafter. Over the next
three decades, the protection of black civil rights crumbled under the pres-
sure of restored white rule in the South and the force of Supreme Court
decisions narrowing the scope of the Reconstruction amendments to the
Constitution. As a former slave observed in 1877, “The whole South—every
state in the South—has got [back] into the hands of the very men that held
us as slaves.”
Radical Reconstruction never offered more than an uncertain commit-
ment to black civil rights and social equality. Yet it left an enduring legacy—
the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments—not dead but dor-
mant, waiting to be reawakened. If Reconstruction did not provide social
equality or substantial economic opportunities for African Americans, it did
create the foundation for future advances. It was a revolution, sighed former
governor of North Carolina Jonathan Worth, and “nobody can anticipate
the action of revolutions.”
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Reconstruction Abraham Lincoln and his successor, southerner Andrew John-

son, wanted a lenient and quick plan for Reconstruction. Lincoln’s assassination
made many northerners favor the Radical Republicans, who wanted to end the
grasp of the old planter class on the South’s society and economy. Congressional
Reconstruction included the stipulation that to reenter the Union, former
Confederate states had to ratify the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
Congress also passed the Military Reconstruction Act, which attempted to
protect the voting rights and civil rights of African Americans.
• Southern Violence Many white southerners blamed their poverty on freed
slaves and Yankees. White mobs attacked blacks in 1866 in Memphis and New
Orleans. That year, the Ku Klux Klan was formed as a social club; its members
soon began to intimidate freedmen and white Republicans. Despite government
action, violence continued and even escalated in the South.
• Freed Slaves Newly freed slaves suffered economically. Most did not have the
resources to succeed in the aftermath of the war’s devastation. There was no
redistribution of land; former slaves were given their freedom but nothing else.
The Freedmen’s Bureau attempted to educate and aid freed slaves and reunite
families. Many former slaves found comfort in their families and the indepen-
dent churches they established. Some took part in state and local government
under the last, radical phase of Reconstruction.
• Grant Administration During Ulysses S. Grant’s administration, fiscal issues
dominated politics. Paper money (greenbacks) was regarded as inflationary; and
agrarian and debtor groups opposed its withdrawal from circulation. Many
members of Grant’s administration were corrupt; scandals involved an attempt
to corner the gold market, construction of the intercontinental railroad, and the
whiskey ring’s plan to steal millions of dollars in tax revenue.
• End of Reconstruction Most southern states had completed the requirements
of Reconstruction by 1876. The presidential election returns of that year were so
close that a special commission was established to count contested electoral
votes. A decision hammered out at a secret meeting gave the presidency to the
Republican, Rutherford B. Hayes; in return, the Democrats were promised that
the last federal troops would be withdrawn from Louisiana and South Carolina,
putting an end to the Radical Republican administrations in the southern states.
 CHRONOLOGY

1862 Congress passes the Morrill Land Grant Act

Congress guarantees the construction of a transcontinental
railroad
Congress passes the Homestead Act
1864 Lincoln refuses to sign the Wade-Davis Bill
1865 Congress sets up the Freedmen’s Bureau
April 14, 1865 Lincoln is assassinated
1866 Ku Klux Klan is organized
Congress passes the Civil Rights Act
1867 Congress passes the Military Reconstruction Act
Congress passes the Tenure of Office Act
1868 Fourteenth Amendment is ratified
Congress impeaches President Andrew Johnson; the Senate
fails to convict him
1877 Compromise of 1877 ends Reconstruction

KEY TERMS & NAMES

Freedmen’s Bureau p. 710 Fourteenth Amendment greenbacks p. 732
p. 719
John Wilkes Booth p. 713 Crédit Mobilier scandal
Fifteenth Amendment p. 734
Andrew Johnson p. 713 p. 723
Horace Greeley p. 737
black codes p. 716 carpetbaggers p. 728
Compromise of 1877
Thaddeus Stevens p. 717 scalawags p. 728 p. 740
Part Five


GROWING

PAINS
T he Federal victory in 1865 restored the Union and in the
process helped accelerate America’s stunning transformation into an
agricultural empire and an urban-industrial nation-state. A distinctly
national consciousness began to displace the regional emphases of the
antebellum era. During and after the Civil War, the Republican-led
Congress pushed through legislation to foster industrial and commercial
development and western expansion. In the process of ruthlessly
exploiting the resources of the continent, the United States abandoned
the Jeffersonian dream of a decentralized agrarian republic and began to
forge a dynamic new industrial economy nurtured by an increasingly
national and even international market for American goods.
After 1865, many Americans turned their attention to the unfinished
business of settling a continent and completing an urban-industrial
revolution begun before the war. Fueled by innovations in mass produc-
tion and mass marketing, huge corporations began to dominate the
economy. As the prominent social theorist William Graham Sumner
remarked, the process of industrial development “controls us all because
we are all in it. It creates the conditions of our own exis-
tence, sets the limits of our social activity, and regu-
lates the bonds of our social relations.”
The Industrial Revolution was not only an urban
phenomenon; it transformed rural life as well. Those
who got in the way of the new emphasis on large-scale,
highly mechanized commercial agriculture and
ranching were brusquely pushed aside. Farm
folk, as one New Englander stressed, “must
understand farming as a business; if they do
not it will go hard with them.” The friction
between new market forces and traditional
folkways generated political revolts and social
unrest during the last quarter of the nine-
teenth century. Fault lines appeared through-
out the social order, and they unleashed
tremors that exerted what one writer called
“a seismic shock, a cyclonic violence” upon
the political culture.
 The clash between tradition and modernity peaked during the 1890s,
one of the most strife-ridden decades in American history. A deep
depression, agrarian unrest, and labor violence unleashed fears of class
warfare. This turbulent situation transformed the presidential-election
campaign of 1896 into a clash between rival visions of America’s future.
The Republican candidate, William McKinley, campaigned on behalf of
modern urban-industrial values. By contrast, William Jennings Bryan,
the nominee of the Democratic and Populist parties, was an eloquent
defender of America’s rural past. McKinley’s victory proved to be a
watershed in American political and social history. By 1900, the United
States would emerge as one of the world’s greatest industrial powers, and
it would thereafter assume a new leadership role in world affairs—for
good and for ill.

18
BIG BUSINESS AND
ORGANIZED LABOR

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• What fueled the growth of the post–Civil War economy?

• What roles were played by leading entrepreneurs like John D.
Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J. Pierpont Morgan?
• Who composed the labor force of the period, and what were
labor’s main grievances?
• What led to the rise of labor unions?

A merica emerged as an industrial and agricultural giant in the

late nineteenth century. Blessed with vast natural resources,
impressive technological advances, relentless population
growth and entrepreneurial energy, and little government regulation, the econ-
omy grew more rapidly and changed more dramatically than ever before.
Between 1869 and 1899, the nation’s population nearly tripled, farm production
more than doubled, and the value of manufactured goods grew sixfold. Within
three generations after the Civil War, the predominantly rural nation burst forth
as the world’s preeminent commercial, agricultural, and industrial power. By
1900, the United States dominated global markets in steel and oil, wheat and
cotton. Corporations grew enormously in size and power, and social tensions
and political corruption worsened with the rising scale of business enterprise.

THE RISE OF BIG BUSINESS

In the decades after the Civil War, huge corporations came to dominate
the economy—as well as political and social life. As businesses grew, their
owners sought to integrate all the processes of production and distribution of
752 • BIG BUSINESS AND ORGANIZED LABOR (CH. 18)

goods into single companies, thus creating even larger firms. Others grew by
mergers, joining forces with their competitors in an effort to dominate entire
industries. This process of industrial development transformed the nation’s
economy and social life. It also sparked widespread dissent and the emer-
gence of an organized labor movement representing wage workers.
Many factors converged to help accelerate economic growth after the Civil
War. The nation’s unparalleled natural resources—forests, mineral wealth,
rivers—along with a rapidly expanding population, were crucial ingredients.
At the same time, inventors and business owners developed more efficient,
labor-saving machinery and mass-production techniques that spurred dra-
matic advances in productivity and efficiency. As the volume and efficiency
of production increased, the larger businesses and industries expanded their
operations across the country and in the process developed standardized
machinery and parts, which became available nationwide. Innovative, bold
leadership was another crucial factor spurring economic transformation.
A group of shrewd, determined, and energetic entrepreneurs took advantage
of fertile business opportunities to create huge new enterprises. Federal and
state politicians after the Civil War actively encouraged the growth of busi-
ness by imposing high tariffs on foreign imports as a means of blunting
competition and by providing land and cash to finance railroads and other
transportation improvements. At the same time that the federal government
was issuing massive land grants to railroads and land speculators, it was also
distributing 160-acre homesteads to citizens, including single women and
freed slaves, through the important Homestead Act of 1862.
Equally important in propelling the post–Civil War economic boom was
what government did not do in the decades after the Civil War: it did not
regulate the activities of big businesses, nor did it provide any oversight of
business operations or working conditions. The so-called Gilded Age was
dominated by unfettered capitalism operating within a turbulent, anarchic
environment free of income tax, meddling regulators, and other curbs on
the behavior of freewheeling entrepreneurs.
Business leaders spent a lot of time—and money—ensuring that govern-
ment stayed out of their businesses. In fact, political corruption was so ram-
pant that it was routine. Business leaders usually got what they wanted from
Congress and state legislators—even if they had to pay for it. The collabora-
tion between elected officials and business executives was so commonplace
that in 1868 the New York state legislature legalized the bribery of politicians.
At the same time that the industrial sector was witnessing an ever-
increasing concentration of large companies, the agricultural sector by 1870
was also experiencing such rapid growth that it had become the world’s
 The Rise of Big Business • 753

leader, fueling the rest of the economy by providing wheat and corn to be
milled into flour and meal. With the advent of the commercial cattle indus-
try, the processes of slaughtering and packing meat themselves became major
industries. So the farm sector directly stimulated the industrial sector of the
economy. A national government-subsidized network of railroads connect-
ing the East and West Coasts played a crucial role in the development of
related industries and in the evolution of an interconnected national market
for goods and services. The industrial transformation also benefited from an
abundance of power sources—water, wood, coal, oil, and electricity—that
were inexpensive compared with those of the other nations of the world.

T H E S E C O N D I N D U S T R I A L R E VO LU T I O N The Industrial Revolu-

tion “controls us all,” said Yale sociologist William Graham Sumner, “because
we are all in it.” Sumner and other Americans living during the second half of
the nineteenth century experienced what economic historians have termed
the Second Industrial Revolution. The First Industrial Revolution began in
Britain during the late eighteenth century. It was propelled by the conver-
gence of three new technologies: the coal-powered steam engine, textile
machines for spinning thread and weaving cloth, and blast furnaces to pro-
duce iron. The Second Industrial Revolution began in the mid–nineteenth
century and was centered in the United States and Germany. It was spurred
by three related developments. The first was the creation of interconnected
transportation and communication networks, which facilitated the emer-
gence of a national and even an international market for American goods and
services. Contributing to this development were the completion of the
national telegraph and railroad networks; the emergence of steamships,
which were much larger and faster than sailing ships; and the laying of the
undersea telegraph cable, which spanned the Atlantic Ocean and connected
the United States with Europe.
During the 1880s a second major breakthrough—the widespread applica-
tion of electrical power—accelerated the pace of industrial change. Electric-
ity created dramatic advances in the power and efficiency of industrial
machinery. It also spurred urban growth through the addition of electric
trolleys and subways, and it greatly enhanced the production of steel and
chemicals.
The third major catalyst for the Second Industrial Revolution was the sys-
tematic application of scientific research to industrial processes. Laborato-
ries staffed by graduates of new research universities sprouted up across the
country, and scientists and engineers discovered dramatic new ways to
improve industrial processes. Researchers figured out, for example, how to
754 • BIG BUSINESS AND ORGANIZED LABOR (CH. 18)

refine kerosene and gasoline from crude oil and how to improve steel produc-
tion. Inventors developed new products—telephones, typewriters, adding
machines, sewing machines, cameras, elevators, and farm machinery—that
resulted in lower prices for an array of consumer items. These advances in turn
expanded the scope and scale of industrial organizations. Capital-intensive
industries such as steel and oil, as well as processed food and tobacco, took
advantage of new technologies to gain economies of scale that emphasized
maximum production and national as well as international marketing and
distribution.

R A I L R OA D S More than any other technological innovation, the rail-

roads symbolized the urban-industrial revolution. No other form of trans-
portation exercised as much influence in the development of post–Civil War
America. Railroads shrunk time and distance. They moved masses of people
and goods faster and farther than any other form of transportation. The
advent of the nation’s railroad network prompted the creation of uniform
national and international time zones and spurred the use of wristwatches,
for the trains were scheduled to run on time. A British traveler in America in
the 1860s said that a town’s connection to a railroad was “the first necessity
of life, and gives the only hope of wealth.” Although the first great wave of
railroad building occurred in the 1850s, the most spectacular growth took
place during the quarter century after the Civil War. From about thirty-five
thousand miles of track in 1865, the national rail network grew to nearly two
hundred thousand miles by 1897. The transcontinental rail lines led the way,
and they helped populate the Great Plains and the Far West. Such a sprawl-
ing railroad system was expensive, and the long-term debt required to
finance it would become a major cause of the financial panic of 1893 and the
ensuing depression.
Railroads were America’s first big business, the first magnet for the great
financial market known as Wall Street in New York City, and the first indus-
try to develop a large-scale management bureaucracy. Railroads were much
larger enterprises than textile mills and iron foundries, the other large indus-
tries in the 1860s and 1870s. They required more capital and more complex
management. The railroads opened the western half of the nation to eco-
nomic development, enabled federal troops to suppress Indian resistance,
ferried millions of European and Asian immigrants across the country, pro-
vided the catalyst for transforming commercial agriculture into a major
international industry, and transported raw materials to factories and fin-
ished goods to retailers. In so doing, they created an interconnected national
market. At the same time, the railroads were themselves the largest con-
sumers of the iron, steel, lumber, and other capital goods that freight cars
 The Rise of Big Business • 755

carried. Railway stations became a dominant new public space in towns and
cities. At one point, New York City’s massive Penn Station employed three
thousand people. The hotel built adjacent to the station and owned by the
railroad employed hundreds more. From the 1860s through the 1950s, most
people entered or left a city through its railroad stations.
But the railroads created problems as well as blessings. Too many were built,
often in the wrong places, at a time when they were not truly needed. In their
race to build new rail lines, companies allowed for dangerous working condi-
tions that caused thousands of laborers to be killed or injured. Shoddy con-
struction caused tragic accidents and required rickety bridges and trestles to
be rebuilt. Numerous railroads were poorly or even criminally managed and
went bankrupt. The lure of enormous profits helped to corrupt the political
system as the votes of politicians were “bought” with cash or shares of stock in
the railroad companies. Railroad executives essentially created the modern
practice of political “lobbying,” and they came to exercise a dangerous degree
of influence over both the economy and the political system. As Charles Fran-
cis Adams Jr., the head of the Union Pacific Railroad, acknowledged, “Our
method of doing business is founded upon lying, cheating, and stealing—all
bad things.”

B U I L D I N G T H E T R A N S C O N T I N E N TA L S The renewal of railroad

building after the Civil War filled out the rail network east of the Mississippi
River. Gradually, tracks in the South that had been destroyed during the war
were rebuilt, and a web of new trunk lines was added throughout the country.
But the most spectacular achievements were the monumental transcontinental
lines built west of the Mississippi River across desolate plains, over roaring rivers
and deep canyons, and around as well as through the nation’s tallest mountains.
Before the Civil War, differences between the North and South over the
choice of routes had held up the start of a transcontinental line. Secession
and the departure of southern congressmen for the Confederacy in 1861
finally permitted Republicans in Congress to pass the Pacific Railway Act in
1862, which authorized the construction of a rail line along a north-central
route, to be built by the Union Pacific Railroad westward from Omaha,
Nebraska, and by the Central Pacific Railroad eastward from Sacramento,
California. Both companies began construction during the war, but most of
the work was done after 1865. The first transcontinental railroads were
utterly dependent on government support. They received huge loans, mas-
sive grants of “public” land taken from the Indians, and lavish cash subsidies
from the federal government. The Union Pacific pushed west across the
plains at a rapid pace, avoiding the Rocky Mountains by going through Evans
Pass in Wyoming. Construction of the 2,000-mile rail line and hundreds of
756 • BIG BUSINESS AND ORGANIZED LABOR (CH. 18)

Transcontinental railroads
Using picks, shovels, wheelbarrows, and horse-drawn carts, Chinese laborers largely
helped to construct the Central Pacific track.

trestles and bridges was hasty, and much of it had to be redone later. The
executives and financiers directing the transcontinental railroads often cut
corners, bribed legislators, and manipulated accounts to line their own pock-
ets. They also ruthlessly used federal troops to suppress the Plains Indians.
But the shenanigans of the railroad barons do not diminish the fact that
the transcontinental railroads were, in the words, of General William
Tecumseh Sherman, the “work of giants.” Building rail lines across the West
involved heroic feats of daring by workers and engineers who laid the rails,
erected the bridges and trestles, and gouged out the tunnels under danger-
ous working conditions and harsh weather. The transcontinental railroads
tied the nation together, changed the economic and political landscape, and
enabled the United States to emerge as a world power.
It took armies of laborers to build the railroads. Some ten thousand men
worked on the two railroads as they raced to connect with one another. The
Union Pacific work crews, composed of former Union and Confederate sol-
diers, former slaves, and Irish and German immigrants, coped with bad
roads, water shortages, extreme weather conditions, Indian attacks, and fre-
quent accidents and injuries. The Central Pacific crews were mainly Chinese
 The Rise of Big Business • 757

workers lured to America first by the California gold rush and then by rail-
road jobs. Most of these “coolie” laborers were single men intent upon accu-
mulating money and returning to their homeland, where they could then
afford to marry and buy a parcel of land. Their temporary status and dream
of a good life back in China apparently made them more willing than Amer-
ican laborers to endure the low pay of railroad work and the dangerous
working conditions. Many railroad construction workers died on the job.
All sorts of issues delayed the effort to finish the transcontinental line. Iron
prices spiked. Broken treaties prompted Indian raids. Blizzards shut down work
for weeks. Fifty-seven miles east of Sacramento, construction crews encoun-
tered the towering Sierra Nevada Mountains, which they had to cross before
reaching more level terrain in Nevada. The Union Pacific had built 1,086 miles
compared with the Central Pacific’s 689 when the race ended on the salt flats at
Promontory, Utah. There, on May 10, 1869, former California governor Leland
Stanford drove a gold spike symbolizing the railroad’s completion.
The next transcontinental line, completed in 1881, linked the Atchison,
Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad with the Southern Pacific Railroad at Needles

The Union Pacific meets the Central Pacific

The celebration of the completion of the first transcontinental railroad, Promon-
tory, Utah, May 10, 1869.
 758 • BIG BUSINESS AND ORGANIZED LABOR (CH. 18)

in southern California. The Southern Pacific, which had absorbed the Cen-
tral Pacific, pushed through Arizona to Texas in 1882, where it made connec-
tions to St. Louis and New Orleans. To the north the Northern Pacific had
connected Lake Superior with Oregon by 1883, and ten years later the Great
Northern, which had slowly and carefully been building westward from
St. Paul, Minnesota, thrust its way to Tacoma, Washington. Thus, before the
turn of the century, five major trunk lines existed, supplemented by connec-
tions that enabled the construction of other transcontinental routes.

The shady financial practices of rail-

F I N A N C I N G T H E R A I L R OA D S
road executives earned them the label of “robber barons,” an epithet soon
extended to other “captains of industry” as well. These were shrewd, deter-

C A N A D A
WASHINGTON
Tacoma
TERR.
Great Nor thern
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MONTANA La
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TERR. WYOMING Milwaukee
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TERR. i fi c
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Houston
O C E A N
San Antonio GULF OF MEXICO

TRANSCONTINENTAL M E X I C O 0 150 300 Miles

RAILROAD LINES, 1880s 0 150 300 Kilometers

What was the route of the first transcontinental railroad, and why was it not in the
South? Who built the railroads? How were they financed?
 The Rise of Big Business • 759

mined, and often ruthless and dishonest men. “What do I care about law?” asked
the railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt. “Hain’t I got the power?” The building
of the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific—as well as other transcontinental
rail lines—involved shameless profiteering by construction companies con-
trolled by insiders who overcharged the railroad companies. One such com-
pany, Crédit Mobilier of America, according to congressional investigators,
bribed congressmen and charged the Union Pacific $94 million for a construc-
tion project that cost at most $44 million.
The prince of the railroad robber barons was Jay Gould, a secretive trick-
ster who mastered the fine art of buying rundown railroads, making cos-
metic improvements, and selling out at a profit, all the while using corporate
funds for personal investments and the payment of judicious bribes for
politicians and judges. Nearly every enterprise he touched was compro-
mised or ruined; Gould, meanwhile, was building a fortune that amounted
to $100 million upon his death, at age fifty-six.
Few railroad fortunes were amassed in those freewheeling times by purely
honest methods, but compared with opportunistic rogues such as Gould, most
railroad owners were saints. They at least took some interest in the welfare of
their companies, if not always in that of the public. Cornelius Vanderbilt,
called “the Commodore” by virtue of his early exploits in steamboating, stands
out among the railroad barons. Already rich before the Civil War, he decided to
give up the hazards of wartime ship-
ping in favor of land transport. Under
his direction the first of the major east-
ern railroad consolidations took form.
In 1869, the clever, daring, ruthless,
relentless, revered, and hated Vander-
bilt merged separate rail lines con-
necting Albany and Buffalo, New
York, into a single powerful rail net-
work led by the New York Central.
This accomplished, he forged connec-
tions to New York City and Chicago, all
the while amassing one of the greatest
personal fortunes America has ever
seen. After the Commodore’s death, in
1877, his son William Henry extended
the Vanderbilt railroads to include
more than thirteen thousand miles Jay Gould
in the Northeast. The consolidation Prince of the railroad buccaneers.
760 • BIG BUSINESS AND ORGANIZED LABOR (CH. 18)

trend was nationwide: about two

thirds of the nation’s railroad mileage
were under the control of only seven
companies by 1900.

INVENTIONS SPUR MANU-

FA C T U R I N G The story of manu-
facturing after the Civil War shows
much the same pattern of expansion
and merger in old and new industr-
ies. Technological innovations spurred
phenomenal increases in industrial pro-
ductivity. The U.S. Patent Office, which
had recorded only 276 inventions dur-
“Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt
ing its first decade of existence, the
Vanderbilt consolidated control of the
vast New York Central Railroad in the
1790s, registered almost 235,000 new
1860s. patents in the 1890s. New processes in
steelmaking and oil refining enabled
those industries to flourish. The invention of the refrigerated railcar allowed
the beef, mutton, and pork of the West to reach national markets in the East,
giving rise to great packinghouse enterprises in the Midwest. Corrugated
rollers that could crack the hard, spicy wheat of the Great Plains provided
impetus to the flour milling industry that centered in Minneapolis under the
control of the Pillsbury Company and others.
The list of commercial innovations after the Civil War was lengthy: barbed
wire, farm implements, the air brake for trains (1868), steam turbines, electri-
cal devices, typewriters (1867), vacuum cleaners (1869), and countless others.
Before the end of the century, the internal-combustion engine and the
motion picture were stimulating new industries that would emerge in the
twentieth century.
These technological advances transformed daily life. Few if any inventions
of the time could rival the importance of the telephone, which twenty-nine-
year-old inventor Alexander Graham Bell patented in 1876. To promote the
new device transmitting voices over wires, the inventor and his supporters
formed the Bell Telephone Company, which was eventually surpassed by the
American Telephone and Telegraph Company.
In the development of electrical industries, the name Thomas Alva Edison
stands above those of other inventors. In his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jer-
sey, Edison invented the phonograph in 1877 and the first light bulb in 1879.
Altogether he created or perfected hundreds of new devices and processes,
including the storage battery, Dictaphone, mimeograph, electric motor, electric
 Entrepreneurs • 761

transmission, and the motion pic-

ture camera and projector.
Until 1880 or so, the world
was lit by flickering oil and gas
lamps. In 1882 the Edison Electric
Illuminating Company supplied
electrical current to eighty-five
customers in New York City,
beginning the great electric util-
ity industry. A number of compa-
nies making lightbulbs merged
into the Edison General Electric
Company in 1888. But the use
of direct current limited Edison’s
lighting system to a radius of about
two miles. To cover greater dis-
tances required an alternating
current, which could be transmit- New technologies
ted at high voltage and then Alexander Graham Bell being observed by
stepped down by transformers. businessmen at the New York end of the
George Westinghouse, inventor first long-distance telephone call to
Chicago, 1892.
of the air brake for railroads,
developed the first alternating-current electric system in 1886 and set up the
Westinghouse Electric Company to manufacture the equipment. Edison
resisted the new method as too risky, but the Westinghouse system won the
“battle of the currents,” and the Edison companies had to switch over. After
the invention in 1887 of the alternating-current motor by a Croatian immi-
grant named Nikola Tesla, Westinghouse improved upon it. The invention of
electric motors enabled factories to locate wherever they wished; they no
longer had to cluster around waterfalls and coal deposits for a ready supply
of energy. The electric motor also led to the development of elevators and
streetcars. Buildings could go higher with electric elevators, and cities could
spawn suburbs because of electric streetcars providing transportation.

ENTREPRENEURS

Thomas Alva Edison and George Westinghouse were rare examples of

inventors with the luck and foresight to get rich from the industries they cre-
ated. The great captains of commerce during the Gilded Age were more
762 • BIG BUSINESS AND ORGANIZED LABOR (CH. 18)

often pure entrepreneurs rather than

inventors, outsized men who were
ruthless competitors adept at increas-
ing production, lowering prices, and
garnering efficiencies. Several post–
Civil War entrepreneurs stand out for
both their achievements and their
special contributions: John D. Rocke-
feller and Andrew Carnegie for their
innovations in organization, J. Pier-
John D. Rockefeller pont Morgan for his development of
His Standard Oil Company dominated investment banking, and Richard Sears
the oil industry. and Alvah Roebuck for their creation
of mail-order retailing. In their differ-
ent ways, each of these titans dealt a mortal blow to the small-scale economy of
the early republic, fostering vast industries that forever altered the size and
scope of business and industry.

RO C K E F E L L E R A N D T H E O I L T RU S T Born in New York, John D.

Rockefeller moved as a youth to Cleveland, Ohio. Soon thereafter his father
abandoned the family. Raised by his mother, a devout Baptist, Rockefeller
developed a passion for systematic organization and self-discipline. Scrupu-
lously honest but fiercely ambitious, he was obsessed with precision, order,
and tidiness, and early on he decided to bring order and rationality to the
chaotic oil industry.
The railroad and shipping connections around Cleveland made it a strate-
gic location for servicing the booming oil fields of western Pennsylvania.
The first oil well in the United States began producing in 1859 in Titusville,
Pennsylvania, and led to the Pennsylvania oil rush of the 1860s. Because oil
could be refined into kerosene, which was widely used in lighting, heating,
and cooking, the economic importance of the oil rush soon outstripped that
of the California gold rush of just ten years before. Well before the end of the
Civil War, drilling derricks checkered western Pennsylvania, and refineries
sprang up in Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Of the two cities, Cleveland had the
edge in rail service, so Rockefeller focused his energies there.
Rockefeller recognized the potential profits in refining oil, and in 1870
he incorporated his various interests, naming the enterprise the Standard
Oil Company of Ohio. Although Rockefeller was the largest refiner, he
wanted to weed out the competition in order to raise prices. He bought out
most of his Cleveland competitors; those who resisted were forced out. By
 Entrepreneurs • 763

The rise of oil

Wooden derricks crowd the farm of John Benninghoff in Oil Creek, Pennsylvania,
in the 1860s.

1879, Standard Oil controlled over 90 percent of the oil refining in the
country.
Much of Rockefeller’s success was based upon his determination to reduce
expenses and eliminate waste as well as “pay nobody a profit.” Instead of
depending upon the products or services of other firms, known as middlemen,
Standard Oil produced its own oil, barrels, and whatever else it needed—in
economic terms, this is called vertical integration. The company also kept large
amounts of cash reserves to make it independent of banks in case of a crisis.
Furthermore, Rockefeller gained control of his transportation needs. With
Standard Oil owning most of the pipelines leading to railroads, plus the rail-
road tank cars and the oil-storage facilities, it was able to dissuade the railroads
from serving its eastern competitors. Those rivals that had insisted upon hold-
ing out rather than selling their enterprise to Rockefeller then faced a giant
marketing organization capable of driving them to the wall with price wars.
To consolidate their scattered business interests under more efficient con-
trol, Rockefeller and his advisers resorted to a new legal device: in 1882 they
organized the Standard Oil Trust. All thirty-seven stockholders in various
Standard Oil enterprises conveyed their stock to nine trustees, receiving
“trust certificates” in return, which paid them annual dividends from the
company’s earnings. The nine trustees thereby controlled all the varied Stan-
dard Oil companies.
764 • BIG BUSINESS AND ORGANIZED LABOR (CH. 18)

But the trust device, widely copied by other companies in the 1880s,
proved vulnerable to prosecution under state laws against monopoly or
restraint of trade. In 1892, Ohio’s supreme court ordered the Standard Oil
Trust dissolved. Gradually, however, Rockefeller perfected the idea of the
holding company: a company that controlled other companies by holding
all or at least a majority of their stock. He was convinced that such big busi-
ness was a natural result of capitalism at work. “It is too late,” he declared in
1899, “to argue about the advantages of [huge] industrial combinations.
They are a necessity.” That year, Rockefeller brought his empire under the
direction of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, a gigantic holding
company. Though less vulnerable to prosecution under state law, some hold-
ing companies were broken up by the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890.
Rockefeller not only made a colossal fortune, but he also gave much of it
away, mostly to support education and medicine. A man of simple tastes
who opposed the use of tobacco and alcohol and believed his fortune was a
public trust awarded by God, he became the world’s leading philanthropist.
He donated more than $500 million during his ninety-eight-year lifetime.
“I have always regarded it as a religious duty,” Rockefeller said late in life, “to
get all I could honorably and to give all I could.”

C A R N E G I E A N D T H E S T E E L I N D U S T RY Like Rockefeller, Andrew

Carnegie experienced an uncommon rise from poverty to riches. Born in
Scotland, he migrated in 1848 with his family to Allegheny County, Pennsyl-
vania. Then thirteen, he started work as a bobbin boy in a textile mill. In 1853
he became personal secretary and
telegrapher to Thomas Scott, then dis-
trict superintendent of the Pennsylva-
nia Railroad and later its president.
When Scott moved up, Carnegie took
his place as superintendent. During
the Civil War, when Scott became
assistant secretary of war in charge of
transportation, Carnegie went with
him and developed a military telegraph
system.
Carnegie kept on moving—from
telegraphy to railroading to bridge
building and then to steelmaking and
Andrew Carnegie investments. Intelligent, energetic,
Steel magnate and business icon. practical, and ferociously ambitious,
 Entrepreneurs • 765

he wanted not simply to compete in an industry; he wanted to dominate it. To

do so he was willing to abuse his power and become a compulsive liar.
Until the mid–nineteenth century, steel could be made only from wrought
iron—itself expensive—and only in small quantities. Then, in 1855, Briton Sir
Henry Bessemer invented what became known as the Bessemer converter, a
process by which steel could be produced directly and quickly from pig iron
(crude iron made in a blast furnace). In 1873, Carnegie resolved to concentrate
on steel. Steel was the miracle material of the post–Civil War era, not because
it was new but because Bessemer’s process had made it suddenly cheap. As
more steel was produced, its price dropped and uses soared. In 1860 the
United States had produced only 13,000 tons of steel. By 1880, production had
reached 1.4 million tons.
Andrew Carnegie was never a technical expert on steel. He was a pro-
moter, salesman, and organizer with a gift for hiring men of expert ability.
He insisted upon up-to-date machinery and equipment and used times of
recession to expand cheaply by purchasing struggling companies. He also
preached to his employees a philosophy of continual innovation in order to
reduce operating costs.

Carnegie’s empire
The huge Carnegie steel plant at Homestead, Pennsylvania.
766 • BIG BUSINESS AND ORGANIZED LABOR (CH. 18)

Carnegie believed that he and other captains of industry, however harsh

their methods, were public benefactors. In his best-remembered essay, “The
Gospel of Wealth” (1889), he argued that, “Not evil, but good, has come to
the race from the accumulation of wealth by those who have the ability and
energy that produces it.” He applied Charles Darwin’s concept of evolution
to society, arguing that the law of human competition is “best for the trade,
because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department.”
Not only did Carnegie make an incredible amount of money; like Rocke-
feller, he also gave much of it away. After retiring from business at age sixty-
five, he devoted himself to dispensing his fortune for the public good. He
called himself a “distributor” of wealth (he disliked the term philanthropy).
He gave money to many universities, built 1,700 public libraries, and helped
fund numerous hospitals, parks, halls for meetings and concerts, swimming
pools, and church buildings. He also donated eight hundred organs to
churches around the world.

J . P I E R P O N T M O R G A N , F I N A N C I E R Unlike Rockefeller and Car-

negie, J. Pierpont Morgan didn’t build industries; he financed them. He also
was not a “rags-to-riches” story; he was born to wealth. His father was a partner
in a London bank. After attending boarding school in Switzerland and univer-
sity in Germany, the younger Morgan was sent in 1857 to work in a New York
firm representing his father’s interests and in 1860 set himself up as its New
York agent under the name J. Pierpont
Morgan and Company. That firm, under
various names, channeled European
capital into the United States and grew
into a financial power in its own right.
Morgan was an investment banker,
which meant that he would buy cor-
porate stocks and bonds wholesale
and sell them at a profit. The growth
of large corporations put investment
firms such as Morgan’s in an increas-
ingly strategic position in the econ-
omy. Since the investment business
depended upon the general good health
of client companies, investment bankers
became involved in the operation of
J. Pierpont Morgan their clients’ firms, demanding seats on
Morgan is shown here in a famous the boards of directors so as to influence
1903 portrait by Edward Steichen. company policies.
 Entrepreneurs • 767

Like John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan sought to consolidate rival firms into

giant trusts. Morgan realized early on that railroads were the key modern
industry, and he acquired and reorganized one line after another. By the 1890s,
he alone controlled a sixth of the nation’s railway system. To Morgan, an impe-
rious, domineering man, the stability brought by his operations helped the
economy and the public. His crowning triumph was consolidation of the steel
industry. After a rapid series of mergers in the iron and steel industry, he
bought out Andrew Carnegie’s huge steel and iron holdings in 1901. In rapid
succession, Morgan added other steel interests as well as the Rockefeller iron
ore holdings in Minnesota’s Mesabi Range and a Great Lakes shipping fleet.
The new United States Steel Corporation, a holding company for these varied
interests, was a marvel of the new century, the first billion-dollar corporation,
the climactic event in the age of relentless business consolidation.

SEARS AND ROEBUCK American inventors helped manufacturers after

the Civil War produce a vast number of new products, but the most important
economic challenge was extending the reach of national commerce to the
millions of people who lived on isolated farms and in small towns. In the after-
math of the Civil War, a traveling salesman from Chicago named Aaron Mont-
gomery Ward decided that he could reach more people by mail than on foot
and in the process could eliminate the middlemen whose services increased

The rise of business

A lavish dinner celebrated the merger of the Carnegie and Morgan interests in 1901.
The shape of the table is meant to symbolize a rail.
768 • BIG BUSINESS AND ORGANIZED LABOR (CH. 18)

the retail price of goods. Beginning

in the early 1870s, Montgomery
Ward and Company began selling
goods at a 40-percent discount
through mail-order catalogs.
By the end of the century, a new
retailer had come to dominate the
mail-order industry: Sears, Roe-
buck and Company, founded by
two young midwestern entrepre-
neurs, Richard Sears and Alvah
Roebuck, who began offering a
cornucopia of goods by mail in the
early 1890s. The Sears, Roebuck
catalog in 1897 was 786 pages
long. It featured groceries, drugs,
tools, bells, furniture, iceboxes,
Cover of the 1897 Sears, Roebuck and stoves, household utensils, musi-
Company catalog cal instruments, farm implements,
Sears, Roebuck’s extensive mail-order boots and shoes, clothes, books,
business and discounted prices allowed its and sporting goods. The com-
many products to reach customers in cities pany’s ability to buy goods in high
and in the backcountry.
volume from wholesalers enabled
it to sell items at prices below
those offered in rural general stores. By 1907, Sears, Roebuck and Company
had become one of the largest business enterprises in the nation.
The Sears catalog helped create a truly national market and in the process
transformed the lives of millions of people. With the advent of free rural mail
delivery in 1898 and the widespread distribution of Sears catalogs, families on
farms and in small towns and villages could purchase by mail the products
that heretofore were either prohibitively expensive or available only to city
dwellers. By the turn of the century, 6 million Sears catalogs were being dis-
tributed each year, and the catalog had become the single most widely read
book in the nation after the Bible.

T H E WO R K I N G C L A S S

The captains of industry and finance dominated economic life during

the so-called Gilded Age. Their innovations and their businesses provided a
rapidly growing American population with jobs. But it was the laboring
 The Working Class • 769

classes who actually produced the iron and steel, coal and oil, beef and pork,
and the array of new consumer items filling city department stores and the
shelves of “general” stores.

SOCIAL TRENDS Accompanying the spread of huge corporations after

the Civil War was a rising standard of living for most people. If the rich were
getting richer, a lot of other people were at least getting better off. But dis-
parities in the distribution of wealth grew wider during the second half of
the nineteenth century. In both 1860 and 1900, the richest 2 percent of
American families owned more than a third of the nation’s wealth, while the
top 10 percent owned almost three fourths of it.
The continuing demand for unskilled or semiskilled workers, meanwhile,
attracted new groups entering the workforce at the bottom: immigrants
above all, but also growing numbers of women and children. Because of a
long-term decline in prices and the cost of living, real wages and earnings in
manufacturing went up about 50 percent between 1860 and 1890 and
another 37 percent from 1890 to 1914. By modern-day standards, however,
working conditions were dreary and often dangerous. The average work-
week was fifty-nine hours, or nearly six ten-hour days, but that was only an
average. Most steelworkers put in a twelve-hour day, and as late as the 1920s
a great many worked a seven-day, eighty-four-hour week.
Although wage levels were rising overall, working and living conditions
remained precarious. In the crowded tenements of major cities, the death rate
was much higher than that in the countryside. Factories often maintained
poor health and safety conditions. American industry had the highest acci-
dent rate in the world. In 1913, for instance, there were some twenty-five
thousand workplace fatalities and seven hundred thousand serious job-
related injuries. The United States was the only industrial nation in the world
that had no workmen’s compensation program to provide financial support
for workers injured on the job. The new industrial culture after the Civil War
was also increasingly impersonal. Ever-larger numbers of people were depen-
dent upon the machinery and factories of owners whom they seldom if ever
saw. In the simpler world of small shops, workers and employers could enter
into close relationships; the new large factories and corporations, on the
other hand, were governed by a bureaucracy in which ownership was separate
from management. Much of the social history of the modern world in fact
turns upon the transition from a world of personal relationships to one of
impersonal, contractual relationships.

C H I L D L A B O R A growing number of wage laborers after the Civil War

were children—boys and girls who worked full-time for meager wages
770 • BIG BUSINESS AND ORGANIZED LABOR (CH. 18)

under unhealthy conditions. Young people had of course always worked in

America: farms required everyone to pitch in. After the Civil War, however,
millions of children took up work outside the home, operating machines,
sorting coal, stitching clothes, shucking oysters, peeling shrimp, canning
food, blowing glass, and tending looms. Parents desperate for income
believed they had no choice but to put their children to work. By 1880, one
out of every six children in the nation was working full-time; by 1900,
there were almost 2 million child laborers in the United States. In southern
cotton mills, where few African Americans were hired, a fourth of the
employees were below the age of fifteen, with half of the children younger
than twelve. Children as young as eight were laboring alongside adults
twelve hours a day, six days a week. This meant they received little or no
education and had little time for play or parental nurturance.
Factories, mills, mines, and canneries were dangerous places, especially
for children. Few machines had safety devices, and few factories or mills had
ventilating fans or fire escapes. Throughout Appalachia, soot-smeared boys
worked deep in the coal mines. In New England and the South, thousands of
young girls worked in dusty textile mills, brushing away lint from the clack-
ing machines and retying broken threads. Children suffered three times as

Children in industry
Four young boys who did the dangerous work of mine helpers in West Virginia
in 1900.
 The Working Class • 771

many accidents as adult workers, and respiratory diseases were common in

the unventilated buildings. A child working in a textile mill was only half as
likely to reach the age of twenty as a child outside a mill. Although some
states passed laws limiting the number of hours children could work and
establishing minimum-age requirements, they were rarely enforced and
often ignored. By 1881 only seven states, mostly in New England, had laws
requiring children to be at least twelve before they worked for wages. Yet the
only proof required by employers in such states was a statement from a
child’s parents. Working-class and immigrant parents were often so desper-
ate for income that they forged work permits for their children or taught
them to lie about their age to keep a job.

DISORGANIZED PROTEST Under these circumstances it was very dif-

ficult for workers to organize unions. Most civic leaders respected property
rights more than the rights of labor; they readily deferred to the wishes of busi-
ness leaders. Many business executives believed that a “labor supply” was simply
another commodity to be procured at the lowest possible price. Among factory
workers and miners recently removed from an agrarian world of independent
farmers, the idea of labor unions was slow to take hold. And much of the work-
force was made up of immigrant workers from a variety of cultures. They spoke
different languages and harbored ethnic animosities. Nonetheless, with or
without unions, workers staged impromptu strikes in response to wage cuts
and other grievances. Such action often led to violence, however, and three inci-
dents of the 1870s colored much of the public’s view of labor unions thereafter.

T H E M O L LY M A G U I R E S The decade’s early years saw a reign of terror

in the Pennsylvania coalfields, attributed to an Irish group called the Molly
Maguires. The Mollies took their name from an Irish patriot who had led
violent resistance against the British. They were outraged by the dangerous
working conditions in the mines and the owners’ brutal efforts to suppress
union activity. Convinced of the justness of their cause, the Mollies used
intimidation, beatings, and killings to right perceived wrongs against Irish
workers. Later investigations have shown that agents of the mine operators
themselves stirred up some of the trouble. The terrorism reached its peak in
1874–1875, when mine owners hired Pinkerton detectives to stop the move-
ment. One of the agents who infiltrated the Mollies produced enough evi-
dence to have the leaders indicted. At trials in 1876, twenty-four of the Molly
Maguires were convicted; ten were hanged. The trials also resulted in a wage
reduction in the mines and the final destruction of the Miners’ National
Association, a weak union the Mollies had dominated.
772 • BIG BUSINESS AND ORGANIZED LABOR (CH. 18)

T H E G R E AT R A I L R OA D S T R I K E O F 1 8 7 7 A far more widespread

labor incident was the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, the first major inter-
state strike in American history. After the financial panic of 1873 and the
ensuing depression, the major rail lines in the East had cut wages. In 1877,
they announced another 10 percent wage cut, which led most of the railroad
workers at Martinsburg, West Virginia, to walk off the job and block the
tracks. Walkouts and sympathy demonstrations spread spontaneously from
Maryland to California. The railroad strike soon engulfed hundreds of cities
and towns, leaving in its wake over a hundred people dead and millions of
dollars in property destroyed. In Pittsburgh thousands of striking workers
burned thirty-nine buildings and destroyed over a thousand rail cars and
locomotives. Nonstriking rail workers were harassed and assaulted. In San
Francisco, the strikers took out their wrath on Chinese immigrants. Such
racist populism was commonplace across the Far West. Militiamen called in
from Philadelphia managed to disperse one crowd at the cost of twenty-six
lives but then found themselves besieged in the railroad’s roundhouse, where
they disbanded and shot their way out.
Federal troops finally quelled the widespread violence. Looting, rioting,
and burning went on for another day until the frenzy wore itself out.
A reporter described the scene as “the most horrible ever witnessed, except
in the carnage of war. There were fifty miles of hot rails, ten tracks side by
side, with as many miles of ties turned into glowing coals and tons on tons of
iron car skeletons and wheels almost at white heat.” Eventually the disgrun-
tled workers, lacking organized bargaining power, had no choice but to drift
back to work. The strike failed.
For many Americans, the railroad strike raised the specter of a worker-
based social revolution. As a Pittsburgh newspaper warned, “This may be the
beginning of a great civil war in this country between labor and capital.”
Equally disturbing to those in positions of corporate and political power was
the presence of many women among the protesters. A Baltimore journalist
noted that the “singular part of the disturbances is the very active part taken
by the women, who are the wives and mothers of the [railroad] firemen.”
From the point of view of organized labor, however, the Great Railroad Strike
demonstrated potential union strength and the need for tighter organization.

THE SAND-LOT INCIDENT In California the railroad strike indirectly

gave rise to a working-class political movement. In 1877, a meeting in a San
Francisco sand lot intended to express sympathy for the railroad strikers ended
with attacks on some passing Chinese. Within a few days, sporadic anti-Chinese
riots had led to a mob attack on Chinatown. The depression of the 1870s had
 The Working Class • 773

hit the West Coast especially hard, and the Chinese were handy scapegoats for
frustrated white laborers who believed the Asians had taken their jobs.
Soon an Irish immigrant, Denis Kearney, organized the Workingmen’s Party
of California, whose platform called for the United States to stop Chinese immi-
gration. A gifted agitator who had only recently become a naturalized American,
Kearney harangued the “sand lotters” about the “foreign peril” and assaulted the
rich railroad barons for exploiting the poor. The Workingmen’s movement
peaked in 1879, when it elected members to the state legislature and the mayor
of San Francisco. Kearney lacked the gift for building a durable movement, but
as his infant party fragmented, his anti-Chinese theme became a national
issue—in 1882, Congress voted to prohibit Chinese immigration for ten years.

A N T I - C H I N E S E A G I TAT I O N The growing tensions between labor

and management over wages and working conditions took an ugly turn
when white workers on the West Coast vented their anger about terrible liv-
ing and working conditions and frustration with the loss of jobs by lashing
out against Chinese immigrants. In dozens of cities, thousands of Chinese
were threatened, abused, expelled, beaten, and killed. In 1876 white vigilantes

Denis Kearney
This cartoon shows support for Denis Kearney, who organized the Workingmen’s
Party of California, and his Chinese labor exclusion policy.
774 • BIG BUSINESS AND ORGANIZED LABOR (CH. 18)

near Truckee, California, set on fire two cabins filled with terrified Chinese,
and shot them as they fled. The harassment and persecution of Chinese
peaked during the 1880s after Congress passed the bill restricting further
immigration from China. During the 1880s, seven thousand lawsuits were
filed on behalf of dispossessed Chinese immigrants, demanding that the
United States enforce its own laws. But the anti-Chinese prejudice contin-
ued. In 1892, Congress passed a law written by California Congressman
Thomas J. Geary. The Geary Act renewed the exclusion of new Chinese
immigrants and required all Chinese residents of the United States to carry a
resident permit, a sort of internal passport. Failure to carry the permit was
punishable by deportation or a year of hard labor. In addition, Chinese were
not allowed to testify in court and could not receive bail in habeas corpus
proceedings. Chinese Americans refused to comply with what they called the
Dog Tag Law (only 3,169 of the estimated 110,000 Chinese in the country
registered by the April 1893 deadline). Their doing so constituted the largest
act of civil disobedience in American history to that point.

T O WA R D P E R M A N E N T U N I O N S Efforts to build a national labor

union movement gained momentum during the second half of the nineteenth
century. Earlier efforts, in the 1830s and 1840s, had largely been dominated by
reformers with schemes that ranged from free homesteads to utopian social-
ism. But the 1850s had seen the beginning of “job-conscious” unions in
selected skilled trades. By 1860, there were about twenty such craft unions.
During the Civil War, because of the demand for skilled labor, those unions
grew in strength and number.
Yet there was no overall federation of such groups until 1866, when the
National Labor Union (NLU) convened in Baltimore. The NLU comprised
delegates from labor and reform groups more interested in political and
social reform than in bargaining with employers. The groups espoused ideas
such as the eight-hour workday, workers’ cooperatives, greenbackism (the
printing of paper money to inflate the currency and thereby relieve debtors),
and equal rights for women and African Americans. After the head of the
union died suddenly, its support fell away quickly, and by 1872 the NLU had
disbanded. The NLU was not a total failure, however. It was influential in
persuading Congress to enact an eight-hour workday for federal employees
and to repeal the 1864 Contract Labor Act, passed during the Civil War to
encourage the importation of laborers by allowing employers to pay for
their passage to America. Employers had taken advantage of the Contract
Labor Act to recruit foreign laborers willing to work for lower wages than
their American counterparts.
 The Working Class • 775

THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR Before the NLU collapsed, another labor

group of national standing had emerged: the Noble Order of the Knights of
Labor, a name that evoked the aura of medieval guilds. The founder of the
Knights of Labor, Uriah S. Stephens, a Philadelphia tailor, was a habitual
joiner involved with several secret orders, including the Masons. His early
training for the Baptist ministry also affected his outlook. Secrecy, he felt,
along with a semireligious ritual, would protect members from retaliation
by employers and create a sense of solidarity.
The Knights of Labor, started in 1869, grew slowly, but during the depres-
sion of the 1870s, as other unions collapsed, it spread more rapidly. In 1878,
its first general assembly established it as a national organization. Its pream-
ble and platform endorsed the reforms advanced by previous workingmen’s
groups, including the creation of bureaus of labor statistics and mechanics’
lien laws (to ensure payment of salaries), elimination of convict-labor com-
petition, establishment of the eight-hour day, and use of paper currency. One
plank in the platform, far ahead of the times, called for equal pay for equal
work by men and women. Throughout its existence the Knights of Labor
emphasized reform measures and preferred boycotts to strikes as a way to put
pressure on employers. The Knights of Labor also proposed to organize
worker cooperatives that would enable members, collectively, to own their
own large-scale manufacturing and mining operations. The Knights allowed

Members of the Knights of Labor

This national union was more egalitarian than most of its contemporaries.
776 • BIG BUSINESS AND ORGANIZED LABOR (CH. 18)

as members all who had ever worked for wages, except lawyers, doctors,
bankers, and those who sold liquor. Theoretically it was one big union of all
workers, skilled and unskilled, regardless of race, color, creed, or sex.
In 1879, Terence V. Powderly, the thirty-year-old mayor of Scranton, Penn-
sylvania, succeeded Stephens as head of the Knights of Labor. Born of Irish
immigrant parents, Powderly had started working for a railroad at age six-
teen. In many ways he was unsuited to his new job as head of the Knights of
Labor. He was frail, sensitive to criticism, and indecisive at critical moments.
He was temperamentally opposed to strikes, and when they did occur, he did
not always support the local groups involved. Yet the Knights owed their
greatest growth to strikes that occurred under his leadership. In the 1880s the
Knights increased their membership from about one hundred thousand to
more than seven hundred thousand. In 1886, however, the organization
peaked and went into rapid decline after the failure of a railroad strike.

ANARCHISM The increasingly violent tensions between labor and

management during the late nineteenth century in the United States and
Europe helped generate the doctrine of anarchism. Anarchists believed that
government—any government—was in itself an abusive device used by the
rich and powerful to oppress and exploit the working poor. Anarchists
dreamed of the eventual disappearance of government altogether, and
many of them believed that the transition to such a stateless society could
be hurried along by promoting revolutionary action among the masses.
One favored tactic was the use of dramatic acts of violence against repre-
sentatives of the government. Many European anarchists emigrated to the
United States during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, bringing
with them their belief in the impact of “propaganda of the deed.”

T H E H AY M A R K E T A F FA I R Labor-related violence increased during

the 1880s as the gap between the rich and working poor widened. Between
1880 and 1900, 6.6 million hourly workers participated in more than
twenty-three thousand strikes nationwide. Chicago, the fastest growing city
in the nation, was a hotbed of labor unrest and a magnet for immigrants,
especially German and Irish laborers, some of whom were socialists or anar-
chists who endorsed violence as a means of transforming the capitalist sys-
tem. Their foremost demand was for an eight-hour working day.
What came to be called the Haymarket affair grew indirectly out of pro-
longed agitation for an eight-hour workday. In 1884, Knights of Labor orga-
nizers set May 1, 1886, as the deadline for adopting the eight-hour workday.
When the deadline passed, forty thousand Chicago workers went on strike.
 The Working Class • 777

On May 3, 1886, violence erupted at the McCormick Reaper Works plant,

where farm equipment was made. Striking union workers and “scabs”
(nonunion workers who defied the strike) clashed outside the plant. The
police arrived, shots rang out, and two strikers were killed.
Evidence of police brutality infuriated the leaders of the minuscule anar-
chist movement in Chicago, which included many women. They printed
leaflets demanding “Revenge!” and “Workingmen, to Arms!” Calls went out
for a mass demonstration the following night at Haymarket Square to
protest the killings. On the evening of May 4, after listening to long speeches
complaining about low wages and long working hours and promoting anar-
chism, the crowd was beginning to break up when a group of policemen
arrived and told the militants to disperse. At that point, someone threw a
bomb at the police; seven were killed and sixty wounded. People screamed
and ran in every direction. Amid the chaos of America’s first terrorist
bombing, the police fired into
the crowd, killing and wounding
an unknown number of people,
including other policemen.
Throughout the night, rampag-
ing police arbitrarily arrested
scores of people without evidence
and subjected them to harsh
questioning. All labor meetings
were banned across the city.
Newspapers across the nation
printed lurid headlines about
anarchy erupting in Chicago.
One New York newspaper
demanded stern punishment for
“the few long-haired, wild-eyed,
bad-smelling, atheistic, reckless
foreign wretches” who promoted
such anarchistic labor unrest.
At trials during the summer of
1886, seven anarchist leaders
were sentenced to death despite
the lack of any evidence linking The Haymarket Affair
them to the bomb thrower, A priest gives last rites to a policeman after
whose identity was never estab- anarchist-labor violence erupts in Haymarket
lished. All but one of the convicted Square, Chicago.
778 • BIG BUSINESS AND ORGANIZED LABOR (CH. 18)

were German speaking, and that one held a membership card in the Knights
of Labor. The facts of the case were lost amid the emotions of the moment. In
a statement to the court after being sentenced to hang, Louis Lingg declared
that he was innocent of the bombing but was proud to be an anarchist who
was “in favor of using force” to attack the abuses of the capitalist system.
Lawyers for the anarchists appealed the convictions to the Illinois Supreme
Court. Meanwhile, petitions from around the world arrived at the governor’s
office appealing for clemency for the seven convicted men. One of the petition-
ers was Samuel Gompers, the founding president of the American Federation
of Labor (AFL), a new organization that would soon supplant the faltering
Knights of Labor as the nation’s leading union. “I abhor anarchy,” Gompers
stressed, “but I also abhor injustice when meted out even to the most despicable
being on earth.”
On September 14, 1887, the state supreme court upheld the convictions,
and six weeks later the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider the case. On
November 10, 1887, Louis Lingg committed suicide in his cell. That same
day, the Illinois governor commuted the sentences of two of the convicted
conspirators to life imprisonment. The next day the four remaining con-
demned men were hanged. Two hundred thousand people lined the streets
of Chicago as their caskets were taken for burial. To labor militants around
the world, the executed anarchists were working-class martyrs; to the police
and the economic elite in Chicago, they were demonic assassins.
The violent incident at Haymarket Square triggered widespread revulsion at
the Knights of Labor and labor groups in general. Despite his best efforts, Ter-
ence Powderly could never dissociate in the public mind the Knights from the
anarchists. He clung to leadership until 1893, but after that the union evapo-
rated. By the turn of the century, it was but a memory. Besides fear of their sup-
posed radicalism, several factors accounted for the Knights’ decline: a leadership
devoted more to reform than to the nuts and bolts of organization, the failure of
the Knights’ cooperative worker-owned enterprises, and a preoccupation with
politics that led the Knights to sponsor labor candidates in hundreds of local
elections.
The Knights nevertheless attained some lasting achievements, among them
the creation of the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1884 as well as several
state labor bureaus; the Foran Act of 1885, which, though weakly enforced,
penalized employers who imported contract labor (an arrangement similar to
the indentured servitude of colonial times, in which workers were committed
to a term of labor in exchange for transportation to America); and an 1880
federal law providing for the arbitration of labor disputes. The Knights by
example also spread the idea of unionism and initiated a new type of union
 The Working Class • 779

organization: the industrial union, an industry-wide union of skilled and

unskilled workers.

GOMPERS AND THE AFL The craft unions (skilled workers) gener-
ally opposed efforts to unite with industrial unionism. Leaders of the craft
unions feared that joining with unskilled laborers would mean a loss of their
craft’s identity and a loss of the skilled workers’ greater bargaining power.
Thus in 1886, delegates from twenty-five craft unions organized the Ameri-
can Federation of Labor (AFL). Its structure differed from that of the
Knights of Labor in that it was a federation of national organizations, each
of which retained a large degree of autonomy and exercised greater leverage
against management.
Samuel Gompers served as president of the AFL from its start until his death,
in 1924, with only one year’s interruption. Born in England of Dutch Jewish
ancestry, Gompers came to the United States as a teenager, joined the Cigar-
makers’ Union in 1864, and became president of his New York City local union
in 1877. Unlike Terence Powderly and the Knights of Labor, Gompers focused
on concrete economic gains—higher wages, shorter hours, better working
conditions—and avoided involvement
with utopian ideas or politics.
Gompers was temperamentally
more suited than Powderly to the
rough-and-tumble world of unionism.
He had a thick hide, liked to talk and
drink with workers in the back room,
and willingly used strikes to achieve
favorable trade agreements, including
provisos for union recognition in the
form of closed shops (which could
hire only union members) or union-
preference shops (which could hire
others only if no union members were
available).
The AFL at first grew slowly, but by
1890 it had surpassed the Knights of
Labor in membership. By the turn of
the century, it claimed 500,000 mem-
bers in affiliated unions; in 1914, on Samuel Gompers
the eve of World War I, it had 2 mil- Head of the American Federation of
lion; and in 1920 it reached a peak of Labor striking an assertive pose.
780 • BIG BUSINESS AND ORGANIZED LABOR (CH. 18)

4 million. But even then the AFL embraced less than 15 percent of the
nation’s nonagricultural workers. All unions, including the unaffiliated rail-
road brotherhoods, accounted for little more than 18 percent of those work-
ers. Organized labor’s strongholds were in transportation and the building
trades. Most of the larger manufacturing industries—including steel, textiles,
tobacco, and packinghouses—remained almost untouched. Gompers never
frowned upon industrial unions, and several became important affiliates of
the AFL: the United Mine Workers, the International Ladies Garment Work-
ers, and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. But the AFL had its greatest
success in organizing skilled workers.

THE HOMESTEAD STRIKE Two violent incidents in the 1890s stalled

the emerging industrial-union movement and set it back for the next forty
years: the Homestead steel strike of 1892 and the Pullman strike of 1894.
These two dramatic labor conflicts in several respects represented the culmi-
nating events of the Gilded Age, an era of riotous economic growth during
which huge corporations came to exercise overweening influence over
American life. Both events pitted organized labor in a bitter contest against
two of the nation’s largest and most influential corporations. In both cases
the stakes were enormous. The two strikes not only represented a test of
strength for the organized labor movement but also served to reshape the
political landscape at the end of the nineteenth century.
The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, founded in 1876,
was the largest craft union at the time. By 1891, it boasted 24,000 members.
But it excluded unskilled steelworkers and had failed to organize the larger
steel plants. The massive Homestead Works near Pittsburgh was an important
exception. There the union, which included about a fourth of Homestead’s
3,800 workers, had enjoyed friendly relations with Andrew Carnegie’s com-
pany until Henry Clay Frick became its president in 1889. A showdown was
delayed until 1892, however, when the union contract came up for renewal.
Carnegie, who had expressed sympathy for unions in the past, had gone hunt-
ing in his native Scotland and left matters in Frick’s hands. Yet Carnegie knew
what was afoot: a cost-cutting reduction in the number of highly paid skilled
workers through the use of labor-saving machinery and a deliberate attempt
to smash the union. “Am with you to the end,” he wrote to Frick.
As negotiations dragged on, the company announced on June 25 that it
would treat workers as individuals unless an agreement with the union was
reached by June 29. A strike—or, more properly, a lockout of unionists—began
on that date. In no mood to negotiate, Frick built a twelve-foot-high fence
around the entire plant, equipped it with watchtowers, searchlights, and barbed
 The Working Class • 781

wire, and hired three hundred union-busting men from the Pinkerton Detec-
tive Agency to protect what was soon dubbed Fort Frick. On the morning of
July 6, 1892, when the untrained Pinkertons floated up the Monongahela River
on barges, unionists were waiting behind breastworks on shore. Who fired the
first shot remains unknown, but a fourteen-hour battle broke out in which
seven workers and three Pinkertons died. In the end, the Pinkertons surren-
dered and were marched away, subjected to taunts and beatings from crowds in
the street. Six days later, Pennsylvania’s governor dispatched 8,500 state militia
to protect the strikebreakers, whom Frick hired to restore production.
The strike dragged on until November, but by then the union was dead at
Homestead, its leaders charged with murder and treason. Its cause was not
helped when an anarchist, a Lithuanian immigrant named Alexander Berkman,
tried to assassinate Frick on July 23, shooting him twice in the neck and stabbing
him three times. Despite his wounds, Frick fought back fiercely and, with the
help of staff members, subdued Berkman. Much of the local sympathy for the
strikers evaporated. As a union leader explained, Berkman’s bullets “went
straight through the heart of the Homestead strike.” Penniless and demoralized,
the defeated workers ended their walkout on November 20 and accepted the
company’s terms. Only a fifth of the strikers were hired back. Carnegie and Frick,
with the support of local, state, and national government officials, had elimi-
nated the union. Across the nation in 1892, state militias intervened to quash
twenty-three labor disputes. In the ongoing struggles between workers and own-
ers, big business held sway—in the workplace and in state governments.
The Homestead strike was symptomatic of the overweening power of indus-
trial capitalism. By 1899, Andrew Carnegie could report to a friend: “Ashamed
to tell you [of my] profits these days. Prodigious!” None of Carnegie’s steel
plants after the Homestead strike employed unionized workers. Frick split with
Carnegie after he learned that his boss had been telling lies about him. Frick
told Carnegie that he had grown “tired of your business methods, your absurd
newspaper interviews and personal remarks and unwarranted interference in
matters you know nothing about.” When Carnegie sought to reconcile with his
former lieutenant, Frick told the messenger: “You can say to Andrew Carnegie
that I will meet him in hell (where we are both going) but not before.”

T H E P U L L M A N S T R I K E Even more than the confrontation at the

Homestead steel plant, the Pullman strike of 1894 was a notable walkout in
American history, for it paralyzed the economies of the twenty-seven states
and territories making up the western half of the nation. It involved a dis-
pute at Pullman, Illinois, a model industrial town built on four thousand
acres outside Chicago, where workers of the Pullman Palace Car Company
782 • BIG BUSINESS AND ORGANIZED LABOR (CH. 18)

were housed. Employees who built rail cars were required to live in the com-
pany town, pay rents and utility costs that were higher than those in nearby
towns, and buy goods from company stores. During the depression of 1893,
George Pullman laid off 3,000 of his 5,800 employees and cut wages 25 to
40 percent, but not rents and other charges. After Pullman fired three mem-
bers of a workers’ grievance committee, a strike began on May 11, 1894.
During this tense period, Pullman workers had been joining the new
American Railway Union, founded the previous year by Eugene V. Debs. The
tall, gangly Debs was a man of towering influence and charismatic appeal.
A child of working-class immigrants, he quit school at age fourteen and
began working for an Indiana railroad. By the early 1890s, Debs had become
a tireless spokesman for labor radicalism, and he strove to organize all rail-
way workers—skilled or unskilled—into the American Railway Union, which
soon became a powerful new labor organization. Debs quickly turned his
attention to the controversy in Pullman, Illinois.
In June 1894, after George Pullman refused Debs’s plea for a negotiated
settlement of the strike, the union workers stopped handling Pullman rail-
cars. By the end of July, they had shut down most of the railroads in the Mid-
west. Railroad executives then hired strikebreakers to connect mail cars to
Pullman cars so that interference with Pullman cars would entail interfer-
ence with the federal mail. The U.S. attorney general, a former attorney for
railroad companies, swore in 3,400 special deputies to keep the trains run-
ning. When clashes occurred between those deputies and some of the strik-

The Pullman strike

Troops guarding the railroads, 1894.
 The Working Class • 783

ers, angry workers ignored Debs’s plea for an orderly boycott. They assaulted
strikebreakers (“scabs”) and destroyed property.
Finally, on July 3, 1894, President Grover Cleveland sent federal troops into
the Chicago area, where the strike was centered. The Illinois governor insisted
that the state could keep order, but President Cleveland claimed authority and
stressed his duty to ensure delivery of the mail. Meanwhile, the attorney gen-
eral won an injunction forbidding any interference with the mail or any effort
to restrain interstate commerce. On July 13, the union called off the strike.
A few days later, the district court cited Debs for violating the injunction, and
he served six months in jail. The Supreme Court upheld the decree in the case
of In re Debs (1895) on broad grounds of national sovereignty: “The strong
arm of the national government may be put forth to brush away all obstruc-
tions to the freedom of interstate commerce or the transportation of the
mails.” Debs served his jail term, during which he read deeply in socialist liter-
ature, and emerged to devote the rest of his life to socialism.

MOTHER JONES One of the most colorful and beloved labor agitators
at the end of the nineteenth century was a remarkable woman known simply
as Mother Jones. White haired, pink cheeked, and dressed in matronly black
dresses and hats, she was a tireless champion of the working poor who used
fiery rhetoric to excite crowds and attract media attention. She led marches,
dodged bullets, served jail terms, and confronted business titans and police
with disarming courage. In 1913, a district attorney called her the “most
dangerous woman in America.”
Born in Cork, Ireland, in 1837, Mary Harris was the second of five chil-
dren in a poor Catholic family that fled the Irish potato famine at midcen-
tury and settled in Toronto. In 1861, she moved to Memphis and began
teaching. There, as the Civil War was erupting, she met and married George
Jones, an iron molder and staunch union member. They had four children,
and then disaster struck. In 1867 a yellow fever epidemic devastated Mem-
phis, killing Mary Jones’s husband and four children. The grief-stricken
thirty-seven-year-old widow moved to Chicago and took up dressmaking,
only to see her shop, home, and belongings destroyed in the great fire of 1871.
Having lost her family and her finances and angry at the social inequality and
injustices she saw around her, Mary Jones drifted into the labor movement
and soon emerged as its most passionate advocate. Chicago was then the
seedbed of labor radicalism, and the union culture nurtured in Mary Jones a
lifelong dedication to the cause of wage workers and their families.
The gritty woman who had lost her family now declared herself the “mother”
of the fledgling labor movement. She joined the Knights of Labor as an orga-
nizer and public speaker. In the late 1880s she became an ardent traveling
784 • BIG BUSINESS AND ORGANIZED LABOR (CH. 18)

speaker for the United Mine Workers

(UMW), various other unions, and the
Socialist party. For the next thirty years,
she crisscrossed the nation, recruiting
union members, supporting strikers
(her “boys”), raising funds, walking
picket lines, defying court injunctions,
berating politicians, and spending time
in prison.
Wherever Mother Jones went, she
promoted higher wages, shorter hours,
safer workplaces, and restrictions on
child labor. Coal miners, said the UMW
president, “have had no more staunch
supporter, no more able defender than
the one we all love to call Mother.” Dur-
Mother Jones ing a miners’ strike in West Virginia,
A pioneer of the labor movement. Jones was arrested, convicted of “con-
spiracy that resulted in murder,” and sen-
tenced to twenty years in prison. The outcry over her plight helped spur a Senate
committee to investigate conditions in the coal mines; the governor set her free.
Mother Jones was especially determined to end the exploitation of children
in the workplace. In 1903, she organized a highly publicized weeklong march of
child workers from Pennsylvania to the New York home of President Theodore
Roosevelt. The children were physically stunted and mutilated, most of them
missing fingers or hands from machinery accidents. President Roosevelt
refused to see the ragtag children, but as Mother Jones explained, “Our march
had done its work. We had drawn the attention of the nation to the crime
of child labor.” Soon the Pennsylvania state legislature increased the legal work-
ing age to fourteen.
Mother Jones lost most of the strikes she participated in, but over the course
of her long life she saw average wages increase, working conditions improve,
and child labor diminish. Her commitment to the cause of social justice never
wavered. At age eighty-three, she was arrested after joining a miners’ strike in
Colorado and jailed in solitary confinement. At her funeral, in 1930, one
speaker urged people to remember her famous rallying cry: “Pray for the dead
and fight like hell for the living.”

SO CIALISM AND THE UNIONS The major unions for the most part
never allied themselves with socialists, as many European labor movements
did. But socialist ideas had been circulating in the United States at least
 The Working Class • 785

since the 1820s. Marxism, one strain of socialism, was imported mainly by
German immigrants. Karl Marx’s International Workingmen’s Association,
founded in England in 1864 and later called the First International, inspired
only a few affiliates in the United States. In 1872, at Marx’s urging, the head-
quarters was moved from London to New York. In 1877, Marxists in America
organized the Socialist Labor party, a group so dominated by immigrants that
German was initially its official language.
The movement gained little notice before the rise of Daniel De Leon in the
1890s. As editor of a Marxist newspaper, the People, he became the dominant
figure in the Socialist Labor party. He strove to organize socialist industrial
unions and to build a political party that would abolish the government once
it gained power, after which the unions of the Socialist Trade and Labor
Alliance, formed under his supervision, would become the units of control.
De Leon preached revolution at the ballot box, not by violence.
Eugene V. Debs was more successful than De Leon at building a socialist
movement in America, however. In 1897, Debs announced that he was a social-
ist and organized the Social Democratic party from the remnants of the Ameri-
can Railway Union; he won over 96,000 votes as its candidate for president in
1900. The next year his followers joined a number of secessionists from De
Leon’s party to set up the Socialist Party of America. Debs polled over 400,000
votes as the party’s candidate for president in 1904 and more than doubled that,

Eugene V. Debs
Founder of the American Railway Union and later candidate for president as head
of the Socialist Party of America.
786 • BIG BUSINESS AND ORGANIZED LABOR (CH. 18)

to more than 900,000 votes, or 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912. In 1910,
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, elected a socialist mayor and congressman.
By 1912, the Socialist party seemed well on the way to becoming a perma-
nent fixture in American politics. Thirty-three cities had socialist mayors.
The party sponsored five English-language daily newspapers, eight foreign-
language dailies, and a number of weeklies and monthlies. In the Southwest
the party built a sizable grassroots following among farmers and tenants.
Oklahoma, for instance, had more paid-up party members in 1910 than any
other state except New York and in 1912 gave 16.5 percent of its popular vote
to Debs, a greater proportion than any other state ever gave him. But the
Socialist party reached its peak in 1912. It would be racked by disagreements
over America’s participation in World War I and was split thereafter by
desertions to the new Communist party.

T H E WO B B L I E S During the years of Socialist party growth, a parallel

effort to revive industrial unionism emerged, led by the Industrial Work-
ers of the World (IWW). The chief base for this group was the Western
Federation of Miners, organized at Butte, Montana, in 1893. Over the next
decade, the Western Federation was the storm center of violent confronta-
tions with unyielding mine operators who mobilized private armies against it
in Colorado, Idaho, and elsewhere. In 1905 the founding convention of the
IWW drew a variety of delegates who opposed the AFL’s philosophy of orga-
nizing unions made up only of skilled workers. Eugene V. Debs participated,
although many of his comrades preferred to work within the AFL. Daniel
De Leon seized this chance to strike back at craft unionism. He argued that
the IWW “must be founded on the class struggle” and “the irrepressible
conflict between the capitalist class and the working class.”
But the IWW waged class war better than it articulated class ideology. Like
the Knights of Labor, it was designed to be “one big union,” including all work-
ers, skilled or unskilled. Its roots were in the mining and lumber camps of the
West, where the unstable seasonal conditions of employment created a large
number of nomadic workers, to whom neither the AFL’s pragmatic approach
nor the socialists’ political appeal held much attraction. The revolutionary goal
of the Wobblies, as they came to be called, was an idea labeled syndicalism by its
French supporters: the ultimate destruction of the government and its replace-
ment by one big union. But just how that union would govern remained vague.
Like other radical groups, the IWW was split by sectarian disputes.
Because of policy disagreements all the major founders withdrew, first the
Western Federation of Miners, then Debs, then De Leon. William D. “Big
Bill” Haywood of the Western Federation remained, however, and as its
leader he held the group together. Haywood was an imposing figure. Well
 The Working Class • 787

over six feet tall, handsome and muscular, he commanded the attention and
respect of his listeners. This hard-rock miner, union organizer, and socialist
from Salt Lake City despised the AFL and its conservative labor philosophy.
He called Samuel Gompers “a squat specimen of humanity” who was “con-
ceited, petulant, and vindictive.” Instead of following Gompers’s advice to
organize only skilled workers, Haywood promoted the concept of one all-
inclusive union dedicated to a socialism “with its working clothes on.”
Haywood and the Wobblies, however, were reaching out to the fringe ele-
ments of the labor force with the least power and influence, chiefly the migratory
workers of the West and the ethnic groups of the East. Always ambivalent about
diluting their revolutionary principles, Wobblies scorned the usual labor agree-
ments even when they participated in them. As a consequence, they engaged in
spectacular battles with employers but scored few victories. The largest was a
textile strike at Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912 that garnered wage raises, over-
time pay, and other benefits. But the next year a strike of silk workers at Paterson,
New Jersey, ended in disaster, and the IWW entered a rapid decline.
The Wobblies’ fading was accelerated by the hysterical opposition they
aroused. Its members were branded anarchists, bums, and criminals. The IWW
was effectively destroyed during World War I, when most of its leaders were
jailed for conspiracy because of their militant opposition to American entry into
the war. Big Bill Haywood fled to the Soviet Union, where he married a Russian
woman, died in 1928, and was honored by burial in the Kremlin wall. The short-
lived Wobblies left behind a rich folklore of nomadic workingmen and a gallery
of heroic agitators, such as Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a dark-haired Irishwoman
who at age eighteen chained herself to a lamppost to impede her arrest during a
strike. The movement also bequeathed martyrs such as the Swedish American
singer and labor organizer Joe Hill, framed (so the faithful assumed) for murder
and executed by a Utah firing squad. His last words were written to Haywood:
“Goodbye, Bill. I die like a true blue rebel. Don’t waste any time mourning.
Organize.” The intensity of conviction and devotion to a cause shown by Hill,
Flynn, and others ensured that the IWW’s ideal of a classless society did not die.

THE STRESSES OF SUCCESS The phenomenal industrial empires

created by the Gilded Age captains of industry and finance generated enor-
mous fortunes and marked improvements in the quality of everyday life. But
the Industrial Revolution also created profound inequalities and fermenting
social tensions. As often happens, unregulated capitalism led to excesses that
bred instability and unrest. By the end of the nineteenth century, as the labor
unions and farmers’ organizations argued, an unregulated economy had
become recklessly out of balance—and only state and federal government
intervention could restore economic legitimacy and social stability.
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Second Industrial Revolution The postwar economy was characterized by

large-scale industrial development and a burgeoning agriculture sector.
The Second Industrial Revolution was fueled by the creation of national
transportation and communications systems, the use of electric power, and the
application of scientific research to industrial processes. The federal government
encouraged growth by imposing high tariffs on imported products and granting
the railroad companies public land.
• Rising Big Business The leading entrepreneurs were extraordinarily skilled at
organizing and controlling industry. John D. Rockefeller eventually controlled
nearly every facet of the oil industry, consolidating that control through trusts
and holding companies. Andrew Carnegie, who believed that competition bene-
fited both society and business, came to dominate the steel industry by buying
struggling companies. J. Pierpont Morgan, an investment banker, not only con-
trolled most of the nation’s railroads but also bought Carnegie’s steel interests in
1901, thereby creating the nation’s first billion-dollar corporation.
• Labor Conditions and Organizations The labor force was largely composed of
unskilled workers, including recent immigrants and growing numbers of
women and children. Children as young as eight years of age worked twelve
hours a day in coal mines and southern mills. In hard times, business owners cut
wages without discounting the rents they charged for company housing or the
prices they charged in company stores.
• Rising Labor Unions It was difficult for unskilled workers to organize
effectively. Strikebreakers were plentiful because new immigrants were desperate
for work. Business owners often had recourse to state and local militias, which
would be mobilized against strikers in the face of perceived anarchy. Craft
unions made up of skilled workers became more successful at organizing as the
American Federation of Labor focused on concrete economic gains and better
working conditions and avoided involvement in politics.
 CHRONOLOGY

1855

1859
1869
Bessemer converter process allows steel to be made quickly and
inexpensively
First oil well is struck in Titusville, Pennsylvania
First transcontinental railroad is completed at Promontory, Utah
1876 Alexander Graham Bell patents his telephone
1876 Thomas A. Edison makes the first successful incandescent lightbulb
1877 Great Railroad Strike
1882 John D. Rockefeller organizes the Standard Oil Trust
1886 In the Haymarket incident, a bomb set off at a Chicago labor rally
kills and wounds police officers
1886 American Federation of Labor is organized
1892 Homestead Strike
1894 Pullman Strike
1901 J. Pierpont Morgan creates the U.S. Steel Corporation

KEY TERMS & NAMES

Jay Gould p. 759 Sears, Roebuck and Homestead steel strike
Company p. 768 p. 780
Cornelius Vanderbilt p. 759
Molly Maguires p. 771 Pullman strike p. 780
John D. Rockefeller p. 762
Knights of Labor p. 775 Eugene V. Debs p. 782
Standard Oil Company of
Ohio p. 762 Samuel Gompers p. 778 Industrial Workers of the
World (IWW) p. 786
Andrew Carnegie p. 764 American Federation of
Labor (AFL) p. 779
J. Pierpont Morgan p. 766

19
THE SOUTH AND THE WEST
TRANSFORMED

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• How did life in the South change politically, economically, and

socially after the Civil War?
• What happened to Native Americans as whites settled the West?
• What were the experiences of farmers, cowboys, and miners in the
West?
• How did mining affect the development of the West?
• How important was the concept of the frontier to America’s politi-
cal and diplomatic development?

A fter the Civil War, the devastated South and the untamed
West provided enticing opportunities for American inven-
tiveness and entrepreneurship. The two distinctive regions
were ripe for development, and each in its own way became like a colonial
appendage of the more prosperous Midwest and Northeast. The war-
devastated South had to be rebuilt; the sparsely settled trans-Mississippi
West beckoned agricultural and commercial development. Entrepreneurs in
the North eagerly sought to exploit both regions by providing the capital for
urbanization and industrialization. This was particularly true of the West,
where before 1860 most Americans had viewed the region between the Mis-
sissippi River and California as a barren landscape unfit for human habita-
tion or cultivation, an uninviting land suitable only for Indians and animals.
Half the state of Texas, for instance, was still not settled at the end of the
Civil War. After 1865, however, the federal government encouraged western
settlement and economic development. The construction of transcontinen-
tal railroads, the military conquest of the Indians, and a generous policy of
distributing government-owned lands combined to help lure thousands of
 The Myth of the New South • 791

pioneers and enterprising capitalists westward. Charles Goodnight, a Texas

cattle rancher, recalled that “we were adventurers in a great land as fresh and
full of the zest of darers.” By 1900, the South and the West had been trans-
formed in ways—for good and for ill—that few could have predicted, and
twelve new states were created out of the western territories.

THE MYTH OF THE NEW SOUTH

A FRESH VISION During the 1880s, the major prophet of the so-called
New South was Henry W. Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution. “The
Old South,” he said, “rested everything on slavery and agriculture, uncon-
scious that these could neither give nor maintain healthy growth.” The New
South, on the other hand, “presents a perfect democracy” of small farms and
diversifying industries. The postwar South, Grady believed, held the promise
of a real democracy, one no longer run by the planter aristocracy and no
longer dependent upon slave labor.
Henry Grady’s compelling vision of a New South modeled after the
North attracted many supporters who fervently preached the gospel of
industrial development. South Carolinian Benjamin F. Perry urged business
leaders to “educate the masses, industralize, work hard, and seek Northern
capital [investments] to develop Southern resources.” The Confederacy, he
and others reasoned, had lost the war because it had relied too much upon
King Cotton—and slavery. In the future, the South must follow the North’s
example and diversify its economy by developing an industrial sector to go
along with its agricultural emphasis. From that central belief flowed certain
corollaries: that a more efficient agriculture would be a foundation for
economic growth, that more widespread education, especially vocational train-
ing, would promote regional prosperity, and that sectional peace and racial
harmony would provide a stable social environment for economic growth.

E C O N O M I C G R O W T H The New South vision of a more diversified

economy made a lot of sense, but it was only partially fulfilled. The chief
accomplishment of the New South movement was a dramatic expansion of
the region’s textile industry, which produced cotton-based bedding and
clothing. From 1880 to 1900, the number of cotton mills in the South grew
from 161 to 400, the number of mostly white mill workers (among whom
women and children outnumbered men) increased fivefold, and the demand
for cotton went up eightfold. By 1900, the South had surpassed New England
as the largest producer of cotton fabric in the nation.
792 • THE SOUTH AND THE WEST TRANSFORMED (CH. 19)

Tobacco growing and cigarette production also increased significantly.

Essential to the rise of the tobacco industry was the Duke family of Durham,
North Carolina. At the end of the Civil War, the story goes, Washington
Duke took a barnful of tobacco and, with the help of his two sons, beat it out
with hickory sticks, stuffed it into bags, hitched two mules to his wagon, and
set out across the state, selling tobacco in small pouches as he went. By 1872,
the Dukes had a factory producing 125,000 pounds of tobacco annually, and
Washington Duke prepared to settle down and enjoy success.
His son James Buchanan “Buck” Duke wanted even greater success, how-
ever. He recognized that the tobacco industry was “half smoke and half
ballyhoo,” so he poured large sums into advertising schemes and perfected
the mechanized mass production of cigarettes. Duke also undersold com-
petitors in their own markets and cornered the supply of ingredients needed
to make cigarettes. Eventually his competitors agreed to join forces, and in
1890 Duke brought most of them into the American Tobacco Company,
which controlled nine tenths of the nation’s cigarette production and, by
1904, about three fourths of all tobacco production. In 1911 the Supreme
Court ruled that the massive company was in violation of the Sherman Anti-
Trust Act and ordered it broken up, but by then Duke had found new worlds
to conquer, in hydroelectric power and aluminum.
Systematic use of other natural resources helped revitalize the region
along the Appalachian Mountain chain from West Virginia to Alabama. Coal
production in the South (including West Virginia) grew from 5 million tons
in 1875 to 49 million tons by 1900. At the southern end of the mountains,
Birmingham, Alabama, sprang up during the 1870s in the shadow of Red
Mountain, so named for its iron ore, and boosters soon tagged the steelmak-
ing city the Pittsburgh of the South.
Urban and industrial growth spawned a need for housing, and after 1870
lumbering became a thriving industry in the South. Northern investors
bought up vast pine forests throughout the region. By the turn of the cen-
tury, lumber had surpassed textiles in value. Tree cutting seemed to know no
bounds, despite the resulting ecological devastation. In time the cutover
southern forests would be saved only by the warm climate, which fostered
quick growth of planted trees.

A G R I C U LT U R E O L D A N D N E W By the end of the nineteenth cen-

tury, however, the South fell far short of the diversified economy and racial
harmony that Henry Grady and other proponents of the New South had
envisioned in the mid-1880s. The South in 1900 remained the least urban,
least industrial, least educated, and least prosperous region. The typical
 The Myth of the New South • 793

southerner was less apt to be tending a textile loom or iron forge than, as the
saying went, facing the eastern end of a westbound mule or risking his life
in an Appalachian coal mine. The traditional overplanting of cotton and
tobacco fields continued after the Civil War and expanded over new acreage
even as its export markets leveled off.
The majority of southern farmers were not flourishing. A prolonged
deflation in crop prices affected the entire economy during the last third of
the nineteenth century. Sagging prices for farm crops made it more difficult
than ever to own land. By 1890, low rates of farm ownership in the Deep South
belied Henry Grady’s dream of a southern democracy of small landowners:
South Carolina, 39 percent; Georgia, 40 percent; Alabama, 42 percent; Missis-
sippi, 38 percent; and Louisiana, 42 percent.

NH

WA VT ME

MT ND
MN
OR NY MA
ID WI MI
SD RI
WY CT
IA PA
NJ
NE OH DE
NV IL IN MD
UT WV VA
CO
CA KS MO KY
NC
OK TN
AZ NM TERR. AR SC
TERR. TERR. INDIAN
TERR. AL GA
TX MS

LA

FL
SHARECROPPING AND TENANCY, 1880–1900
Increase in Percentage of
Percentage of All Tenants and Sharecroppers
Farmers, 1900 since 1880
0 200 Miles
Over 55 percent Over 10 percent
40–55 percent 7–10 percent 0 200 Kilometers

20–39 percent Under 7 percent

Under 20 percent Decrease

Why was there a dramatic increase in sharecropping and tenancy in the late nine-
teenth century? Why did the South have more sharecroppers than other parts of the
country? Why, in your opinion, was the rate of sharecropping low in the western
territories of New Mexico and Arizona?
794 • THE SOUTH AND THE WEST TRANSFORMED (CH. 19)

Poverty forced most southern

farm workers to give up their
hopes of owning land and
become sharecroppers or tenants.
Sharecroppers, who had nothing
to offer the landowner but their
labor, worked the owner’s land in
return for seed, fertilizer, and
supplies and a share of the crop,
generally about half. Tenant
farmers, hardly better off, might
have their own mule, plow, and
line of credit with the country
store. They were entitled to claim
a larger share of the crops. The
sharecropper-tenant system was
horribly inefficient and corrupt-
ing. It was in essence a post–Civil
War version of land slavery. Ten-
Picking cotton in Mississippi, 1870
ants and landowners developed an
Tenant farming was extremely inefficient,
as the tenant lacked incentive to care for intense suspicion of each other.
the land and the owner was largely unable Landlords often swindled the
to supervise the work. farm workers by not giving them
their fair share of the crops.
The postwar South suffered from an acute, prolonged shortage of money;
people in the former Confederacy had to devise ways to operate without
cash. One innovation was the crop-lien system whereby rural merchants fur-
nished supplies to small farm owners in return for liens (or mortgages) on
their future crops. Over time, the credit offered by the local store coupled
with sagging prices for cotton and other crops created a hopeless cycle of
perennial debt among farmers. The merchant, who assumed great risks, gen-
erally charged interest on borrowed money that ranged, according to one
newspaper, “from 24 percent to grand larceny.” The merchant, like the
planter (and often the same man), required farmer clients to grow a cash
crop, which could be readily sold upon harvesting. This meant that the
sharecropping and crop-lien systems warred against agricultural diversity
and placed a premium on growing a staple “cash” crop, usually cotton or
tobacco. It was a vicious cycle. The more cotton that was grown, the lower
the price. If a farmer borrowed $1000 when the price of cotton was 10¢ cents
a pound, he had to grow more than 10,000 pounds of cotton to pay back his
 The Myth of the New South • 795

debt plus interest. If the price of cotton dropped to 5¢, he had to grow more
than 20,000 pounds just to break even.
Tenant farming and sharecropping unwittingly caused profound environ-
mental damage. Growing commercial row crops like cotton on the same land
year after year leached the nutrients from the soil. Tenants had no incentive to
take care of farm soil by manuring or rotating crops because the land was not
their own. They used fertilizers to accelerate the growing cycle, but the exten-
sive use of phosphate only accelerated long-term soil depletion by enabling
multiple plantings each year. Fertilizer, said an observer, seduced southern
farmers into believing that there was a “short cut to prosperity, a royal road to
good crops of cotton year after year. The result has been that their lands have
been cultivated clean year after year, and their fertility has been exhausted.”
Once the soil had lost its fertility, the tenants moved on to another farm, leav-
ing behind rutted fields whose topsoil washed away with each rain. The silt
and mud flowed into creeks and rivers, swamping many lowland fields and
filling millponds and lakes. By the early twentieth century, much of the rural
South resembled a ravaged land: deep gullies sliced through eroded hillsides,
and streams and deep lakes were clogged with silt. As far as the eye could see,
red clay devoid of nutrients dominated the landscape.
The stagnation of rural life thus held millions, white and black, in
bondage to privation and ignorance. Eleven percent of whites in the South
were illiterate at the end of the nineteenth century, twice the national aver-
age. Then as now, poverty accompanied a lack of education. The average
annual income of white southerners in 1900 was about half of that of Amer-
icans outside the South. Yet the poorest people in the poorest region were
the 9 million former slaves and their descendants. Per capita black income
was a third of that of southern whites. African Americans also remained the
least educated people in the region. The black illiteracy rate in the South in
1900 was nearly 50 percent, almost five times higher than that of whites.

THE REDEEMERS ( B O U R B O N S ) In post–Civil War southern poli-

tics, centuries-old habits of social deference and political elitism still pre-
vailed. “Every community,” one U.S. Army officer noted in postwar South
Carolina, “had its great man, or its little great man, around whom his fellow
citizens gather when they want information, and to whose monologues they
listen with a respect akin to humility.” After Reconstruction, such “great”
men dominated local southern politics, usually because of their ownership
of land or their wealth. The supporters of these postwar Democratic leaders
referred to them as “redeemers” because they supposedly saved the South
from Yankee domination, as well as from the straitjacket of a purely rural
796 • THE SOUTH AND THE WEST TRANSFORMED (CH. 19)

economy. The redeemers included a rising class of lawyers, merchants, and

entrepreneurs who were eager to promote a more diversified economy based
upon industrial development and railroad expansion. The opponents of the
redeemers labeled them “Bourbons” in an effort to depict them as reac-
tionaries. Like the French royal family of the same name, which Napoléon
had said forgot nothing and learned nothing in the ordeal of the French rev-
olution, the ruling white Bourbons of the postwar South were said to have
forgotten nothing and to have learned nothing in the ordeal of the Confed-
eracy and the Civil War.
During and after the late 1870s, the Bourbon governors and legislators of
the New South slashed state expenditures, including those for the public-
school systems started during the Reconstruction era immediately after the
war. The urge to reduce state expenditures created one of the darkest blots
on the Bourbon record: convict leasing. During the Civil War, many south-
ern prisons and jails were destroyed. After the war, state and local govern-
ments were so strapped for cash that they looked for ways to reduce the
expense of jailing people convicted of crimes. At the same time, white land
owners whose slaves had been freed were desperate for farm workers. State
governments therefore began “leasing” convicts, most of them African Amer-
icans, to white farmers as a way for southern states to avoid penitentiary
expenses and generate revenue. White leaders often used a racist argument to
rationalize the leasing of convicts, most of whom were African Americans: an
“inferior” and “shiftless” race, they claimed, benefited from the discipline of
working for others.
Perhaps the ultimate paradox of the Bourbons’ rule was that these cham-
pions of white supremacy tolerated a lingering black voice in politics and
showed no haste to raise the barriers of racial segregation in public places. In
the 1880s, southern politics remained surprisingly open and democratic,
with 64 percent of eligible voters, blacks and whites, participating in elec-
tions. African Americans sat in the state legislature of South Carolina until
1900 and in the state legislature of Georgia until 1908; some of them were
Democrats. The South sent African American congressmen to Washington,
D.C., in every election except one until 1900, though they always represented
gerrymandered districts in which most of the state’s African American vot-
ers had been placed. Under the Bourbons, the disenfranchisement of African
American voters remained inconsistent, a local matter brought about mainly
by fraud and intimidation, but it occurred often enough to ensure white
control of the southern states.
A like flexibility applied to other aspects of race relations. The color line
was drawn less strictly immediately after the Civil War than it would be in
 The New West • 797

The effects of Radical and Bourbon rule in the South

This 1880 cartoon shows the South staggering under the oppressive weight
of military Reconstruction (left) and flourishing under the “Let ’Em Alone Policy”
of President Rutherford B. Hayes and the Bourbons (right).

the twentieth century. In some places, to be sure, racial segregation appeared

before the end of Reconstruction, especially in schools, churches, hotels, and
rooming houses and in private social relations. In places of public accom-
modation such as trains, depots, theaters, and diners, discrimination was
more sporadic.
The ultimate achievement of the New South promoters and their allies,
the Bourbons, was that they reconciled tradition with innovation. By pro-
moting the growth of industry, the Bourbons led the South into a new eco-
nomic era, but without sacrificing a mythic reverence for the Old South.
Bourbon rule left a permanent mark on the South’s politics, economics, and
race relations.

THE NEW WEST

Like the South, the West is a region wrapped in myths and stereotypes.
The vast land west of the Mississippi River contains remarkable geographic
extremes: majestic mountains, roaring rivers, searing deserts, sprawling
grasslands, and dense forests. For vast reaches of western America, the great
798 • THE SOUTH AND THE WEST TRANSFORMED (CH. 19)

epics of the Civil War and Reconstruction were remote events hardly touch-
ing the lives of the Indians, Mexicans, Asians, trappers, miners, and Mormons
scattered through the plains and mountains. There the march of settlement
and exploitation continued, propelled by a lust for land and a passion for
profit. Between 1870 and 1900, Americans settled more land in the West than
had been occupied by all Americans up to 1870. On one level, western settle-
ment beyond the Mississippi River constitutes a colorful drama of deter-
mined pioneers and two-fisted gunslingers overcoming all obstacles to secure
their vision of freedom and opportunity amid the region’s awesome vastness.
The post–Civil War West offered the promise of democratic individualism,
economic opportunity, and personal freedom that had long before come to
define the American dream. On another level, however, the colonization of
the Far West was a tragedy of shortsighted greed and irresponsible behavior, a
story of reckless exploitation that scarred the land, decimated its wildlife, and
nearly exterminated Native American culture.
In the second tier of trans-Mississippi states—Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska—
and in western Minnesota, farmers began spreading across the Great Plains
after mid-century. From California, miners moved east through the moun-
tains, drawn by one new strike after another. From Texas, nomadic cowboys
migrated northward onto the plains and across the Rocky Mountains, into
the Great Basin of Utah. The settlers encountered climates and landscapes
markedly different from those they had left behind. The Great Plains were
arid, and the scarcity of water and timber rendered useless the familiar trap-
pings of the pioneer: the ax, the log cabin, the rail fence, and the accustomed
methods of tilling the soil. For a long time the region had been called the
Great American Desert, unfit for human habitation and therefore, to white
Americans, the perfect refuge for Indians. But that view changed in the last
half of the nineteenth century as a result of newly discovered deposits of
gold, silver, and other minerals, the completion of the transcontinental rail-
roads, the destruction of the buffalo, the collapse of Indian resistance, the
rise of the range-cattle industry, and the dawning realization that the arid
region need not be a sterile desert. With the use of what water was available,
new techniques of dry farming and irrigation could make the land fruitful
after all.

T H E M I G R AT O R Y S T R E A MDuring the second half of the nineteenth

century, an unrelenting stream of migrants flowed into the largely Indian
and Hispanic West. Millions of Anglo-Americans, African Americans, Mexi-
cans, and European and Chinese immigrants transformed the patterns of
western society and culture. Most of the settlers were relatively prosperous
 The New West • 799

white, native-born farm folk. Because of the expense of transportation, land,

and supplies, the very poor could not afford to relocate. Three quarters of
the western migrants were men.
The largest number of foreign immigrants came from northern Europe
and Canada. In the northern plains, Germans, Scandinavians, and Irish were
especially numerous. In the new state of Nebraska in 1870, a quarter of the
123,000 residents were foreign-born. In North Dakota in 1890, 45 percent of
the residents were immigrants. Compared with European immigrants, those
from China and Mexico were much less numerous but nonetheless significant.
More than 200,000 Chinese arrived in California between 1876 and 1890.

In the aftermath of the collapse

A F R I C A N A M E R I C A N M I G R AT I O N
of Radical Republican rule in the South, thousands of African Americans
began migrating west from Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mis-
sissippi, and Texas. Some six thousand southern blacks arrived in Kansas in
1879, and as many as twenty thousand followed the following year. These
African American migrants came to be known as Exodusters because they
were making their exodus from the South—in search of a haven from racism
and poverty.
The foremost promoter of black migration to the West was Benjamin
“Pap” Singleton. Born a slave in Tennessee in 1809, he escaped and made his
way to Michigan. After the Civil War, he returned to Tennessee, convinced

Nicodemus, Kansas
A colony founded by southern blacks in the 1860s.
800 • THE SOUTH AND THE WEST TRANSFORMED (CH. 19)

that God was calling him to rescue his brethren. When Singleton learned
that land in Kansas could be had for $1.25 an acre, he led his first party of
two hundred colonists to Kansas in 1878, bought 7,500 acres that had been
an Indian reservation, and established the Dunlop community. Over the
next several years, thousands of African Americans followed Singleton into
Kansas, leading many southern leaders to worry about the loss of black
laborers in the region. In 1879, whites closed access to the Mississippi River
and threatened to sink all boats carrying black colonists from the South to
the West. An army officer reported to President Rutherford B. Hayes that
“every river landing is blockaded by white enemies of the colored exodus;
some of whom are mounted and armed, as if we are at war.”
The exodus of black southerners to the West died out by the early 1880s.
Many of the settlers were unprepared for the living conditions on the plains.
Their Kansas homesteads were not large enough to be self-sustaining, and
most of the black farmers were forced to supplement their income by hiring
themselves out to white ranchers. Drought, grasshoppers, prairie fires, and
dust storms led to crop failures. The sudden influx of so many people taxed
resources and patience. Many of the African American pioneers in Kansas
soon abandoned their land and moved to the few cities in the state. Life on
the frontier was not the “promised land” that settlers had been led to expect.
Nonetheless, by 1890 some 520,000 African Americans lived west of the
Mississippi River. As many as 25 percent of the cowboys who participated in
the Texas cattle drives were African Americans.
In 1866, Congress passed legislation establishing two “colored” cavalry
units and dispatched them to the western frontier. Nicknamed “buffalo
soldiers” by the Indians, the men were mostly Civil War veterans from
Louisiana and Kentucky. They built and maintained forts, mapped vast areas
of the Southwest, strung hundreds of miles of telegraph lines, protected rail-
road construction crews, subdued hostile Indians, and captured outlaws and
rustlers. Eighteen of the buffalo soldiers won Congressional Medals of Honor
for their service.

MINING THE WEST Valuable mineral deposits continued to lure

people to the West after the Civil War. The California miners of 1849 (forty-
niners) set the typical pattern, in which the sudden, disorderly rush of
prospectors to a new find was quickly joined by camp followers—a motley
crew of peddlers, saloon keepers, prostitutes, cardsharps, hustlers, and
assorted desperadoes eager to mine the miners. If a new field panned out, the
forces of respectability and more subtle forms of exploitation slowly worked
 The New West • 801

their way in. Lawlessness gave way

to vigilante rule and, finally, to a
stable community.
The drama of the 1849 gold
rush was reenacted time and again
in the following three decades.
Along the South Platte River, not
far from Pikes Peak in Colorado,
a prospecting party found gold
in 1858, and stories of success
brought perhaps one hundred
thousand “fifty-niners” into the
country by the next year. New dis-
coveries in Colorado kept occur-
ring: near Central City in 1859, at
Leadville in the 1870s, and the last
important strikes in the West, Deadwood, Dakota Territory
again gold and silver, at Cripple A gold-rush town in 1876, before the
Creek in 1891 and 1894. During Dakotas became states.
those years, farming and grazing
had given the economy a stable base, and Colorado, the Centennial State,
entered the union in 1876.
While the early miners were crowding around Pikes Peak, the Comstock
Lode was discovered near Gold Hill, Nevada. H. T. P. Comstock, a Canadian-
born fur trapper, had drifted to the Carson River diggings, which opened in
1856. He talked his way into a share in a new discovery made by two other
prospectors in 1859 and gave it his own name. The lode produced gold and
silver. Within twenty years, it had yielded more than $300 million from
shafts that reached hundreds of feet into the mountainside. In 1861, largely
on account of the settlers attracted to the Comstock Lode, Nevada became a
territory, and in 1864 the state of Nevada was admitted to the Union in time
to give two electoral votes to Abraham Lincoln (the new state’s third elec-
toral voter got caught in a snowstorm).
The growing demand for orderly government in the West led to the hasty
creation of new territories and eventually the admission of a host of new
states. After Colorado’s admission in 1876, however, there was a long hiatus
because of party divisions in Congress: Democrats were reluctant to create
states out of territories that were heavily Republican. After the sweeping
Republican victory in the 1888 legislative races, however, Congress admitted
802 • THE SOUTH AND THE WEST TRANSFORMED (CH. 19)

CANADA

WASHINGTON MONTANA TERRITORY

R
S
TERRITORY 1864–1889

E
River
1863–1889 Missouri

D
A Lewiston

r
Last Chance Gulch

ive
Columbia

O
River R
C

(Helena) ne
Butte Yellowsto
S

Miles
Bozeman
C A

Centerville Bannack City

OREGON Virginia City

C
Caldwell Boise
IDAHO Deadwood Gulch
Silver City Sn
ak TERRITORY

K
eR WYOMING
ive 1868–1890
S I E R R A

r BLACK
TERRITORY HILLS
1868–1890 Pl
att
Great eR

Y
Salt ive
Lake COMSTOCK r
Tahoe Lake Cheyenne
LODE Ogallala
Virginia City
Gold Hill Denver
Sutter’s Fort Central City
(Sacramento) UTAH
San Francisco NEVADA TERRITORY Leadville
N

Pikes Peak
1868–1896 M
E

Cripple Creek
CALIFORNIA
V

r
ve COLORADO TERRITORY
Ri
A

o 1861–1876
ad
D

lor

T
Co
A

Goodnight-Loving Trai
ARIZONA Santa Fe
S

TERRITORY
PA C I F I C 1866–1912 NEW MEXICO
OCEAN TERRITORY
Gila River 1863–1912
l

Bisbee
Ri
o
G
ra Peco
s R
nd
e

ive
r

THE NEW WEST

Arid lands
Grassland
Forest MEXICO
Cattle country
Mining

What were the main industries of the New West? How did mining transform its ecology?
 The New West • 803

Superior
ke
MINNESOTA La

DAKOTA

Lake Michigan
TERRITORY
1863–1889
M
WISCONSIN MI
iss
o uri

Ri
ve
r Centerville
NEBRASKA Chicago
TERRITORY IOWA
1863–1867 Omaha

Republican River ILLINOIS IN

KANSAS
Ellsworth Abilene Kansas City ver
St. Louis
i o Ri
Dodge Sedalia O h
City
Wichita MISSOURI KY
Caldwell
Ar
ka

ns
as TN
er

Riv
Western Trail

Riv

er
i

UNORGANIZED
ipp

ARKANSAS
iss

TERRITORY
s
Mis
Chisholm Trail

AL
MISSISSIPPI
ail
a Tr
ali

T E X A S LOUISIANA
Sed

o lo
C

Ri rad
ver o
Re

d
Ri
Bra

Centerville ver
zos

Caldwell
Austin
Rive

New Orleans
r

San Antonio Galveston

Corpus Christi
GULF OF MEXICO

0 100 200 300 Miles

0 100 200 300 Kilometers

804 • THE SOUTH AND THE WEST TRANSFORMED (CH. 19)

the Dakotas, Montana, and Washington in 1889 and Idaho and Wyoming in
1890. Utah entered the Union in 1896 (after the Mormons abandoned the
practice of polygamy) and Oklahoma in 1907, and in 1912 Arizona and New
Mexico rounded out the forty-eight contiguous states.

MINING AND THE ENVIRONMENT During the second half of the

nineteenth century, the nature of mining changed drastically. It became a
mass-production industry as individual prospectors gave way to large compa-
nies. The first wave of miners who rushed to California in 1849 sifted gold dust
and nuggets out of riverbeds by means of “placer” mining, or “panning.” But
once the placer deposits were exhausted, efficient mining required large-scale
operations and huge investments. Companies shifted from surface digging to
hydraulic mining, dredging, or deep-shaft “hard-rock” mining.
Hydraulicking, dredging, and shaft mining transformed vast areas of veg-
etation and landscape. Huge hydraulic cannons shot an enormous stream of
water under high pressure, stripping the topsoil and gravel from the bedrock
and creating steep-sloped barren canyons that could not sustain plant life.
The tons of dirt and debris unearthed by the water cannons covered rich
farmland downstream and created sandbars that clogged rivers and killed
fish. All told, some 12 billion tons of earth were blasted out of the Sierra
Nevada Mountains and washed into local rivers.
Irate California farmers in the fertile Central Valley bitterly protested the
damage done downstream by the industrial mining operations. In 1878, they
formed the Anti-Debris Association, with its own militia, to challenge the pow-
erful mining companies. Efforts to pass state legislation restricting hydraulic
mining repeatedly failed because mining companies controlled the votes. The
Anti-Debris Association then turned to the courts. On January 7, 1884, the
farmers won their case when federal judge Lorenzo Sawyer, a former miner,
outlawed the dumping of mining debris where it could reach farmland or navi-
gable rivers. Thus Woodruff v. North Bloomfield Gravel Mining Company
became the first major environmental ruling in the nation. As a result of the
ruling, hydraulic mining dried up, leaving a legacy of abandoned equipment,
ugly ravines, ditches, gullies, and mountains of discarded rock and gravel.

T H E I N D I A N WA R S As the frontier pressed in from east and west,

some 250,000 Native Americans were forced into what was supposed to
be their last refuge, the Great Plains and the mountain regions of the Far
West. The 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty, in which the chiefs of the Plains tribes
agreed to accept definite tribal borders and allow white emigrants to travel
on their trails unmolested, worked for a while, with wagon trains passing
 The New West • 805

safely through Indian lands and the army building roads and forts without
resistance. Fighting resumed, however, as the emigrants began to encroach
upon Indian lands on the plains rather than merely pass through them.
From the early 1860s until the late 1870s, the frontier raged with Indian
wars. In 1864, Colorado’s governor persuaded most of the warring Indians in
his territory to gather at Fort Lyon, on Sand Creek, where they were promised
protection. Despite that promise, Colonel John M. Chivington’s untrained
militia attacked an Indian camp flying a white flag of truce, slaughtering two
hundred peaceful Indians—men, women, and children—in what one general
called the “foulest and most unjustifiable crime in the annals of America.”
With other scattered battles erupting, a congressional committee in 1865
gathered evidence on the grisly Indian wars and massacres. Its 1867 “Report
on the Condition of the Indian Tribes” led to the creation of an Indian Peace
Commission charged with removing the causes of the Indian wars. Congress
decided that this would be best accomplished at the expense of the Indians,
by persuading them to take up life on out-of-the-way reservations. Yet the
persistent encroachment of whites on Indian hunting grounds continued. In
1870, Indians outnumbered whites in the Dakota Territory by two to one;
in 1880, whites outnumbered Indians by more than six to one.
In 1867 a conference at Medicine Lodge, Kansas, ended with the Kiowas,
Comanches, Arapahos, and Cheyennes reluctantly accepting land in western
Oklahoma. The following spring the Sioux agreed to settle within the Black
Hills Reservation in Dakota Territory. But Indian resistance in the southern
plains continued until the Red River War of 1874–1875, when General Philip
Sheridan forced the Indians to disband in the spring of 1875. Seventy-two
Indian chiefs were imprisoned for three years.
Meanwhile, trouble was brewing again in the north. In 1874, Lieutenant
Colonel George A. Custer, a reckless, glory-seeking officer, led an exploratory
expedition into the Black Hills. Miners were soon filtering onto the Sioux
hunting grounds despite promises that the army would keep them out. The
army had done little to protect Indian land, but when ordered to move
against wandering bands of Sioux hunting on the range according to their
treaty rights, it moved vigorously.
What became the Great Sioux War was the largest military event since the
end of the Civil War and one of the largest campaigns against Indians in
American history. The war lasted fifteen months and entailed fifteen battles
in present-day Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska. The
heroic Chief Sitting Bull ably led the Sioux. In 1876, after several indecisive
encounters, Custer found the main encampment of Sioux and their North-
ern Cheyenne allies on the Little Bighorn River. Separated from the main
 806 • THE SOUTH AND THE WEST TRANSFORMED (CH. 19)

C A N A D A
Seattle
WASHINGTON BLACKFOOT
TERR. uperior
MONTANA TERR. DAKOTA ke S
1853–1889 La
1864–1889 SIOUX and TERR.
Bozeman (NORTHERN) 1861–1889 MN MI
Virginia City CHEYENNE
Little Bighorn, WI
OR SIOUX

Lake Michigan
IDAHO 1876 St. Paul
TERR. WYOMING
1868–1890 Sioux Uprising,
TERR.

Bo
Wounded Knee, 1862
NEZ PERCE

zem
MODOC 1868–1890 Dec. 29, 1890
CHEYENNE

an T
Great Salt Lake
Fort r NEBRASKA TERR. IA
Laramie ail
1863–1867
Sacramento NV Omaha IL
UTAH Denver
ARAPAHO
San TERR.
Francisco 1868–1896 CO TERR. Kansas City MO
UTES 1861–1876 Sand Creek
CALIFORNIA CHEYENNE Massacre, 1864
KS St. Louis

HOPI KIOWA
NAVAJO

ver
UNORGANIZED TERR. TN
Santa Fe

i Ri
ARIZONA Red River War,

ipp
TERR. PUEBLO 1874–1875 AR

Mississ
1863–1912 NEW MEXICO FIVE CIVILIZED
TRIBES
TERR. MS
1863–1912 COMANCHE
APACHE
TX LA
PA C I F I C

O C E A N
GULF OF MEXICO

M E X I C O 0 150 300 Miles

INDIAN WARS
0 150 300 Kilometers

What was the Great Sioux War? What happened at Little Bighorn, and what were
the consequences? Why were hundreds of Indians killed at Wounded Knee?

body of soldiers and surrounded by 2,500 warriors, Custer’s detachment of

210 men was annihilated.
Instead of following up their victory, the Indians celebrated and renewed
their hunting. The army quickly regained the offensive and compelled the
Sioux to give up their hunting grounds and goldfields in return for pay-
ments. Forced onto reservations situated on the least valuable land in the
region, the Indians soon found themselves struggling to subsist under harsh
conditions. Many of them died of starvation or disease. When a peace com-
mission imposed a settlement, Chief Spotted Tail said: “Tell your people that
since the Great Father promised that we should never be removed, we have
been moved five times. . . . I think you had better put the Indians on wheels
and you can run them about wherever you wish.”
 The New West • 807

In the Rocky Mountains and to the west, the same story of hopeless resis-
tance was repeated. Indians were the last obstacle to white western expansion,
and they suffered as a result. The Blackfeet and Crows had to leave their
homes in Montana. In a war along the California-Oregon boundary, the
Modocs held out for six months in 1871–1872 before they were overwhelmed.
In 1879 the Utes were forced to give up their vast territories in western Col-
orado. In Idaho the peaceful Nez Perce bands, many of which had converted to
Christianity and embraced white culture, refused to surrender land along the
Salmon River, and prolonged fighting erupted there and in eastern Oregon.
Joseph, one of several Nez Perce chiefs, delivered an eloquent surrender speech
that served as an epitaph to the Indians’ efforts to withstand the march of
American empire: “I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. . . . The old
men are all dead. . . . I want to have time to look for my children, and see how
many of them I can find. . . . Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick
and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.”
A generation of Indian wars virtually ended in 1886 with the capture of
Geronimo, a chief of the Chiricahua Apaches, who had fought white settlers
in the Southwest for fifteen years. But there would be a tragic epilogue. Late in
1888, Wovoka (or Jack Wilson), a Paiute in western Nevada, fell ill and in
a delirium imagined he had visited the spirit world, where he learned of a
deliverer coming to rescue the Indians and restore their lands. To hasten their

The Battle of Little Bighorn, 1876

A painting by Amos Bad Heart Bull, an Oglala Sioux.
808 • THE SOUTH AND THE WEST TRANSFORMED (CH. 19)

deliverance, he said, the Indians must

take up a ceremonial dance at each new
moon. The Ghost Dance craze fed upon
old legends of a coming messiah and
spread rapidly. In 1890, the Lakota Sioux
adopted it with such fervor that it
alarmed white authorities. They banned
the Ghost Dance on Lakota reservations,
but the Indians defied the order and a
crisis erupted. On December 29, 1890, a
bloodbath occurred at Wounded Knee,
South Dakota. An accidental rifle dis-
Indian wars charge led nervous soldiers to fire into a
group of Indians who had come to sur-
Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce.
render. Nearly two hundred Indians and
twenty-five soldiers died in the Battle of
Wounded Knee. The Indian wars had ended with characteristic brutality and
misunderstanding. General Philip Sheridan was acidly candid in summarizing
how whites had treated the Indians: “We took away their country and their
means of support, broke up their mode of living, their habits of life, intro-
duced disease and decay and among them, and it was for this and against this
that they made war. Could anyone expect less?”

T H E D E M I S E O F T H E B U F FA L O Over the long run, the collapse of

Indian resistance in the face of white settlement on the Great Plains resulted
as much from the decimation of the buffalo herds as from the actions of
federal troops. In 1750, there were an estimated 30 million buffalo; by 1850
there were less than 10 million; by 1900, only a few hundred were left. What
happened to them? The conventional story focuses on intensive harvesting
of buffalo by white hunters after the Civil War. Americans east of the Missis-
sippi River developed a voracious demand for buffalo robes and buffalo
leather. The average white commercial hunter killed one hundred animals a
day, and the hides and bones (to be ground into fertilizer) were shipped east on
railroad cars. Some army officers encouraged the slaughter. “Kill every buffalo
you can!” Colonel Richard Dodge told a sport hunter in 1867. “Every buffalo
dead is an Indian gone.”
This conventional explanation tells only part of a more complicated
story, however. The buffalo disappeared from the western plains for a vari-
ety of environmental reasons, including a significant change in climate;
competition for forage with horses, sheep, and cattle; and cattle-borne
 The New West • 809

disease. A prolonged drought on the Great Plains during the late 1880s and
1890s—the same drought that would help spur the agrarian political revolt
and the rise of populism—also devastated the buffalo herds by reducing the
grasslands upon which the animals depended. At the same time, the buffalo
had to compete for forage with other grazing animals. By the 1880s over
2 million horses were roaming buffalo lands. In addition, the Plains Indians
themselves, empowered by horses and guns and spurred by the profits
reaped from selling hides and meat to white traders, accounted for much of
the devastation of the buffalo herds after 1840. White hunters who killed
buffalo by the millions in the 1870s and 1880s played a major role in the
animals’ demise, but only as the final catalyst. If there had been no white
hunters, the buffalo would probably have lasted only another thirty years,
because their numbers had been so greatly reduced by other factors.

INDIAN POLICY The slaughter of buffalo and Indians ignited wide-

spread criticism. Politicians and religious leaders castigated the persistent
mistreatment of Indians. In his annual message of 1877, President Ruther-
ford B. Hayes joined the protest: “Many, if not most, of our Indian wars
have had their origin in broken promises and acts of injustice on our part.”
Helen Hunt Jackson, a novelist and poet, focused attention on the Indian
cause in A Century of Dishonor (1881). Its impact on American attitudes
toward the Indians was comparable to the effect that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) had on the abolitionist movement before the Civil
War. U.S. policies regarding Indians gradually became more benevolent, but
this change did little to ease the plight of the Indians and actually helped
destroy the remnants of their culture. The reservation policy inaugurated by
the Peace Commission in 1867 did little more than extend a practice that
dated from colonial Virginia. Partly humanitarian in motive, it also saved
money: housing and feeding Indians on reservations cost less than fight-
ing them.
Well-intentioned reformers sought to “Americanize” Indians by dealing
with them as individuals rather than tribes. The fruition of such reform
efforts came with the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887. Sponsored by Senator
Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, the act divided tribal lands, granting
160 acres to each head of a family and lesser amounts to others. But the more
it changed, the more Indian policy remained the same. Despite the best of
intentions, the Dawes Act created opportunities for increased white plun-
dering of Indian land and disrupted what remained of the traditional cul-
ture. Between 1887 and 1934, Indians lost an estimated 86 million of their
130 million acres. Most of what remained was unsuited for agriculture.
810 • THE SOUTH AND THE WEST TRANSFORMED (CH. 19)

C AT T L E A N D C O W B O Y S While the West was being taken from the

Indians, cattle entered the grasslands where the buffalo had roamed. Much
of the romance of the open-range cattle industry derived from its Mexican
roots. The Texas longhorns and the cowboys’ horses had in large part
descended from stock brought to the New World by the Spaniards, and
many of the industry’s trappings had been worked out in Mexico first: the
cowboy’s saddle, chaps (chaparreras) to protect the legs, spurs, and lariat.
For many years, wild cattle competed with the buffalo in the Spanish bor-
derlands. Natural selection and contact with Anglo-American cattle pro-
duced the Texas longhorns: lean and rangy, they were noted more for speed
and endurance than for yielding a choice steak. They had little value, more-
over, because the largest markets for beef were too far away. At the end of the
Civil War, as many as 5 million cattle roamed the grasslands of Texas, still
neglected—but not for long. In the upper Mississippi Valley, where herds
had been depleted by the war, cattle were in great demand, and the Texas cat-
tle could be had just for the effort of rounding them up.
New opportunities arose as railroads pushed farther west, where cattle could
be driven through relatively vacant lands. Joseph G. McCoy, an Illinois livestock
dealer, recognized the possibilities of moving the cattle trade west. In 1867 in
Abilene, Kansas, he bought 250 acres for a stockyard; he then built a barn, an
office building, livestock scales, a hotel, and a bank. He then sent an agent into
Indian-owned areas to recruit owners of herds bound north to go through Abi-
lene. Over the next few years, Abilene flourished as the first successful Kansas
cowtown. The ability to ship huge numbers of western cattle by rail transformed
ranching into a major industry. As the railroads moved west, so did the
cowtowns—Ellsworth, Wichita, Caldwell, and Dodge City in Kansas; farther
north to Ogallala, Nebraska; Cheyenne, Wyoming; and Miles City, Montana.
During the twenty years after the Civil War, some forty thousand cowboys
roamed the Great Plains. They were young—the average age was twenty-
four—and from diverse backgrounds. Some 30 percent were Mexican or
African American, and hundreds were Indians. Many others were Civil War
veterans from the North and the South, and still others were immigrants
from Europe. The life of a cowboy, for the most part, was rarely as exciting as
has been depicted by movies and television shows. Working as a ranch hand
involved grueling, dirty wage labor interspersed with drudgery and boredom,
often amid terrible weather conditions.
The thriving cattle industry spurred rapid growth in the region, however.
The population of Kansas increased from 107,000 in 1860 to 365,000 ten
years later and reached almost 1 million by 1880. Nebraska witnessed similar
increases. During the 1860s, cattle would be delivered to rail depots, loaded
 The New West • 811

The cowboy era

Cowboys herd cattle near Cimarron, Colorado, 1905.

onto freight cars, and shipped east. By the time the animals arrived in New
York or Massachusetts, some would be dead or dying, and all would have lost
significant weight. The secret to higher profits in the cattle industry was to
devise a way to slaughter the cattle in the Midwest and ship the dressed
carcasses east and west. That process required refrigeration to keep the meat
from spoiling. In 1869, G. H. Hammond, a Chicago meat packer, shipped the
first refrigerated beef in an air-cooled railroad car from Chicago to Boston.
Eight years later, Gustavus Swift developed a more efficient system of mechan-
ical refrigeration, an innovation that earned him a fortune and provided the
cattle industry with a major stimulus.
In the absence of laws governing the open range, cattle ranchers at first
worked out a code of behavior largely dictated by circumstances. As cattle often
wandered onto other ranchers’ claims, cowboys would “ride the line” to keep
the animals off the adjoining ranches. In the spring they would “round up” the
herds, which invariably got mixed up, and sort out ownership by identifying
the distinctive ranch symbols “branded,” or burned, into the cattle. All that
changed in 1873, when Joseph Glidden, an Illinois farmer, invented the first
812 • THE SOUTH AND THE WEST TRANSFORMED (CH. 19)

effective barbed wire, which ranchers used to fence off their claims at relatively
low cost. Ranchers rushed to buy the new wire fencing, and soon the open
range was no more. Cattle raising, like mining, evolved from a romantic adven-
ture into a big business dominated by giant enterprises.

THE END OF THE OPEN RANGE The flush times of the cowtown
soon passed, however, and the long cattle drives played out too, because they
were economically unsound. A combination of factors put an end to the open
range. Farmers kept crowding in and laying out homesteads and waging
“barbed-wire wars” with ranchers by cutting the ranchers’ fences or policing
their own. The boundless range was being overrun with cattle by 1883, and
expenses mounted as stock breeders formed associations to keep intruders off
overstocked ranges, establish and protect land titles, deal with railroads and
buyers, fight prairie fires, and cope with rustlers as well as wolves and cougars.
The rise of sheepherding by 1880 caused still another conflict with the cattle
ranchers. A final blow to the open-range industry came with two unusually
severe winters, in 1886 and 1887, followed by ten long years of drought.
The dangers of the trail, the wear and tear on men and cattle, the charges
levied on drives across Indian territory, and the advance of farms across the trails
combined to persuade cattlemen that they could function best near railroads. As
railroads spread out into Texas and across the plains, the cattle business spread
with them over the High Plains as far north as Montana and on into Canada.

Langtry, Texas, 1900

Judge Roy Bean’s courthouse and saloon.
 The New West • 813

Surviving the hazards of the range required ranchers to establish legal title
and fence in the land, limit the herds to a reasonable size, and provide shelter
and hay during the rigors of winter. Moreover, as the long cattle drives gave
way to more rail lines and refrigerated railcars, the cowboy settled into a
more sedentary existence. Within merely two decades, from 1866 to 1886,
the era of the cowboy had come and gone.

R A N G E WA R S Conflicting claims over land and water rights triggered

range wars, violent disputes between ranchers and farmers. Ranchers often
tried to drive off neighboring farmers, and farmers in turn tried to sabotage
the cattle barons, cutting their fences and spooking their herds. The cattle
ranchers also clashed with sheepherders over access to grassland. A strain of
ethnic and religious prejudice heightened the tension between ranchers and
herders. In the Southwest, shepherds were typically Mexican Americans; in
Idaho and Nevada they were from the Basque region of Spain, or they were
Mormons. Many Anglo-American cattle ranchers and cowboys viewed
those ethnic and religious groups as un-American and inferior, adopting a
racist attitude that helped them rationalize the use of violence against sheep-
herders. Warfare gradually faded, however, as the sheep for the most part
found refuge in the high pastures of the mountains, leaving the grasslands of
the plains to the cattle ranchers.
Yet there also developed a perennial tension between large and small cat-
tle ranchers. The large ranchers fenced in huge tracts of public land, leaving
the smaller ranchers with too little pasture. To survive, the smaller ranchers
cut the fences. In central Texas this practice sparked the Fence-Cutters’ War
of 1883–1884. Several ranchers were killed and dozens wounded before the
state ended the conflict by passing legislation outlawing fence cutting.

FA R M E R S A N D T H E L A N D Farming has always been a hard life, and

it was made more so on the Great Plains by the region’s unforgiving environ-
ment and mercurial weather. After 1865, on paper at least, the federal land
laws offered farmers favorable terms. Under the Homestead Act of 1862, a
settler (“homesteader”) could gain title to federal land simply by staking out
a claim and living on it for five years, or he could buy land at $1.25 an acre
after six months. But such land legislation was predicated upon the tradition
of farming the fertile lands east of the Mississippi River, and the laws were
never adjusted to the fact that much of the prairie was suited only for cattle
raising. Cattle ranchers were forced to obtain land by gradual acquisition
from homesteaders or land-grant railroads.
814 • THE SOUTH AND THE WEST TRANSFORMED (CH. 19)

As so often happens, environmental forces influenced development. The

arid climate, rather than new land laws, shaped institutions in the West after
the Civil War. Where farming was impossible, ranchers simply established
dominance by control of the water, regardless of the law. Belated legislative
efforts to develop irrigable land finally achieved a major success when the
1902 Newlands Reclamation Act (after the aptly named Senator Francis G.
Newlands of Nevada) set up the Bureau of Reclamation. The proceeds of
public land sales in sixteen states created a fund for irrigation projects, and
the Reclamation Bureau set about building such major projects as the Boul-
der (later the Hoover) Dam on the Nevada-Arizona line, the Roosevelt Dam
in Arizona, the Elephant Butte Dam in New Mexico, and the Arrowrock Dam
in Idaho.
The lands of the New West, like those on previous frontiers, passed to
their ultimate owners more often from private hands than directly from the
government. Many of the 274 million acres claimed under the Homestead
Act passed quickly to ranchers or speculators and thence to settlers. The
land-grant railroads got some 200 million acres of land owned by the federal
government between 1851 and 1871. Over time, the railroads sold much of

The construction of Hoover Dam

When completed in 1936, Hoover Dam was the world’s largest concrete structure.
 The New West • 815

the land to create towns and ranches along the rail lines. The West of ranch-
ers and farmers was in fact largely the product of the railroads; they were the
lifeblood of the western economy.
The first arrivals on the sod-house frontier faced a grim struggle against
danger, adversity, and monotony. Though land was relatively cheap, horses,
livestock, wagons, wells, lumber, fencing, seed, and fertilizer were not. Freight
rates and interest rates on loans seemed criminally high. As in the South,
declining crop prices produced chronic indebtedness, leading strapped west-
ern farmers to promote the inflation of the money supply. The virgin land
itself, although fertile, resisted planting; the heavy sod broke many a plow.
Since wood was almost nonexistent on the prairie, pioneer families used buf-
falo chips (dried dung) for fuel.
Farmers and their families also fought a constant battle with the elements:
tornadoes, hailstorms, droughts, prairie fires, blizzards, and pests. Swarms of
locusts often clouded the horizon, occasionally covering the ground six inches
deep. A Wichita newspaper reported in 1878 that the grasshoppers devoured
“everything green, stripping the foliage off the bark and from the tender twigs
of the fruit trees, destroying every plant that is good for food or pleasant to the
eyes, that man has planted.”
As the railroads brought piles of lumber from the East, farmers could
leave their sod houses (homes built of sod) to build more comfortable frame
dwellings. New machinery helped provide fresh opportunities. In 1868,
James Oliver, a Scottish immigrant living in Indiana, made a successful
chilled-iron plow. This “sodbuster” plow greatly eased the task of breaking
the tough grass roots of the plains. Improvements and new inventions in
threshing machines, hay mowers, planters, manure spreaders, cream separa-
tors, and other devices lightened the burden of farm labor but added to the
farmers’ capital outlay. In Minnesota, the Dakotas, and central California
the gigantic “bonanza farms,” with machinery for mass production, became
the marvels of the age. On one farm in North Dakota, 13,000 acres of wheat
made a single field. Another bonanza farm employed over 1,000 migrant
workers to tend 34,000 acres.
While the overall value of farmland and farm products increased in the
late nineteenth century, small farmers did not keep up with the march of
progress. Their numbers grew in size but decreased in proportion to the pop-
ulation at large. Wheat in the western states, like cotton in the antebellum
South, was the great export crop that spurred economic growth. For a variety
of reasons, however, few small farmers prospered. By the 1890s, they were
in open revolt against the “system” of corrupt processors (middlemen) and
“greedy” bankers who they believed conspired against them.
816 • THE SOUTH AND THE WEST TRANSFORMED (CH. 19)

P I O N E E R WO M E N The West remained a largely male society through-

out the nineteenth century. Women were not only a numerical minority;
they also continued to face traditional legal barriers and social prejudice.
A wife could not sell property without her husband’s approval, for example.
Texas women could not sue except for divorce, nor could they serve on
juries, act as lawyers, or witness a will.
But the fight for survival in the trans-Mississippi West made men and
women more equal partners than in the East. Many women who lost their
mates to the deadly toil of sod busting thereafter assumed complete respon-
sibility for their farms. In general, women on the prairie became more inde-
pendent than women leading domestic lives back East. A Kansas woman
explained “that the environment was such as to bring out and develop the
dominant qualities of individual character. Kansas women of that day
learned at an early age to depend on themselves—to do whatever work there
was to be done, and to face danger when it must be faced, as calmly as they
were able.”

THE END OF THE FRONTIER American life reached an important

juncture at the end of the nineteenth century. The 1890 national census
reported that the frontier era in American development was over; people by
then had spread across the entire continent. This fact inspired the historian
Frederick Jackson Turner to develop his influential frontier thesis, first out-
lined in “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” a paper

Women of the frontier

A woman and her family in front of their sod house. The difficult life on the prairie
led to more egalitarian marriages than were found in other regions of the country.
 The New West • 817

delivered to the American Historical Association in 1893. “The existence of

an area of free land,” Turner wrote, “its continuous recession, and the
advance of American settlement westward, explain American development.”
The frontier, he added, had shaped the national character in fundamental
ways. It was

to the frontier [that] the American intellect owes its striking characteristics.
That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and acquisitive-
ness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that
masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to
effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individual-
ism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuber-
ance which comes with freedom—these are traits of the frontier, or traits
called out elsewhere because of the existence of the frontier.

In 1893, Turner concluded, “four centuries from the discovery of America, at

the end of a hundred years under the Constitution, the frontier has gone and
with its going has closed the first period of American history.”
Turner’s “frontier thesis” guided several generations of scholars and stu-
dents in their understanding of the distinctive characteristics of American
history. His view of the frontier as the westward-moving source of the
nation’s democratic politics, open society, unfettered economy, and rugged
individualism, far removed from the corruptions of urban life, gripped the
popular imagination as well. But it left out much of the story. The frontier
experience Turner described exaggerated the homogenizing effect of the
frontier environment and virtually ignored the role of women, African
Americans, Native Americans, Mormons, Hispanics, and Asians in shaping
the diverse human geography of the western United States. Turner also
implied that the West would be fundamentally different after 1890 because
the frontier experience was essentially over. But in many respects that region
has retained the qualities associated with the rush for land, gold, timber, and
water rights during the post–Civil War decades. The mining frontier, as one
historian has recently written, “set a mood that has never disappeared from
the West: the attitude of extractive industry—get in, get rich, get out.”
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Indian Wars and Policies By 1900, Native Americans in the West were no
longer free to roam the plains. Disease and the influx of farmers and miners
reduced their numbers and curtailed their way of life. Instances of resistance,
such as the Great Sioux War, were crushed. Initially, Indian tribes were forced to
sign treaties and were confined to reservations. Beginning in 1887, the American
government’s Indian policy was aimed at forcing Indians to relinquish their tra-
ditional culture and adopt individual land ownership, settled agriculture, and
Christianity.
• Life in the West Life in the West was harsh and violent, but the promise of
cheap land or wealth from mining drew settlers from the East. Most cowboys
and miners did not acquire wealth, however, because raising cattle and mining
became large-scale enterprises that enriched only a few. Although most
westerners were white Protestant Americans or northern European immigrants,
Mexicans, African Americans, and Chinese contributed to the West’s diversity.
As a consequence of the region’s rugged isolation, women achieved greater
equality in everyday life than did most women elsewhere in the country.
• Growth of Mining Mining lured settlers to largely uninhabited regions,
thereby hastening the creation of new territories and the admission of new
states into the Union. By the 1880s, when mining became a big business
employing large-scale equipment, its environmental impact could be seen in
the blighted landscape.
• The American Frontier The historian Frederick Jackson Turner believed that
the enduring presence of the frontier was responsible for making Americans
individualistic, materialistic, practical, democratic, and energetic. In 1893 he
declared that the closing of the frontier had ended the first stage of America’s
history.
 CHRONOLOGY

1859
1862
1864
Comstock Lode is discovered
Congress passes the Homestead Act
Sand Creek Massacre
1873 Joseph Glidden invents barbed wire
1876 Battle of Little Bighorn
1877 With the Compromise of 1877, Rutherford B. Hayes becomes presi-
dent and Reconstruction comes to an end
1886 Surrender of Geronimo marks the end of the Indian wars
1887 Congress passes the Severalty Act
1890 Battle of Wounded Knee
1893 Frederick J. Turner’s “frontier thesis”

KEY TERMS & NAMES

New South p. 791 panning p. 804 Ghost Dance movement
p. 808
sharecroppers p. 794 George A. Custer
p. 805 range wars p. 813
redeemers p. 795
Great Sioux War Frederick Jackson Turner
Bourbons p. 796 p. 805 p. 816

20
THE EMERGENCE OF
URBAN AMERICA

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• What accounted for the rise of cities in America?

• How did the “new immigration” change America at the end of the
nineteenth century?
• What new forms of mass entertainment had emerged by 1900?
• What was the impact of Darwinian thought on social sciences?

W ithin three decades after the Civil War, a stunning

transformation had occurred in American life. A soci-
ety long rooted in the soil and focused on domestic
issues became an urban-industrial nation inextricably involved in world
markets and global politics. Cities are one of humanity’s greatest creations,
and in the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century,
cities grew at a rate unparalleled in world history. The late nineteenth cen-
tury, declared an economist in 1899, was “not only the age of cities, but the
age of great cities.” Between 1860 and 1910, the urban population mush-
roomed from 6 million to 44 million. By 1920, more than half the nation’s
population lived in urban areas. This rise of big cities created a distinctive
urban culture. People from different ethnic and religious backgrounds and
every walk of life poured into the high-rise apartment buildings and ram-
shackle tenements springing up in every major city. They came in search of
jobs, wealth, and excitement.
Not surprisingly, the rise of metropolitan America created an array of new
social problems. Rapid urban development produced widespread poverty
and political corruption. How to feed, clothe, shelter, and educate the new
arrivals taxed the imagination—and the patience—of urban leaders. Further
 America’s Move to Town • 821

complicating efforts to improve the quality of life in the nation’s cities was
increasing residential segregation according to racial and ethnic background
and social class.

A M E R I C A’ S M O V E TO TOW N

The prospect of good jobs and social excitement in the cities lured
workers by the millions from the countryside and overseas. City people
became distinctively urban in demeanor and outlook, and the contrasts
between farm and city life grew more vivid with each passing year.

E X P LO S I V E U R BA N G ROW T H The frontier was a societal safety

valve, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner said in his influential thesis on
American development. Its cheap lands afforded a release for the population
pressures mounting in the cities. If there was such a thing as a safety valve in
the nineteenth century, however, Turner had it exactly backward. The flow of
population toward the cities was greater than the flow toward the West. Much
of the westward movement, in fact, was itself an urban movement, spawning
new towns near the mining digs or at the railheads. On the Pacific coast, a
greater portion of the population was urbanized than anywhere else; its
major concentrations were around San Francisco Bay at first and then in Los
Angeles, which became a boomtown after the arrival of the Southern Pacific
and Santa Fe Railroads in the 1880s. In the Northwest, Seattle grew quickly,
first as the terminus of three transcontinental railroad lines and, by the end of
the century, as the staging area for the Yukon gold rush. Minneapolis, St. Paul,
Omaha, Kansas City, and Denver experienced rapid growth as well. The
South, too, produced new cities: Durham, North Carolina, and Birmingham,
Alabama, which were centers of tobacco and iron production, and Houston,
Texas, which handled cotton and cattle and, later, oil.
While the Far West had the greatest proportion of urban dwellers, the
Northeast had far more people in its teeming cities. These city dwellers were
increasingly landless and homeless: they had nothing but their labor to sell.
By 1900, more than 90 percent of the residents in New York City’s Manhat-
tan lived in rented houses or congested multi-story apartment buildings,
called tenements.
Several technological innovations allowed city buildings to expand vertically
to accommodate their surging populations. In the 1870s, developments in
heating, such as steam circulating through radiators, enabled the construction
 822 • THE EMERGENCE OF URBAN AMERICA (CH. 20)

Boston
Buffalo
Providence
Milwaukee Detroit Newark New York
Cleveland Brooklyn
Chicago Jersey City
Pittsburgh
Philadelphia
Cincinnati Baltimore
San Francisco Washington
St. Louis Louisville

New Orleans

THE EMERGENCE OF CITIES, 1880

Percentage of Population
Living in Cities
0 150 300 Miles
Over 60 percent
40–60 percent 0 150 300 Kilometers

20–39 percent
Under 20 percent
Cities with population over 100,000

Which states had the largest urban population in 1880? What drove the growth of
western cities? How were western cities different from eastern cities?

of large apartment buildings, since fireplaces were no longer needed. In 1889,

the Otis Elevator Company installed the first electric elevator, which made
possible the erection of taller buildings—before the 1860s few structures had
risen beyond three or four stories. And during the 1880s, engineers developed
cast-iron and steel-frame construction techniques. Because such materials
were stronger than brick, they allowed developers to erect high-rise build-
ings, called skyscrapers.
Cities also expanded horizontally after the introduction of important
transportation innovations. Before the 1890s, the chief power sources of
urban transport were either animals or steam. Horse- and mule-drawn
streetcars had appeared in antebellum cities, but they were slow and cum-
bersome, and cleaning up after the animals added to the cost. In 1873, San
Francisco became the first city to use cable cars that clamped onto a moving
underground cable driven by a central power source. Some cities used
 America’s Move to Town • 823

Seattle

Portland
Lowell
Rochester Boston
Worcester
Minneapolis Buffalo
Providence
Milwaukee Detroit New Haven
Newark New York
Cleveland Pittsburgh Brooklyn
Chicago Jersey City
Omaha Philadelphia
Salt Lake City Cincinnati Baltimore
San Francisco Denver Richmond Washington
Kansas City
St. Louis Louisville

Nashville
Los Angeles Memphis

Atlanta
Birmingham

Dallas

New Orleans

THE EMERGENCE OF CITIES, 1920 Houston

Percentage of Population
Living in Cities
0 150 300 Miles
Over 60 percent
40–60 percent 0 150 300 Kilometers

20–39 percent
Under 20 percent
Cities with population over 100,000

How did technology change urban life in the early twentieth century? What was the
role of mass transit in expanding the urban population? How did the demographics
of the new cities change between 1880 and 1920?

steam-powered trains on elevated tracks, but by the 1890s electric trolleys

were preferred. Mass transit received an added boost when subways were
built in Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia.
The spread of mass transit allowed large numbers of people to become
commuters, and a growing middle class retreated from downtown to live in
quieter tree-lined “streetcar suburbs,” whence they could travel into the cen-
tral city for business or entertainment (though working folk generally stayed
put, unable to afford even the nickel fare). Urban growth often became a
sprawl, since it usually took place without plan, in the interest of a fast buck,
and without thought to the need for parks and public services.
The use of horse-drawn railways, cable cars, and electric trolleys helped
transform the social character of cities. After the Civil War, the emergence of
suburbs began to segregate people according to their wealth. The more affluent
824 • THE EMERGENCE OF URBAN AMERICA (CH. 20)

Urban mass transit

A horse-drawn streetcar moving along rails in New York City.

moved outside the city, leaving behind the working folk, many of whom were
immigrants or African Americans. The poorer districts of a city became more
congested and crime ridden as the population grew, fueled by waves of new-
comers from abroad.

T H E A L LU R E A N D P RO B L E M S O F T H E C I T I E S The wonders of
the cities—their glittering new electric lights, their streetcars, telephones,
department stores, vaudeville shows and other amusements, newspapers
and magazines, and a thousand other attractions—cast a magnetic lure on
rural youth. In times of rural depression, thousands left farms for the cities
in search of opportunity and personal freedom. The exodus from the coun-
tryside was especially evident in the East, where the census documented the
shift in population from country to city. Yet those who moved to the city
often traded one set of problems for another. Workers in the big cities often
had no choice but to live in crowded apartments, most of which were poorly
designed. In 1900, Manhattan’s 42,700 tenements housed almost 1.6 million
people. Such unregulated urban growth created immense problems of sani-
tation, health, and morale.
During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, cities became so
cramped and land so scarce that designers were forced to build upward. In
New York City this resulted in tenement houses, shared buildings with multi-
 America’s Move to Town • 825

ple housing units. These structures were usually six to eight stories tall, lacked
elevators, and were jammed tightly against one another. Twenty-four to
thirty-two families would cram into each building. Some city blocks housed
almost four thousand people. Shoehorned into their quarters, families living
in tenements had no privacy, free space, or sunshine; children had few places
to play except in the streets; infectious diseases and noxious odors were ram-
pant. Not surprisingly, the mortality rate among the urban poor was much
higher than that of the general population. In one poor Chicago district at
the end of the century, three out of five babies died before their first birthday.

CITIES AND THE ENVIRONMENT Nineteenth-century cities were

filthy and disease ridden, noisy and smelly. They overflowed with garbage,
contaminated water, horse urine and manure, roaming pigs, and untreated
sewage. Providing clean water was a chronic problem, and raw sewage was
dumped into streets and waterways. Epidemics of water-related diseases
such as cholera, typhoid fever, and yellow fever ravaged urban populations.
Animal waste was pervasive. In 1900, for example, there were over 3.5 mil-
lion horses in American cities, each of which generated 20 pounds of
manure and several gallons of urine daily. In Chicago alone, 82,000 horses
produced 300,000 tons of manure each year. The life expectancy of urban
draft horses was only two years, which meant that thousands of horse car-
casses had to be disposed of each year. In New York City, 15,000 dead horses
were removed annually.
During the late nineteenth century, municipal reformers organized to clean
up the cities. The “sanitary reformers”—public health officials and municipal
engineers—persuaded city governments to banish hogs and cattle within the
city limits, mount cleanup campaigns, build water and sewage systems, institute
trash collection, and replace horses with electric streetcars. By 1900, 94 per-
cent of American cities had developed regular trash-collection services.
Yet such improvements in public health involved important social and
ecological trade-offs and caused unanticipated problems. Waste that once
had been put into the land was now dumped into waterways. Similarly, solv-
ing the horse-manure problem involved trade-offs. The manure dropped on
city streets caused stench and bred countless flies, many of which carried
diseases such as typhoid fever. But urban horse manure also had benefits.
Farmers living on the outskirts of cities used it to fertilize hay and vegetable
crops. City-generated manure was the agricultural lifeblood of the vegetable
farms outside New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston.
Ultimately, however, the development of public water and sewer systems and
flush toilets separated urban dwellers and their waste from the agricultural
826 • THE EMERGENCE OF URBAN AMERICA (CH. 20)

Urbanization and the environment

A garbage cart retrieves trash in New York City, ca. 1890.

cycle at the same time that the emergence of refrigerated railcars and massive
meatpacking plants separated most people from their sources of food. While
the advances provided great benefits, a flush-and-forget-it mentality emerged.
Well into the twentieth century, people presumed that running water purified
itself, so they dumped massive amounts of untreated waste into rivers and bays.
What they failed to calculate was the carrying capacity of the waterways. The
high phosphorous content of bodily waste dumped into streams led to algae
blooms that sucked the oxygen out of the water and unleashed a string of envi-
ronmental reactions that suffocated fish and affected marine ecology. In sum,
city growth had unintended consequences.

T H E N E W I M M I G R AT I O N

The Industrial Revolution brought to American shores waves of new

immigrants from every part of the globe. Between 1860 and 1920, about one
in seven Americans was foreign-born. Immigrants were even more numer-
ous in cities. By 1900, nearly 30 percent of the residents of major cities were
foreign-born. These newcomers provided much-needed labor, but their
arrival sparked ugly racial and ethnic tensions.
 The New Immigration • 827

A M E R I C A’ S P U L L The migration of foreigners to the United States has

been one of the most powerful forces shaping American history, and this was
especially true between 1860 and 1920. In steadily rising numbers, immi-
grants moved from the agricultural areas of eastern and southern Europe
directly to the largest cities of America. Once in the United States, they
wanted to live with others who shared their language, customs, and religion.
Ethnic neighborhoods in American cities preserved familiar folkways and
shielded newcomers from the shocks of a strange culture. In 1890, four out
of five New Yorkers were foreign-born, a higher proportion than in any
other city in the world. New York had twice as many Irish as Dublin, as many
Germans as Hamburg, and half as many Italians as Naples. In 1893, Chicago
claimed the largest Bohemian (Czech) community in the world, and by
1910, the size of its Polish population ranked behind only the populations of
Warsaw and Lodz.
This nation of immigrants continued to draw new inhabitants for much
the same reasons as before and from much the same segments of society.
Immigrants took flight from famine or the dispiriting lack of opportunity in
their native lands. They fled racial, religious, and political persecution and

Steerage deck of the S.S. Pennland, 1893

These immigrants are about to arrive at Ellis Island in New York Harbor. Many
newcomers to America settled in cities because they lacked the means to take up
farming.
828 • THE EMERGENCE OF URBAN AMERICA (CH. 20)

compulsory military service. Yet more immigrants were probably pulled by

America’s promise than were pushed out by conditions at home. American
industries, seeking cheap labor, sent recruiting agents abroad. Railroads,
eager to sell land and build up the traffic on their lines, distributed tempting
propaganda in Europe in a medley of languages. Under the Contract Labor
Act of 1864, the federal government helped pay an immigrant’s passage. The
law was repealed in 1868, but not until 1885 did the government forbid
companies to import contract labor, a practice that put immigrant workers
under the control of their employers.
After the Civil War, the tide of immigration rose from just under 3 million
in the 1870s to more than 5 million in the 1880s, then fell to a little over
3.5 million in the depression decade of the 1890s and rose to its high-water
mark of nearly 9 million in the first decade of the twentieth century. The
numbers declined to 6 million from 1910 to 1920 and to 4 million in the
1920s, after which official restrictions nearly cut the flow of immigrants.
Before 1880, immigrants were mainly from northern and western Europe.
By the 1870s, however, that pattern had begun to change. The proportion of
Slavs and Jews from southern and eastern Europe rose sharply. After 1890,
these groups made up a majority of the newcomers, and by the first decade
of the new century they formed 70 percent of the immigrants to this coun-
try. Among the new immigrants were Italians, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks,
Poles, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Russians, Romanians, and Greeks—all people
whose culture and language were markedly different from those of western
Europe and whose religion for the most part was Judaism, Eastern Orthodox,
or Roman Catholicism.

E L L I S I S L A N D As the number of immigrants passing through the port

of New York soared during the late nineteenth century, the state-run receiv-
ing center, called Castle Garden, overflowed with corruption. Money chang-
ers cheated new arrivals, railroad agents overcharged them for tickets, and
baggage handlers engaged in blackmail. With reports of such abuses filling
the newspapers, Congress ordered an investigation, which resulted in the
closure of Castle Garden in 1890. Thereafter the federal government’s new
Bureau of Immigration took over the business of admitting newcomers to
New York City.
To launch this effort, Congress funded the construction of a new recep-
tion center on a tiny island off the New Jersey coast, a mile south of Manhat-
tan, near the Statue of Liberty. In 1892, Ellis Island opened its doors to the
“huddled masses” of the world. In 1907, the reception center’s busiest year,
more than 1 million new arrivals passed through the receiving center, an
 The New Immigration • 829

The Registry Room at Ellis Island

Inspectors asked arriving passengers twenty-nine probing questions, including
“Are you a polygamist?”

average of about 5,000 per day; in one day alone, immigration officials
processed some 11,750. These were the immigrants who crammed into the
steerage compartments deep in the ships’ hulls. Those refugees who could
afford first- and second-class cabins did not have to visit Ellis Island; they
were examined on board, and most of them simply walked down the gang-
way onto the docks in lower Manhattan.

S T R A N G E R S I N A N E W L A N D Once on American soil, immigrants

felt exhilaration, exhaustion, and usually a desperate need for work. Many
were greeted by family and friends who had come over before them, others by
representatives of immigrant-aid societies or by hiring agents offering jobs in
mines, mills, or sweatshops. Since most immigrants knew little if any English
and nothing about American employment practices, they were easy subjects
for exploitation. In exchange for a bit of whiskey and a job, obliging hiring
agents claimed a healthy percentage of their wages. Among Italians and Greeks
these agents were known as padrones, and they dominated the labor market in
New York. Other contractors provided train tickets to inland cities such as
Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, and St. Louis.
830 • THE EMERGENCE OF URBAN AMERICA (CH. 20)

As strangers in a new land, most of the immigrants naturally gravitated to

neighborhoods populated by their own kind. The immigrant enclaves—
nicknamed Little Italy, Little Hungary, Chinatown, and so on—served as
crucial transitional communities between the newcomers’ Old World past
and their New World future. By 1920, Chicago had some seventeen separate
Little Italy colonies scattered across the city, representing various home
provinces. In such kinship communities, immigrants practiced their native
religion, clung to their native customs, and conversed in their native tongue.
But they paid a price for such community solidarity. When the “new immi-
grants” moved into an area, older residents typically moved out, taking with
them whatever social prestige and political influence they had achieved. The
quality of living conditions quickly deteriorated as housing and sanitation
codes went unenforced.

T H E N AT I V I S T R E S P O N S E Then, as now, many native-born Ameri-

cans saw the wave of new immigrants as a threat to their way of life and their
jobs. “Immigrants work for almost nothing,” groused one laborer. Other
“nativists” felt that the newcomers threatened traditional American culture.
A Stanford University professor called Africans “illiterate, docile, lacking in
self-reliance and initiative, and not possessing the Anglo-Teutonic concep-
tions of law, order, and government.” Cultural differences confirmed in the
minds of nativists the assumption that the Nordic peoples of the old immi-
gration were superior to the Slavic, Italian, Greek, and Jewish peoples of the
new immigration. Many of the new immigrants were illiterate, and more
appeared so because they could not speak English. Some resorted to crime,
encouraging suspicions that criminals were being quietly helped out of
Europe just as they had once been transported from England to the colonies.
Religious prejudice, mainly anti-Catholic, anti-Buddhist, and anti-
Semitic sentiments, also underlay hostility toward the latest newcomers.
During the 1880s, nativist groups emerged to stop the flow of immigrants.
The most successful of the nativist groups, the American Protective Associa-
tion (APA), operated mainly in Protestant strongholds of the upper
Mississippi Valley. Its organizer harbored paranoid fantasies of Catholic
conspiracies and was especially eager to keep public schools free from Jesuit
control. The association grew slowly from its start in 1887 until 1893, when
leaders took advantage of a severe depression to draw large numbers of the
frustrated to its ranks. The APA promoted government restrictions on
immigration, more stringent naturalization requirements, workplaces that
refused to employ aliens or Catholics, and the teaching of the “American”
language in the schools.
 The New Immigration • 831

I M M I G R AT I O N R E S T R I C T I O N Throughout American history, Con-

gress has passed inconsistent laws regulating immigration, laws that fre-
quently have been rooted in racial and ethnic prejudice. During the late
nineteenth century, such prejudice took an ugly turn. The Chinese were vic-
tims of every act of discrimination the European immigrants suffered and
more. They were not white; they were not Christian; many were not literate.
By 1880, there were some seventy-five thousand Chinese in California, about
a ninth of the state’s population. Many white workers resented the Chinese
for accepting lower wages, but their greatest sin, the editor of the New York
Nation opined with tongue-in-cheek irony, was perpetuating “those disgust-
ing habits of thrift, industry, and self-denial.”
In 1882, Congress overturned President Chester A. Arthur’s veto of the
Chinese Exclusion Act. It thus became the first federal law to restrict immi-
gration on the basis of race and class, shutting the door to Chinese immi-
grants for ten years. The discriminatory legislation received overwhelming
support. One congressman explained that because the “industrial army of
Asiatic laborers” was increasing the tension between workers and manage-
ment, “the gate must be closed.” The Chinese Exclusion Act was periodically
renewed before being extended indefinitely in 1902. Not until 1943 were
barriers to Chinese immigration finally removed.
The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act was the first federal law to restrict immi-
gration explicitly on the basis of racial and class criteria. It was not the last. In
1891, the prominent politician Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts took up
the cause of excluding illiterate foreigners, a measure that would have
affected much of the new wave of immigrants even though literacy in English
was not required. Lodge and other prominent New Englanders organized the
Immigrations Restriction League, an organization dedicated to saving the
Anglo-Saxon “race” in America from being “contaminated” by alien immi-
grants. Three presidents vetoed bills embodying the restriction of illiterate
immigrants on the grounds that they penalized people for lack of opportu-
nity: Grover Cleveland in 1897, William H. Taft in 1913, and Woodrow Wil-
son in 1915 and 1917. The last time, however, Congress overrode the veto.
Although these legislative efforts sharply reduced the flow of Chinese immi-
grants, they did not stop the influx completely. In 1910, the West Coast coun-
terpart of Ellis Island opened on rugged Angel Island, six miles off-shore from
San Francisco, to process tens of thousands of Asian immigrants, most of them
Chinese. Those arrivals from China who could claim a Chinese American par-
ent were allowed to enter, as were certain officials, teachers, merchants, and stu-
dents. The powerful prejudice that the Chinese immigrants encountered helps
explain why over 30 percent of the arrivals at Angel Island were denied entry.
832 • THE EMERGENCE OF URBAN AMERICA (CH. 20)

Anti-Chinese protest, California, 1880

Widespread racism and prejudice against the Chinese resulted in the Chinese
Exclusion Act (1882), which banned Chinese immigration.

P O P U L A R C U LT U R E

The flood of people into large towns and cities created new patterns of
recreation and leisure. Traditionally, people in rural areas were tied to the ritu-
als of the harvest season and intimately connected to their neighbors and
extended families. By contrast, most middle-class urban whites had enough
money to be more mobile; they were primarily connected to the other mem-
bers of their nuclear family (made up only of parents and children), and their
affluence enabled them to enjoy greater leisure time and an increasing discre-
tionary income. Middle- and upper-class urban families spent much of their
leisure time together at home, usually in the parlor, singing around a piano,
reading novels, or playing cards, dominoes, backgammon, chess, and checkers.
In the congested metropolitan areas, politics became as much a form of
public entertainment as it was a means of providing civic representation and
public services. People flocked to hear visiting candidates speak. Impas-
sioned oratory, whether delivered by elected officials or ministers, was the
primary medium of civic culture. In cities such as New York, Philadelphia,
Boston, and Chicago, membership in a political party was akin to belonging
 Popular Culture • 833

to a social club. In addition, labor unions provided activities that were more
social than economic in nature, and members often visited the union hall as
much to socialize as to discuss working conditions. The sheer number of city
dwellers also helped generate new forms of mass entertainment, such as
traveling Wild West shows, vaudeville shows, and spectator sports.

A R E A D I N G P U B L I C In the half century after the Civil War, newspa-

pers were the primary means of communication. They were not only the
source of local and national news, but also were the primary medium for
political life. Many of them also published poetry and fiction. Between 1870
and 1900, the number of daily newspapers—in English as well as numerous
foreign languages—grew twice as fast as the population, and the number of
subscribers grew even faster. Most of the newspapers were openly partisan,
identifying with one of the major national political parties.

VAU D E V I L L E Growing family incomes and innovations in urban trans-

portation—cable cars, subways, as well as electric streetcars and streetlights—
enabled more people to take advantage of urban cultural life. Attendance at
theaters, operas, and dance halls soared after the Civil War. But by far the

Vaudeville
For as little as one cent, vaudeville offered customers entertainment.
834 • THE EMERGENCE OF URBAN AMERICA (CH. 20)

most popular—and most diverse—form of theatrical entertainment in the

late nineteenth century was vaudeville. The term derives from a French word
for a play accompanied by music.
Vaudeville “variety” shows featured comedians, singers, musicians, black-
face minstrels, farcical plays, animal acts, jugglers, gymnasts, dancers,
mimes, and magicians. Vaudeville houses attracted all social classes and
types—men, women, and children. The shows included something to please
every taste and, as such, reflected the diversity of city life. To commemo-
rate the opening of a palatial new Boston theater in 1894, an actress read a
dedicatory poem in which she announced that “all are equals here”; the
vaudeville house was the people’s theater: it knew “no favorites, no class.”
She promised the spectators that the producers would “ever seek the new” in
providing entertainers who epitomized “the spice of life, Variety,” with its
motto “ever to please—and never to offend.”

S A L O O N C U LT U R E The most popular destinations for the urban

working class were saloons and dance halls. The saloon was the poor man’s
social club during the late nineteenth century. By 1900, there were more
saloons in the United States (over 325,000) than there were grocery stores
and meat markets. Immigrants owned most saloons, many of which were
financed by the huge, often German American–owned breweries such as
Adolphus Busch’s Budweiser. New York City alone had ten thousand
saloons, or one for every five hundred residents. Often sponsored by beer
brewers and frequented by local politicians, saloons offered a free lunch to
encourage patrons to visit and buy 5¢ beer or 15¢ whiskey.
Saloons provided much more than food and drink, however; they were in
effect public homes, offering haven and fellowship to people who often
worked ten hours a day, six days a week. Saloons were especially popular
among male immigrants seeking companionship in a new land. Saloons
served as busy social hubs and were often aligned with local political
machines. In New York City in the 1880s, most of the primary elections and
local political caucuses were conducted in saloons.
Men went to saloons to learn about jobs, engage in labor union activities,
cash paychecks, mail letters, read newspapers, and gossip about neighborhood
affairs. Because saloons were heated and offered public restrooms, they also
served as places of refuge for poor people whose own slum tenements or
cramped lodging houses were not as accommodating. Many saloons included
gymnasiums. Patrons could play handball, chess, billiards, darts, cards, or dice.
Saloons were defiantly male enclaves. Although women and children
occasionally entered a saloon—through a side door—in order to carry home
a pail of beer (called “rushing the growler”) or to drink at a backroom party,
 Popular Culture • 835

the main bar at the front was for men only. Some saloons provided “snugs,”
small separate rooms for female patrons.
Saloons aroused intense criticism. Anti-liquor societies such as the
Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League charged
that saloons contributed to alcoholism, divorce, crime, and absenteeism
from work. Reformers such as the colorful Carry Nation demanded that
saloons be closed down. Yet drunkenness in saloons was the exception rather
than the rule. Most patrons of working-class saloons had little money to
waste, and recent studies have revealed that the average amount of money
spent on liquor was no more than 5 percent of a man’s annual income.
Saloons were the primary locus of the workingman’s leisure time and politi-
cal activity. As a journalist observed, “The saloon is, in short, the social and
intellectual center of the neighborhood.”

OUTDOOR R E C R E AT I O N The congestion and disease associated

with city life led many people to participate in forms of outdoor recreation
to restore their vitality and improve their health. A movement to create
urban parks flourished after the construction of New York’s Central Park in
1858. Its planner, Frederick Law Olmsted, went on to design parks for
Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and many other
cities. Although originally intended as places where people could walk and
commune with nature, parks soon offered more vigorous forms of exercise
and recreation—for men and women.
Croquet and tennis courts were among the first additions to city parks
because they took up little space and required little maintenance. Lawn tennis
was invented by an Englishman in 1873 and arrived in the United States a
year later. By 1885, New York’s Central Park had thirty courts. Even more
popular than croquet or tennis was cycling, or “wheeling.” In the 1870s, bicy-
cles began to be manufactured in the United States, and by the end of the cen-
tury a bicycle craze had swept the country. Bicycles were especially popular
with women who chafed at the restricting conventions of the Victorian era.
The new vehicles offered exercise, freedom, and access to the countryside.
The urban working poor could not afford to acquire a bicycle or join a cro-
quet club, however. Nor did they have as much free time as the affluent. At the
end of their long days and on Sundays, they sought recreation and fellowship
on street corners or on the front stoops of their apartment buildings. Organ
grinders and other musicians would perform on the sidewalks among the
food vendors. Many ethnic groups, especially the Germans and the Irish,
formed male singing, drinking, or gymnastic clubs. Working folk also
attended bare-knuckle boxing matches or baseball games and on Sundays
would gather for picnics. By the end of the century, large-scale amusement
836 • THE EMERGENCE OF URBAN AMERICA (CH. 20)

Tandem tricycle
In spite of the danger and discomfort of early bicycles, “wheeling” became a popu-
lar form of recreation and mode of transportation.

parks such as the one at Brooklyn’s Coney Island provided entertainment for
the entire family. Yet many inner-city youth could not afford the trolley fare,
so the crowded streets and dangerous alleys remained their playgrounds.

WO R K I N G WO M E N A N D L E I S U R E In contrast to the male public

culture centered in saloons, the leisure activities of working-class women,
many of them immigrants, were more limited at the end of the nineteenth
century. Married women were so encumbered by housework and maternal
responsibilities that they had little free time. As a social worker noted, “The
men have the saloons, political clubs, trade-unions or [fraternal] lodges for
their recreation . . . while the mothers have almost no recreation, only a dreary
round of work, day after day, with occasionally doorstep gossip to vary the
monotony of their lives.” Married working-class women often used the streets
as their public space. Washing clothes, supervising children, or shopping at the
local market provided opportunities for fellowship with other women.
 Popular Culture • 837

Single women had more time for leisure and recreation than did working
mothers. They flocked to dance halls, theaters, amusement parks, and picnic
grounds. On hot summer days, many working-class folk went to public
beaches. With the advent of movie theaters during the second decade of the
twentieth century, the cinema became the most popular form of entertain-
ment for women.
Young single women participated in urban amusements for a variety of
reasons: escape, pleasure, adventure, companionship, and autonomy. As a
promotional flyer for a movie theater promised, “If you are tired of life, go to
the movies. If you are sick of troubles rife, go to the picture show. You will
forget your unpaid bills, rheumatism and other ills, if you stow your pills
and go to the picture show.” Urban recreational and entertainment activities
also allowed opportunities for romance and sexual relationships. Not sur-
prisingly, young women eager for such recreation encountered far more
obstacles than did young men. Just as reformers sought to shut down
saloons, parents and authorities tried to restrict the freedom of young
women to engage in “cheap amusements.” Yet many young women followed
their own wishes and in so doing helped carve out their own social sphere.

S P E C TAT O R S P O R T S In the last quarter of the nineteenth century,

new spectator sports such as college football and basketball and professional

Steeplechase Park, Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York

Members of the working class could afford the inexpensive rides at this popular
amusement park.
838 • THE EMERGENCE OF URBAN AMERICA (CH. 20)

baseball gained mass appeal, reflecting the growing urbanization of life. Peo-
ple could gather easily for sporting events in the large cities. Spectator sports
became urban extravaganzas, unifying the diverse ethnic groups in the large
cities and attracting people with the leisure time and cash to spend on
watching others perform—or bet on the outcome.
Football emerged as a modified form of soccer and rugby. The College of
New Jersey (Princeton) and Rutgers played the first college football game in
1869. Basketball was invented in 1891, when Dr. James Naismith, a physical
education instructor, nailed two peach baskets to the walls of the Young Men’s
Christian Association (YMCA) training school in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Naismith wanted to create an indoor winter game that could be played
between the fall football and spring baseball seasons. Basketball quickly grew
in popularity among boys and girls.
Vassar and Smith Colleges added the
sport in 1892. In 1893, Vanderbilt
University, in Nashville, became the
first college to field a men’s team.
Baseball laid claim to being
America’s national pastime at mid-
century. Contrary to popular opin-
ion, Abner Doubleday did not
invent the game. Instead, Alexander
Cartwright, a New York bank clerk
and sportsman, is recognized as the
father of organized baseball. In
1845, he gathered a group of mer-
chants, stockbrokers, and physicians
to form the Knickerbocker Base Ball
Club of New York.
The first professional baseball
team was the Cincinnati Red Stock-
ings, which made its appearance in
1869. In 1900 the American League
was organized, and two years later
the first World Series was held. Base-
ball became the national pastime
and the most democratic sport in
Baseball card, 1887 America. People from all social
The excitement of rooting for the home classes (mostly men) attended the
team united all classes. games, and recent immigrants were
 Education and Social Thought • 839

among the most faithful fans. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported in 1883
that “a glance at the audience on any fine day at the ball park will reveal . . .
telegraph operators, printers who work at night, travelling [sales]men . . .
men of leisure . . . men of capital, bank clerks who get away at 3 P.M., real
estate men . . . barkeepers . . . hotel clerks, actors and employees of the the-
ater, policemen and firemen on their day off . . . butchers and bakers.” Cheer-
ing for a city baseball team gave rootless people a common loyalty and a
sense of belonging.
Only white players were allowed in the major leagues. African Americans
played on “minor league” teams or in all-black Negro leagues. In 1887, the
Cuban Giants, an exhibition team made up of black players, traveled the
country. A few major league white teams agreed to play them. An African
American–owned newspaper announced in early 1888 that the Cuban
Giants “have defeated the New Yorks, 4 games out of 5, and are now virtually
champions of the world.” But, it added, “the St. Louis Browns, Detroits and
Chicagos, afflicted by Negrophobia and unable to bear the odium of being
beaten by colored men, refused to accept their challenge.”
By the end of the nineteenth century, sports of all kinds had become a
major cultural phenomenon in the United States. A writer for Harper’s
Weekly announced in 1895 that “ball matches, football games, tennis tourna-
ments, bicycle races, [and] regattas, have become part of our national life.”
They “are watched with eagerness and discussed with enthusiasm and
understanding by all manner of people, from the day-laborer to the million-
aire.” One reporter in the 1890s referred to the “athletic craze” that was
sweeping the American imagination. Moreover, it was in 1892 that a French-
man, Pierre de Coubertin, called for the revival of the ancient Olympic
Games, and the first modern Olympiad was held four years later.

E D U C AT I O N AND SOCIAL THOUGHT

T H E S P R E A D O F P U B L I C E D U C AT I O NEfforts to expand access to

public education, spurred partly by the determination to “Americanize”
immigrant children, helped quicken the emergence of a new urban culture.
In 1870, there were 7 million pupils in public schools; by 1920, the number
had risen to 22 million. The percentage of school-age children in attendance
went from 57 to 78 during those years.
The spread of secondary schools accounted for much of the increased
enrollment in public schools. In antebellum America, private academies had
prepared those who intended to enter college. At the beginning of the Civil
840 • THE EMERGENCE OF URBAN AMERICA (CH. 20)

War, there were only about a hundred public high schools in the whole
nation, but their number grew to about eight hundred in 1880 and to six
thousand at the turn of the century. Their curricula at first copied the acade-
mies’ emphasis on higher mathematics and classical languages, but the pub-
lic schools gradually adapted their programs to those students not going on
to college, devising vocational training in such arts as bookkeeping, typing,
drafting, and the use of tools.

VO C AT I O N A L T R A I N I N G Vocational training was most intensely pro-

moted after the Civil War by missionary schools for African Americans in the
South, such as the Hampton Institute in Virginia. Congress had supported
vocational training at the college level for many years. The Morrill Act of 1862
granted each state thirty thousand acres per representative and senator, the
income from which was to be applied to teaching agriculture and the
mechanic arts in what came to be known as the land-grant colleges. Among
the new land-grant institutions were Clemson University, Pennsylvania State
University, and Iowa State University. In 1890 a second Morrill Act provided
federal grants to these colleges.

Vocational education
Students in a current-events class at Virginia’s Hampton Institute, 1899.
 Education and Social Thought • 841

H I G H E R E D U C AT I O N The demand for higher learning after the Civil

War led to a dramatic increase in the college-student population, from 52,000
in 1870 to 157,000 in 1890 and 600,000 in 1920. To accommodate the diverse
needs of these growing numbers, colleges moved from rigidly prescribed
courses toward an elective system. The new approach allowed students to favor
their strong points in selecting their classes. But as Henry Cabot Lodge com-
plained, it also allowed students to “escape without learning anything at all by a
judicious selection of unrelated subjects taken up only because they were easy
or because the burden imposed by those who taught them was light.”
Colleges remained largely male bastions, but women’s access to higher
education improved markedly in the late nineteenth century. Before the
Civil War, a few men’s colleges had admitted women, though most state uni-
versities in the West were open to women from the start. Colleges in the
South and the East fell in line very slowly. Vassar, opened in New York in
1865, was the first women’s college to teach by the same standards as the best
of the men’s colleges. In the 1870s, two additional excellent women’s schools
appeared in Massachusetts: Wellesley and Smith, the latter being the first to
set the same admission requirements as men’s colleges. By the end of the
century, women made up more than a third of all college students.

I N T E L L E C T UA L L I F E Much as popular culture was transformed as a

result of the urban-industrial revolution, intellectual life also adapted to new
social realities. The new urban culture relished new knowledge and immediate
experience. A growing number of writers, artists, and intellectuals were not
interested in romantic themes and idealized life. They focused their efforts on
the emerging realities of scientific research and technology, factories and rail-
roads, cities and immigrants, wage labor and social tensions.
The prestige and premises of modern science increased enormously
during the second half of the nineteenth century. Researchers explored elec-
tromagnetic induction, the conservation of matter, the laws of thermody-
namics, and the relationship between heat and energy. Breakthroughs in
chemistry led to new understandings about the formation of compounds
and the nature of chemical reactions. Discoveries of fossils opened up new
horizons in geology and paleontology, and greatly improved microscopes
enabled zoologists to decipher cell structures.
Virtually every field of thought in the post–Civil War years felt the impact
of Charles Darwin’s controversial book On the Origin of Species (1859). Darwin
used extensive observations and cast-iron logic to argue that most organ-
isms produce many more offspring than can survive. Those offspring with
advantageous characteristics tend to live while others die—from disease or
842 • THE EMERGENCE OF URBAN AMERICA (CH. 20)

Women as students
An astronomy class at Vassar College, 1880.

predators. This random process of “natural selection” over millions of years

led to the evolution of species from less complex forms of life: those species
that survived by reason of quickness, shrewdness, or other advantages repro-
duced their kind, while others fell by the wayside. As Darwin wrote, “the vig-
orous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.”
The idea of species evolution shocked people who embraced a literal inter-
pretation of the biblical creation stories. Darwin’s findings suggested that
there was no providential God controlling the cosmos. Life was the result of
the blind natural process of selection. And people were no different from
plants and animals; like everything else, they too evolved by trial and error
rather than by God’s purposeful hand. The fossil record revealed a natural
history of conflict, pain, and species extinction. What kind of benevolent
God would be so cruel as to create a world of such waste, strife, and sorrow?
Darwin showed that there could be no proof for the existence of God.
Darwin’s findings—as well as the implications that people drew from
them—generated heated arguments between scientists and clergymen. Some
Christians rejected Darwin’s secular doctrine, while others found their faith
severely shaken not only by evolutionary theory but also by the urging of pro-
fessional scientists to apply the critical standards of scholarship to the Bible
itself. Most of the faithful, however, came to reconcile science and religion.
 Education and Social Thought • 843

They viewed evolution as the divine

will, one of the secondary causes
through which God worked.

S O C I A L DA RW I N I S M Although
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution
applied only to biological phenom-
ena, others drew broader inferences
from it. The temptation to apply
evolutionary theory to the social
(human) world proved irresistible.
Darwin’s fellow Englishman Herbert
Spencer, a social philosopher, became
Charles Darwin
the first major prophet of what came
to be called social Darwinism, a clus- Darwin’s theories influenced more
than a century of political debate.
ter of ideas that exercised an impor-
tant influence on American thought.
Spencer argued that human society and institutions, like the organisms
studied by Darwin, evolved through the same process of natural selection.
The result, in Spencer’s chilling phrase, was the “survival of the fittest.” For
Spencer, such social evolution was the engine of progress, ending “only in the
establishment of the greatest perfection and the most complete happiness.”
Darwin dismissed Spencer’s theories as poppycock. Spencer’s arguments, he
said, “could never convince me.” Darwin especially objected to Spencer’s
assumption that the evolutionary process in the natural world had any rele-
vance to the human realm.
Others, however, eagerly endorsed Spencer’s notion of social Darwinism.
If, as Spencer believed, society naturally evolved for the better, then government
interference with the process of social evolution was a serious mistake because
it would keep unsound people from being weeded out. Social Darwinism
implied a hands-off government policy; it decried the regulation of business,
the graduated income tax, and sanitation and housing regulations. Such inter-
vention, Spencer charged, would help the “unfit” survive and thereby impede
progress. (Ironically, Spencer himself was notoriously frail and would not have
been among the surviving “fittest.”) The only acceptable charity to Spencer
was voluntary, and even that was of dubious value. Spencer warned that
“fostering the good-for-nothing [people] at the expense of the good, is an
extreme cruelty.”
For Spencer and his many American supporters, successful businessmen
and corporations provided living proof of the concept of the “survival of the
844 • THE EMERGENCE OF URBAN AMERICA (CH. 20)

fittest.” If small businesses were crowded out by huge corporate trusts and
monopolies, that too was part of the evolutionary process. The oil tycoon
John D. Rockefeller told his Baptist Sunday-school class that the “growth of a
large business is merely a survival of the fittest. . . . This is not an evil tendency
in business. It is merely the working-out of a law of nature and a law of God.”
The ideas of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer spread quickly. Popular
Science Monthly, founded in 1872, became the chief medium for popularizing
Darwinism. That year, Spencer’s chief academic disciple, William Graham
Sumner, began teaching at Yale University, where he preached the gospel of nat-
ural selection. Sumner’s most lasting contribution, made in his book Folkways
(1907), was to argue that it would be a mistake for government to interfere with
established customs in the name of ideals of equality or natural rights.

P R A G M AT I S M Early in the twentieth century, Darwin’s concept of evo-

lutionary development found expression in pragmatism, a philosophical
principle set forth by the Harvard psychologist and philosopher William
James in his book Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking
(1907). Pragmatists, said James, believed that ideas gain their validity not
from their inherent truth but from their social consequences and practical
applications, just as scientists test the validity of their ideas in the laboratory
and judge their import by their applications. Pragmatism reflected a com-
monsensical quality often looked upon as genuinely American: the inven-
tive, experimental spirit that judged ideas on their results (what James called
their “cash value”) and their ability to
adapt to changing social needs and
environments. James essentially said
that philosophical ideas that were only
discussed in classrooms were lifeless.
Many philosophers, he declared, philos-
ophize for the sake of philosophizing; he
wanted to philosophize in order to
help people live better.
John Dewey, who would become the
chief philosopher of pragmatism after
James, preferred the term instrumental-
ism, by which he meant that ideas
should be instruments for action, espe-
cially social reform. Dewey, unlike
William James James, threw himself into progressive
The conceptual founder of pragmatism. social movements promoting the rights
 Education and Social Thought • 845

of labor and women, the promotion of

peace, and the reform of education. He
believed that education was not just
book learning; it was the process
through which society would gradually
progress toward the goal of economic
and social democracy. Pragmatic ideas,
Dewey, with William James, insisted,
were instruments for social action, not
simply abstractions to generate philo-
sophical discussion.

REFORM D A R W I N I S M Prag-
matism was but one example of many
Lester Frank Ward
efforts to interpret Darwinist evolu-
Proponent of reform Darwinism.
tionary theory as justifying efforts at
social reform. So-called reform Dar-
winism found its major advocate in an obscure Washington, D.C. civil ser-
vant, Lester Frank Ward, who fought his way up from poverty and never lost
his empathy for the underdog. Ward’s book Dynamic Sociology (1883) sin-
gled out one product of evolution that Chales Darwin and Herbert Spencer
had neglected: the human brain. Yes, people, like animals, compete, as
William Graham Sumner stressed, but they also collaborate; they have
minds that can shape social evolution. Humans also show compassion for
others. Far from being the helpless subject of evolution, Ward argued, human-
ity could control and shape the process of evolutionary social development.
Ward’s progressive reform Darwinism challenged Sumner’s conservative
social Darwinism by arguing that cooperation, not competition, would better
promote social progress. According to Ward, Sumner’s “irrational distrust of
government” might have been justified in an earlier day of monarchy and
tyranny but was not applicable under a representative system of government.
Democratic government could become the agency of progress by pursuing
two main goals: reducing poverty, which impeded the development of the
mind, and promoting the education of all classes. “Intelligence, far more than
necessity,” Ward wrote, “is the mother of invention,” and “the influence of
knowledge as a social factor, like that of wealth, is proportional to the extent of
its distribution.” Intellect, rightly informed by science, could foster societal
improvement. This intellectual justification for social reform would become
one of the pillars of the “progressive” movement that would transform urban
America during the late nineteenth century and after.
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Rise of Cities America’s cities grew in all directions after the Civil War. Electric
elevators and new steel-frame construction allowed architects to extend build-
ings upward. Mass transit enabled the middle class to retreat to suburbs.
Crowded tenements bred disease and crime and created an opportunity for
urban political bosses to accrue power, in part by distributing to the poor the
only relief that existed.
• New Immigration By 1900, 30 percent of Americans were foreign-born, with
many immigrants coming from eastern and southern Europe rather than west-
ern and northern Europe, like most immigrants of generations past. Thus their
languages and culture were vastly different from those of native-born Ameri-
cans. They tended to be Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Jewish rather than
Protestant. Beginning in the 1880s, nativists advocated immigration laws to
exclude the Chinese and the poor and demanded that immigrants pass a literacy
test. A federal immigration station on Ellis Island, in New York Harbor, opened
in 1892 to process immigrants arriving by ship from across the Atlantic.
• Mass Entertainment Cities began to create urban parks, like New York’s Cen-
tral Park, as places for all citizens to stroll, ride bicycles, or play games such as
tennis. Vaudeville shows emerged as a popular form of entertainment. Saloons
served as local social and political clubs for men. It was in this era that football,
baseball, and basketball emerged as spectator sports.
• Social Darwinism Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species shocked people
who believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible’s account of creation. Her-
bert Spencer and William Graham Sumner, who equated economic and social
success with the “survival of the fittest” and advanced the idea that government
should not interfere to promote equality, applied Darwin’s scientific theory to
human society and social institutions.
 CHRONOLOGY

1858
1859
1882
Construction of New York’s Central Park begins
Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is published
Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act
1889 Otis Elevator Company installs the first electric elevator
1891 Basketball is invented
1892 Ellis Island, a federal center for processing immigrants, opens
1900 Baseball’s National League is formed

KEY TERMS & NAMES

Ellis Island p. 828 Frederick Law Olmsted pragmatism p. 844
p. 835
nativist p. 830 William James p. 844
Herbert Spencer p. 843
Chinese Exclusion Act John Dewey p. 844
p. 831 social Darwinism p. 843
reform Darwinism p. 845

21
GILDED AGE POLITICS AND
AGRARIAN REVOLT

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• What were the major features of American politics during the

Gilded Age?
• What were the major issues in politics during this period?
• What were the main problems facing farmers in the South and the
Midwest after the Civil War?
• How and why did farmers become politicized?
• What was significant about the election of 1896?
• How did African American leaders respond to the spread of
segregation in the South?

I n 1873, the writers Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

created an enduring label for the post–Civil War era when they
collaborated on a novel titled The Gilded Age, a colorful depic-
tion of the widespread political corruption and corporate greed that charac-
terized the period. Generations of political scientists and historians have
since reinforced the two novelists’ judgment. As a young college graduate in
1879, future president Woodrow Wilson described the state of the political
system after the Civil War: “No leaders, no principles; no principles, no par-
ties.” Indeed, the real movers and shakers of the Gilded Age were not the
men who sat in the White House or Congress but the captains of industry
who crisscrossed the continent with railroads and adorned its cities with
plumed smokestacks and gaudy mansions.
 Paradoxical Politics • 849

P A R A D OX I C A L P O L I T I C S

Political life in the Gilded Age, the thirty-five years between the end of
the Civil War and the end of the nineteenth century, had several distinctive
elements. Perhaps the most important feature of Gilded Age politics was its
localism. Unlike today, the federal government in the nineteenth century
was an insignificant force in the lives of Americans, in part because it was so
small. In 1871, the entire federal workforce totaled 51,000 civilians (most of
them postal workers), and only 6,000 of them actually worked in Washing-
ton, D.C. Not until the twentieth century did the federal government begin
to overshadow the importance of local and state governments. By 1914, for
example, there would be 401,000 federal civilian employees.
Most Americans were far more engaged in local politics. In cities crowded
with waves of new immigrants, the political scene was usually controlled by
“rings”—small groups of powerful political insiders who managed the nomi-
nation and election of candidates, conducted primaries, and influenced policy.
Each ring typically had a powerful “boss” who ran things, using his political
“machine”—a network of neighborhood activists and officials—to govern
the town or city. Throughout most of the nineteenth century, almost every
governmental job—local, state, and federal—was subject to the latest election
results. So for hundreds of thousands of citizens, an election was not simply a
contest between candidates, but also a referendum on a single, urgent question:
“Will I keep my government job?” This meant that whichever political party
was in power expected government employees to become campaign workers
doing the bidding of the party bosses during important elections.

CITY POLITICS After the Civil War, the sheer size of the rapidly growing
cities helped create a new form of politics. Because local government was often
fragmented and beset by parochial rivalries, a need grew for a central organi-
zation to coordinate citywide services such as public transportation, street
lighting, sewers, police and fire protection, paved roads, bridges, harbor facili-
ties, garbage collection, schools, housing, parks, and hospitals. Urban political
machines consisting of local committeemen and district captains led by a
political boss thus became even more powerful. While the city bosses engaged
in graft, buying and selling votes, taking kickbacks and payoffs, they also pro-
vided needed services. Political bosses organized loyal neighborhood voters
into wards or precincts, and staged torchlight election parades, fireworks
displays, and free banquets and alcoholic beverages for voters. They also medi-
ated neighborhood disputes, helped the needy, and distributed “patronage”
850 • GILDED AGE POLITICS AND AGRARIAN REVOLT (CH. 21)

(municipal jobs and contracts) to

loyal followers and corporate con-
tributors. They gave food, coal, and
money to the poor; found jobs for
those who were out of work; spon-
sored English-language classes for
immigrants; organized sports teams,
social clubs, and neighborhood gath-
erings; and generally helped new-
comers adjust to their new life. In
return, the political professionals felt
entitled to some reward for having
done the grubby work of the local
William “Boss” Tweed
organization.
Tweed is represented here as having a Colorful, larger-than-life figures
moneybag face and a $15,500 diamond
stickpin. such as New York City’s William “Boss”
Tweed shamelessly ruled, plundered,
and occasionally improved municipal
government, often through dishonest means and frequent bribes. Until his
arrest in 1871 and his conviction in 1873, Tweed used the Tammany Hall
ring to dominate the nation’s largest city. The Tammany Hall machine doled
out contracts to business allies and jobs to political supporters. In the late,
1870s one of every twelve New York men worked for the city government.
The various city rings and bosses were often corrupt, but they did bring
structure, stability, and services to rapidly growing inner-city communities,
many of them composed of immigrants newly arrived from Ireland, Ger-
many, and, increasingly, from southern and eastern Europe.

N AT I O N A L P O L I T I C S Several factors gave national politics during

the Gilded Age its distinctive texture. First, like the urban political machines,
the national political parties during the Gilded Age were much more domi-
nant forces than they are today. Party loyalty was intense, often extending over
several generations in Irish and Italian families in cities such as Boston, Provi-
dence, Rhode Island, New York City, Newark, New Jersey, and Philadelphia.
A second distinctive element of Gilded Age politics was the close division
between Republicans and Democrats in Congress, which created the sense
of a stalemated political system. Both parties avoided controversial issues
or bold initiatives because neither gained dominant power. Voters of the
time nonetheless thought politics was very important, making widespread
political participation the third distinctive element of post–Civil War poli-
 Paradoxical Politics • 851

tics. Voter turnout during the Gilded Age was commonly about 70 to 80 per-
cent, even in the South, where the disenfranchisement of African Americans
was not yet complete. (By contrast, the turnout for the 2008 presidential
election was almost 57 percent.)
The paradox of such a high rate of voter participation in the face of the
inertia at the national political level raises an obvious question: How was it
that elected officials who failed to address the “real issues” of the day
presided over the most highly organized and politically active electorate in
U.S. history? The answer is partly that the politicians and the voters believed
that they were dealing with crucial issues: tariff rates, the regulation of cor-
porations, monetary policy, Indian disputes, civil service reform, and immi-
gration. But the answer also reflects the extreme partisanship of the times
and the essentially local nature of political culture during the Gilded Age.
Politics was then the most popular form of local entertainment.

PA R T I S A N P O L I T I C S Most Americans after the Civil War were

intensely loyal to one of the two major parties, Democratic or Republican.
Most voters cast their ballots for the same party, year after year, generation
after generation. Loyalty to a party was often an emotional choice, as parties
openly appealed to particular regional, ethnic, and religious ties. During the
1870s and 1880s, for example, people continued to fight the Civil War using
highly charged political rhetoric as their weapon. Republicans regularly
“waved the bloody shirt” in election campaigns, meaning that they reminded
voters that the Democratic Party was the party of “secession and civil war,”
while their party, the party of Lincoln and Grant, had abolished slavery and
saved the Union. Democrats, especially in the South, responded by reminding
voters that they were the party of white supremacy and states’ rights. Blacks in
the South, by contrast, voted Republican (before they were disenfranchised)
because it was the “party of Lincoln,” the “Great Emancipator.” Third parties,
such as the Greenbackers, Populists, and Prohibitionists, appealed to particu-
lar interests and issues, such as currency inflation or temperance legislation.
Political parties also gave people an organizational anchor in an unstable
world. Local party officials took care of those who voted their way and dis-
tributed appointive public offices and other favors to party loyalists. The city
political machines used patronage and favoritism to keep the loyalty of busi-
ness supporters while providing jobs or food or fuel to working-class voters
who had fallen on hard times. Politics was also a form of popular entertain-
ment. The party faithful eagerly took part in rallies and picnics and avidly
read newspaper coverage of political issues. Members of political parties
developed an intense camaraderie.
852 • GILDED AGE POLITICS AND AGRARIAN REVOLT (CH. 21)

Party loyalties and voter turnout in the late nineteenth century reflected
religious and ethnic divisions as well as geographic differences. The Republi-
can party attracted mainly Protestants of British descent. The party was
dominant in New England, New York, and the upper Midwest. The Republi-
cans, the party of Abraham Lincoln, could also rely upon the votes of Union
veterans of the Civil War.
The Democrats, by contrast, tended to be a heterogeneous, often unruly
coalition embracing southern whites, northern immigrants, Roman Catholics
living in the northern states, Jews, freethinkers, and all those repelled by the
“party of morality.” As one Chicago Democrat explained, “A Republican is a
man who wants you t’ go t’ church every Sunday. A Democrat says if a man
wants to have a glass of beer on Sunday he can have it.”
Republicans also promoted what were called nativist policies, which
imposed restrictions on immigration and the employment of foreigners.
Efforts to prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages revived along with nativism
in the 1880s. Among the immigrants who crowded into the growing cities
were many Irish, Germans, and Italians, all of whom tended to enjoy wine
and beer on a daily basis. The mostly rural Republican Protestant moralists
increasingly saw saloons as the central social evil around which all others
revolved, including vice, crime, political corruption, and neglect of families,
and they associated these problems with the ethnic groups that frequented
saloons. The feisty Carry Nation, a militant member of the Women’s Chris-
tian Temperance Union (WCTU) who was known for attacking saloons with
a hatchet, charged that saloons stripped women of everything by seducing
working men: “Her husband is torn from her, she is robbed of her sons, her
home, her food, and her virtue.”

P O L I T I C A L S TA L E M AT E Between 1869 and 1913, from the presi-

dency of Ulysses S. Grant through that of William Howard Taft, Republicans
monopolized the White House except for the two nonconsecutive terms of
the conservative New York Democrat Grover Cleveland, but otherwise
national politics was remarkably balanced between the two major parties.
Between 1872 and 1896, no president won a majority of the popular vote. In
each of those presidential elections, sixteen states invariably voted Republi-
can and fourteen voted Democratic, leaving a pivotal six states whose results
determined the outcome. The important swing-vote role played by two of
those states, New York and Ohio, helps explain the election of eight presi-
dents from those states from 1872 to 1908.
No chief executive between Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt
could be described as a “strong” president. None challenged the prevailing
 Corruption and Reform: Hayes to Harrison • 853

view that Congress, not the White House, should formulate policy. Senator
John Sherman of Ohio expressed the widely held notion that the legislative
branch should predominate in a republic: “The President should merely
obey and enforce the law.”
Republicans controlled the Senate and Democrats controlled the House
during the Gilded Age. Only during 1881 to 1883 and 1889 to 1891 did a
Republican president coincide with a Republican Congress, and only between
1893 and 1895 did a Democratic president enjoy a Democratic majority in
Congress. On the important questions of the currency, regulation of big busi-
ness, farm problems, civil service reform, and immigration, the parties dif-
fered very little. As a result, they primarily became vehicles for seeking office
and dispensing “patronage” in the form of government jobs and contracts.

S TAT E A N D L O C A L I N I T I AT I V E SAmericans during the Gilded Age

expected little direct support from the federal government; most significant
political activity occurred at the state and local levels. Only 40 percent of
government spending and taxing occurred at the federal level. Then, unlike
today, the large cities spent far more on local services than did the federal
government, and three fourths of all public employees worked for state and
local governments. Local issues generated far more excitement than complex
national debates over tariffs and monetary policies. It was the state and local
governments that first sought to curb the power and restrain the abuses of
corporate interests.

C O R RU P T I O N AND R E F O R M : H AY E S TO HARRISON

After the Civil War, a close alliance developed between business and
political leaders at every level. As a leading congressman, for example, James
Gillespie Blaine of Maine saw nothing wrong in his accepting gifts of stock
from an Arkansas railroad after helping it win a land grant from Congress.
Free railroad tickets, free entertainment, and a host of other favors were reg-
ularly provided to politicians, newspaper editors, and other leaders in posi-
tions to influence public opinion or affect legislation.
Both Republican and Democratic leaders also squabbled over the “spoils”
of office, the appointive political positions at the local and the national
levels. After each election, it was expected that the victorious party would
replace the defeated party’s government appointees with its own. The patron-
age system of awarding government jobs to supporters invited corruption. It
also was so time-consuming that it distracted elected officials from more
854 • GILDED AGE POLITICS AND AGRARIAN REVOLT (CH. 21)

“The Bosses of the Senate”

This 1889 cartoon bitingly portrays the period’s corrupt alliance between big
business and politics.

important issues. Yet George Washington Plunkitt, a Democratic boss in

New York City, spoke for many Gilded Age politicians when he explained
that “you can’t keep an organization together without patronage. Men ain’t
in politics for nothin’. They want to get somethin’ out of it.” Each party had
its share of corrupt officials willing to buy and sell government appointments
or congressional votes, yet each also witnessed the emergence of factions pro-
moting honesty in government. The struggle for “cleaner” government soon
became one of the foremost issues of the day.

H AY E S A N D C I V I L S E R V I C E R E F O R M President Rutherford B.
Hayes brought to the White House in 1877 a new style of uprightness, in
sharp contrast to the graft and corruption practiced by members of the
Grant administration. The son of an Ohio farmer, Hayes was wounded four
times in the Civil War and was promoted to the rank of major general.
Elected governor of Ohio in 1867, he served three terms.
Hayes’s own party, the Republicans, was split between so-called Stalwarts
and Half-Breeds, led respectively by Senators Roscoe Conkling of New York
 Corruption and Reform: Hayes to Harrison • 855

and James Gillespie Blaine of Maine. The Stalwarts had been “stalwart” in
their support of President Grant during the furor over the misbehavior of
his cabinet members. They also had promoted Radical Reconstruction of the
defeated South and benefited from the “spoils system” of distributing federal
political jobs to party loyalists. The Half-Breeds acquired their name because
they were only half-loyal to Grant and half-committed to reform of the
spoils system. For the most part, the two Republican factions were loose
alliances designed to advance the careers of Conkling and Blaine.
To his credit, Hayes aligned himself with the growing public discontent
over political corruption. American leaders were just learning about the
“merit system” for hiring government employees, which was long estab-
lished in the bureaucracies of France and Germany, and the new British
practice in which civil service jobs were filled by competitive written tests
rather than awarded as political favors.
Hayes irritated Republican leaders by making political appointments
based on merit: he pledged that those already in office would be dismissed
only for the good of the government and not for political reasons; party
members would have no more influence in appointments than other qual-
ified citizens; government employees would not be forced to make political
contributions; and no officeholder could manage election campaigns for
political organizations, although all could vote and express their opinions.
On the economic issues of the day, Hayes held to a conservative line that
would guide his successors for the rest of the century. His solution to labor
troubles, demonstrated in his response to the Great Railroad Strike of 1877,
was to send in federal troops to break the strike. His answer to demands for
an expansion of the currency was to veto the 1878 Bland-Allison Act, which
provided for a limited increase in the supply of silver coins. The act passed
anyway when Congress overrode Hayes’s veto. A bruised president confided
in his diary that he had lost the support of his own party. In 1879, with a year
still left in his term, Hayes was ready to leave the White House. “I am now in
my last year of the Presidency,” he wrote a friend, “and look forward to its
close as a schoolboy longs for the coming vacation.”

THE 1880 ELECTION With President Hayes out of the running for
a second term, the Republicans nominated the dark-horse Ohio candidate,
James A. Garfield. A native of Ohio and an early foe of slavery, Garfield, like
Hayes and Grant, had distinguished himself during the Civil War and
retired from the army as a major general before being elected to Congress in
1863, where he had become one of the outstanding leaders in the House.
Now he was the Republican nominee for president. The convention named
856 • GILDED AGE POLITICS AND AGRARIAN REVOLT (CH. 21)

Chester A. Arthur, the deposed head of the New York Customhouse, as the
candidate for vice president.
The Democrats selected retired Union general Winfield Scott Hancock to
counterbalance the Republicans’ “bloody-shirt” attacks on Democrats as the
party of secessionism and the Confederacy. Former Confederates nevertheless
advised their constituents to “vote as you shot”—that is, against the Republi-
cans. In an election characterized by widespread bribery, Garfield eked out a
plurality of only 39,000 votes, or 48.5 percent of the vote, but with a comfort-
able margin of 214 to 155 in the Electoral College. In his inaugural address,
President Garfield confirmed that the Republicans had ended efforts to recon-
struct the former Confederacy and stamp out its racist heritage. He declared
that southern blacks had been “surrendered to their own guardianship.”
Garfield showed great potential as a new president, but never had a
chance to prove it. On July 2, 1881, after only four months in office, he was
walking through the Washington, D.C., railroad station when Charles Gui-
teau, a deranged man who had been turned down for a federal job, shot the
president twice. As a policeman wrestled the assassin to the ground, Guiteau
shouted: “Yes! I have killed Garfield! [Chester] Arthur is President of the
United States. I am a Stalwart!”—a statement that would greatly embarrass
the Stalwart Republicans. A seriously wounded Garfield was taken upstairs
and given brandy. The attending physician concluded that he would proba-
bly survive, but the president murmured: “Thank you, doctor, but I am a
dead man.” Garfield lingered near death for two months. On September 19,
he died of complications resulting from his inept medical care. At his sensa-
tional ten-week-long trial, Charles Guiteau explained that God had ordered
him to kill the president. The jury refused to believe that he was insane and
pronounced him guilty of murder. On June 30, 1882, Guiteau was hanged;
an autopsy revealed that his brain was diseased.
Chester Arthur proved to be a surprisingly competent president. He dis-
tanced himself from the Stalwarts and established a genuine independence,
even becoming a civil service and tariff reformer. The assassin Guiteau had
unwittingly stimulated widespread public support for reforming the distrib-
ution of government jobs. In 1883, a reform bill sponsored by “Gentleman
George” H. Pendleton, a Democratic senator from Ohio, set up a three-
member federal Civil Service Commission, the first federal regulatory
agency established on a permanent basis. A growing percentage of all federal
jobs would now be filled on the basis of competitive examinations rather
than political favoritism. The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act was thus
the vital step in a new approach to government administration that valued
merit over partisanship.
 Corruption and Reform: Hayes to Harrison • 857

The high protective tariff, a heritage of the Civil War designed to deter
foreign imports by taxing them, had by the early 1880s raised federal rev-
enues to a point where the government was enjoying an embarrassment of
riches, an annual budget surplus that drew money into the Treasury and out
of daily circulation, thus constricting economic growth. Some argued that
lower tariff rates would reduce consumer prices by enabling foreign compe-
tition with American producers and at the same time leave more money in
circulation to fuel economic growth. In 1882, a special presidential commis-
sion recommended a substantial reduction in tariff rates. The proposal
gained President Arthur’s support, but then ran up against swarms of lobby-
ists representing different industries determined to keep the rate on their
particular commodity high. The resulting “mongrel tariff ” of 1883, so called
because of its different rates for different commodities, provided for a slight
overall rate reduction, but was more indicative of the growing power of spe-
cial interest groups influencing Congress.

T H E C A M PA I G N O F 1 8 8 4 Chester Arthur’s presidential record might

have attracted voters, but it did not please leaders of his party. So in 1884 the
Republicans dumped Arthur and turned to the glamorous senator James
Gillespie Blaine of Maine, longtime leader of the Republican Half-Breeds.
Blaine was the consummate politician. He inspired the party faithful with
his oratory, and at the same time he knew how to wheel and deal in the back-
rooms, sometimes evading the law in the process. Newspapers turned up
evidence of his corruption. Based on references in the “Mulligan letters,”
they revealed that Blaine was in the
pocket of the railroad barons. While
serving as Speaker of the House, he
had sold his votes on measures favor-
able to their interests. Nobody ever
proved that Blaine had committed any
crimes, but the circumstantial evi-
dence was powerful: his mansion in
Washington, D.C., could not have been
built on his senatorial salary alone, nor
could his palatial home in Augusta,
Maine (which has since become the
state’s governor’s mansion).
During the campaign, more letters Senator James Gillespie Blaine of
surfaced with disclosures embarrassing Maine
to Blaine. For the reform element of the The Republican candidate in 1884.
858 • GILDED AGE POLITICS AND AGRARIAN REVOLT (CH. 21)

Republican party, this was too much, and prominent leaders and supporters of
the party refused to endorse Blaine’s candidacy. Party regulars scorned them as
“goo-goos”—the good-government crowd, who ignored partisan realities.
The editor of the New York Sun jokingly called the anti-Blaine Republicans
Mugwumps, after an Algonquian Indian word for a self-important chieftain.
The Mugwumps were a self-conscious political elite dedicated to promoting
the public welfare. They were centered in the large cities and major universities
of the northeast. Mostly educators, writers, or editors, they included the most
famous American of all, Mark Twain. The Mugwumps generally opposed tar-
iffs and championed free trade. They opposed the regulation of railroads as
well as efforts to inflate the money supply by coining more silver. Their fore-
most goal was to expand civil service reform by making all federal jobs non-
partisan. Their break with the Republican party, the party of Lincoln, testified
to the depth of their convictions.
The rise of the Mugwumps influenced the Democrats to nominate the
New Yorker Grover Cleveland, a minister’s son, as a reform candidate. He had
first attracted national attention when, in 1881, he was elected as the anti-
corruption mayor of Buffalo. In 1882 he was elected governor of New York,
and he continued to build a reform record by fighting New York City’s cor-
rupt Tammany Hall ring. As mayor and as governor, he repeatedly vetoed
bills serving selfish interests. He supported civil-service reform, opposed
expanding the money supply, and preferred free trade rather than high tariffs.
A stocky 270-pound man, Cleveland provided a sharp contrast to the
Republican Blaine. He possessed little charisma but impressed the public
with his stubborn integrity. A juicy scandal erupted when the Buffalo Evening
Telegraph revealed that as a bachelor, Cleveland had befriended an attractive
Buffalo widow who later named him the father of a baby born to her in 1874.
Cleveland had since provided financial support for the child. The respective
escapades of Blaine and Cleveland provided some of the most colorful battle
cries in political history: “Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, the continental liar
from the state of Maine,” Democrats chanted; Republicans countered with
“Ma, ma, where’s my pa? Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!”
Near the end of the toxic campaign, Blaine and his supporters committed
two fateful blunders. The first occurred at New York City’s fashionable Del-
monico’s restaurant, where Blaine went to a private dinner with several mil-
lionaire bigwigs to discuss campaign finances. Accounts of the event
appeared in the opposition press for days. The second fiasco occurred when
one member of a delegation of Protestant ministers visiting Republican
headquarters in New York referred to the Democrats as the party of “rum,
Romanism, and rebellion.” Blaine, who was present, let pass the implied
 Corruption and Reform: Hayes to Harrison • 859

“Another Voice for Cleveland”

This 1884 cartoon attacks “Grover the Good” for fathering an
illegitimate child.

insult to Catholics—a fatal oversight, since he had always cultivated Irish

American support with his anti-English talk and public reminders that his
mother was Catholic. Democrats spread the word that Blaine was at heart
anti-Irish and anti-Catholic. The two incidents may have tipped the 1884
presidential election. The electoral vote, in Cleveland’s favor, stood at 219 to
182, but the popular vote ran far closer: Cleveland’s plurality was fewer than
30,000 votes. Cleveland won the key state of New York by the razor-thin
margin of 1,149 votes out of the 1,167,169 cast.

CLEVELAND AND THE SPECIAL INTERESTS President Cleve-

land was an unusual president in that he opposed any federal government
favors to big business. “A public office is a public trust” was one of his
favorite mottoes. He held to a strictly limited view of government’s role in
both economic and social matters, a rigid philosophy illustrated by his 1887
veto of a congressional effort to provide desperate Texas farmers with seeds in
the aftermath of a devastating drought that had parched the western states,
summer after summer, for five years between 1887 and 1892. “Though the
860 • GILDED AGE POLITICS AND AGRARIAN REVOLT (CH. 21)

people support the government, the

government should not support the
people,” Cleveland asserted.
Cleveland urged Congress to adopt
an important new policy: federal regu-
lation of interstate railroads. Since
the late 1860s, states had adopted laws
regulating railroads, but in 1886 a
Supreme Court decision in the case of
Wabash, St. Louis, and Pacific Railroad
Company v. Illinois, the justices denied
the right of any state to regulate rates
Grover Cleveland
charged by railroads engaged in inter-
As president, Cleveland made the issue
state traffic. Cleveland thereupon urged
of tariff reform central to the politics
of the late 1880s. Congress to take the lead in regulating
the rail industry.
Congress followed through, and in 1887 Cleveland signed into law an act
creating the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). The law empowered
the ICC’s five members to ensure that freight rates were “reasonable and
just.” The commission’s actual powers proved to be weak, however, when
tested in the courts, in large part because of the vagueness of the phrase “rea-
sonable and just.”

T E N S I O N S O V E R T H E TA R I F F President Cleveland’s most dramatic

challenge to the power of Big Business focused on tariff reform. During the
late nineteenth century, critics charged that government tariff policies had
fostered big business at the expense of small producers and retailers by effec-
tively shutting out foreign imports, thereby enabling U.S. corporations to
dominate their American markets and charge higher prices for their prod-
ucts. Cleveland agreed that tariff rates were too high and often inequitable.
Congress, Cleveland argued, should reduce the tariff rates. The stage was set
for the election of 1888 to highlight a difference between the major parties
on an issue of substance.

THE ELECTION OF 1888 Cleveland was the obvious nominee of his

party for reelection. The Republicans, now calling themselves the GOP
(Grand Old Party) to emphasize their party’s longevity, turned to the
obscure Benjamin Harrison, whose greatest attribute was his availability.
The grandson of President William Henry Harrison, he resided in Indiana, a
 Corruption and Reform: Hayes to Harrison • 861

pivotal state, and had a good war

record. There was little in his political
record to offend any voter. He had lost
a race for governor and served one
term in the Senate (1881–1887). The
Republican platform accepted Cleve-
land’s challenge to make the tariff the
chief issue.
The Republicans enjoyed a huge
advantage over the Democrats in
funding and organization. To fend off
Cleveland’s efforts to reduce the tariff,
business executives contributed over $3
million to the Republican campaign. A billion-dollar hole
On the eve of the election, Cleveland In an attack on Benjamin Harrison’s
suffered a more devastating blow. A spending policies, Harrison is shown
California Republican had written pouring Cleveland’s huge surplus
the British ambassador to the United down a hole.
States, Sir Lionel Sackville-West, using
the false name Charles F. Murchison. Posing as an English immigrant
in America, he asked advice on how to vote in the presidential election.
Sackville-West, engaged at the time in sensitive negotiations over British
and U.S. access to Canadian fisheries, hinted that the man should vote for
Cleveland. The letter aroused a storm of protest against foreign intervention
in American elections. The Democrats’ explanations never caught up with
the public’s sense of outrage. Still, the outcome was incredibly close. Cleve-
land won the popular vote by 5,538,000 to 5,447,000, but Harrison carried
the Electoral College by 233 to 168.

REPUBLICAN REFORM UNDER HARRISON As president, Ben-

jamin Harrison was a competent figurehead overshadowed by his flamboy-
ant secretary of state, James Gillespie Blaine. Harrison owed a heavy debt to
Union Civil War veterans, which he discharged by signing the Dependent
Pension Act, substantially the same measure that Cleveland had vetoed. The
number of veterans receiving federal pensions almost doubled between 1889
and 1893.
During the first two years of Harrison’s term, the Republicans controlled
the presidency and both houses of Congress for only the second time since
1875. In 1890, they passed a cluster of significant legislation. In addition to
862 • GILDED AGE POLITICS AND AGRARIAN REVOLT (CH. 21)

the Dependent Pension Act, Congress

and the president approved the Sher-
man Anti-Trust Act, the Sherman Sil-
ver Purchase Act, the McKinley Tariff
Act, and the admission of Idaho and
Wyoming as new states, which fol-
lowed the admission of the Dakotas,
Montana, and Washington in 1889.
Both parties had pledged to do
something about the growing power of
big businesses to fix prices and control
markets. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act,
named for Ohio senator John Sherman,
prohibited companies from conspiring
to establish monopolies. Its passage
turned out to be largely symbolic, how-
ever. During the next decade, succes-
“King of the World”
sive administrations rarely enforced
Reformers targeted the growing power
the new law. From 1890 to 1901, only
of monopolies, such as that of John D.
Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. eighteen lawsuits were instituted, and
four of those were against labor unions
rather than corporations.

I N A D E Q UAT E C U R R E N C Y Complex monetary issues dominated the

political arena during the Gilded Age. The fact that several farm organiza-
tions organized the Greenback party in 1876, which nominated presidential
candidates in three national elections, illustrated the issue’s significance to
voters. The nation’s money supply in the late nineteenth century lacked the
flexibility to grow along with the expanding economy. From 1865 to 1890,
the amount of currency in circulation decreased about 10 percent, while the
population and the economy were rapidly growing. Such currency deflation
raised the cost of borrowing money, as a shrinking money supply caused
bankers to hike interest rates on loans. The American emphasis on metallic
money dated from the Mint Act of 1792, which authorized the coinage of sil-
ver and gold at a ratio of 15 to 1. This meant that the amount of silver in a
dollar coin weighed fifteen times as much as that in a gold dollar, a reflection
of the relative value of gold and silver at the time.
In 1873, the Republican-controlled Congress declared that silver could no
longer be used for coins, only gold. This gold-only decision occurred just
when new mines in the western states had begun to increase the supply of
 Corruption and Reform: Hayes to Harrison • 863

silver. Debt-ridden farmers and laborers who advocated currency inflation

through the unlimited coinage of silver denounced the “crime of ’73,” argu-
ing that eastern bankers and merchants had conspired to stop coining silver
so as to ensure a nationwide scarcity of money. The Bland-Allison Act of
1878 and the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890 provided for some silver
coinage, but too little in each case to offset the overall contraction of the cur-
rency as the population and the economy grew.
By the 1880s, hard-pressed farmers in the West and South demanded
increased coinage of silver to inflate the currency and thereby raise com-
modity prices, making it easier for them to earn the money they needed to
pay their mortgages and other debts. The farmers found allies among legis-
lators representing the new western states where the silver mines were
located. All six of the states admitted to the Union in 1889 and 1890 had sub-
stantial silver mines, and their new congressional delegations—largely
Republican—wanted the federal government to mint more silver. The “silver
delegates” shifted the balance in Congress enough to pass the Sherman Silver
Purchase Act (1890), which required the Treasury to purchase 4.5 million
ounces of silver each month with new paper money. Yet eastern business and
financial groups viewed the inflationary act as a threat, setting the stage for
the currency issue to eclipse all others during the financial panic that would
sweep the country three years later.
Republicans viewed their victory over Grover Cleveland and the Demo-
crats in 1888 as a mandate not just to maintain the high tariffs insulating
companies from foreign competition but to raise them even higher. Piloted
through Congress by Ohio representative William McKinley, the McKinley
Tariff Act of 1890 raised duties on manufactured goods to their highest level
ever, so high that the threat of foreign competition diminished, encouraging
many businesses to charge higher prices. Voters rebelled. In the 1890 midterm
elections, citizens repudiated the McKinley Tariff with a landslide of Demo-
cratic votes. In the new House, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by
almost three to one; in the Senate the Republican majority was reduced to
eight. One of the election casualties was Congressman McKinley himself.
The Democratic victory in the 1890 Congressional elections may also have
been a reaction to Republican efforts at the state level to legislate against
alcoholic beverages. Between 1880 and 1890 sixteen out of twenty-one states
outside the South held referenda on a constitutional ban of alcoholic bever-
ages, although only six states passed prohibition statutes. Republican moral-
ists were playing a losing game, arousing wets (anti-prohibitionists) on the
Democratic side. Another issue that served to mobilize Democratic resis-
tance was the Republican attempt to eliminate funding for state-supported
864 • GILDED AGE POLITICS AND AGRARIAN REVOLT (CH. 21)

Catholic (parochial) schools. In 1889, Wisconsin Republicans pushed

through a law that required schools to teach only in English. Such efforts
turned large numbers of outraged immigrants into Democratic activists. In
1889 and 1890, the Democrats swept state after state.

T H E FA R M P RO B L E M AND AG R A R I A N P ROT E S T
M OV E M E N TS

The 1890 congressional elections also revealed a deep-seated unrest

in the farming communities of the South and on the plains of Kansas
and Nebraska, as well as in the mining towns of the Rocky Mountain region.
People used the term “revolution” to describe the swelling grassroots sup-
port for the Populists, a new third party focused on addressing the needs of
small farmers, many of whom did not own the land they worked. In

“I Feed You All!”

This 1875 poster shows the farmer at the center of society.
 The Farm Problem and Agrarian Protest Movements • 865

drought-devastated Kansas, Populists took over five Republican congres-

sional seats. On a national level, the newly elected Populists and Democrats
took control of Congress just as an acute economic crisis appeared on the
horizon: farmers’ debts were mounting as crop prices plummeted.

E C O N O M I C C O N D I T I O N S Since the end of the Civil War, farmers in

the South and the plains states suffered from worsening economic and social
conditions. The source of their problems was a long decline in commodity
prices, from 1870 to 1898, caused by overproduction and growing interna-
tional competition in world markets. From 1870 to the mid-1890s, corn
prices plunged by a third, wheat by more than half, and cotton by two thirds.
The vast new land brought under cultivation in the West poured an ever-
increasing supply of agricultural commodities into the market, driving
prices down. Capitalism is supposed to work that way, but considerations of
abstract economic forces puzzled many farmers. How could one speak of
overproduction when so many remained in need? Instead, they reasoned,
there must be a screw loose somewhere in the system.
Struggling farmers targeted the railroads and the food processors who han-
dled the farmers’ and ranchers’ products as the prime villains. Farmers resented
the high railroad freight rates that prevailed in farm regions with no alternative
forms of transportation. High tariffs on imported goods also operated to farm-
ers’ disadvantage because the tariffs deterred foreign competition, allowing U.S.
companies to raise the prices of manufactured goods upon which farmers
depended. Farmers, however, had to sell their wheat, cotton, and other staples
in foreign markets, where competition lowered prices.
Debt, too, had been a perennial problem of agriculture. After the Civil
War, farmers had become ever more enmeshed in debts owed to local banks
or merchants. As commodity prices dropped, the burden of debt grew
because farmers had to cultivate more wheat or cotton to raise the same
amount of money; and by growing more, they furthered the vicious cycle of
commodity surpluses and price declines.

T H E G R A N G E R M O V E M E N T When the U.S. Department of Agricul-

ture sent Oliver H. Kelley on a tour of the South in 1866, he was disheartened
by the isolation of people living on farms. To address the problem, Kelley and
some government clerks in 1867 founded the National Grange of the
Patrons of Husbandry, better known as the Grange (an old word for gra-
nary), as each chapter was called. In the next few years, the Grange mush-
roomed, reaching a membership as high as 1.5 million by 1874. The Grange
started as a social and educational response to the farmers’ isolation, but as it
866 • GILDED AGE POLITICS AND AGRARIAN REVOLT (CH. 21)

grew, it began to promote farmer-owned cooperatives for the buying and sell-
ing of crops. The farmers who joined the Grange wanted to free themselves
from the high fees charged by grain-elevator operators and food processors
by banding together to buy their own warehouses and storage elevators.
The Grange soon became indirectly involved in politics, through indepen-
dent third parties, especially in the Midwest during the early 1870s. The
Grange’s chief political goal was to regulate the rates charged by railroads and
warehouses. In five states, Grangers brought about the passage of “Granger
laws,” which at first proved relatively ineffective but laid a foundation for
stronger legislation. Warehouse owners challenged the laws in the “Granger
cases” that soon advanced to the Supreme Court, where they claimed to have
been deprived of property without due process of law. In a key case involving
warehouse regulation, Munn v. Illinois (1877), the Supreme Court ruled that
the state, according to its “police powers,” had the right to regulate property
that affected the public welfare. If regulatory power were abused, the ruling
said, “the people must resort to the polls, not the courts.” Later, however, the
courts would severely restrict state regulatory powers.
The Granger movement gradually declined as members directed their
energies into farm cooperatives, many of which failed, and political action.
In 1875, insurgent farmers formed the Independent National party, more
commonly known as the Greenback party because of its emphasis on the
virtues of paper money. In the 1878 congressional elections, the Greenback
party polled over 1 million votes and elected fifteen congressmen. But in 1880,
the party’s fortunes declined, and it disintegrated after 1884.

FA R M E R S ’ A L L I A N C E SAs the Grange lost energy, other agricultural

organizations, known as Farmers’ Alliances, grew in size and significance.
Like the Grange, the Farmers’ Alliances (Northern and Southern) organized
social and recreational activities, but they also emphasized political action.
Struggling farmers throughout the South and Midwest, where tenancy rates
were highest, rushed to join the Alliance movement as a means of addressing
the hardships created by chronic indebtedness, declining crop prices, and
devastating droughts. Yet unlike the Grange, which was a national organiza-
tion that tended to attract more prosperous farmers, the Alliances were
grassroots organizations that would become the largest and most dynamic
farmers’ movement in history.
The Alliance movement swept across the cotton belt in the South and
established strong support in Kansas and the Dakotas. In 1886, a white min-
ister in Texas responded to the appeals of African American farmers by orga-
nizing the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance. The white leadership of the
 The Farm Problem and Agrarian Protest Movements • 867

Alliance movement in Texas endorsed this development because the Colored

Alliance stressed that its objective was economic justice, not social equality.
By 1890, the Alliance movement had members from New York to California,
numbering about 1.5 million, and the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance
claimed over 1 million members.
The Alliance movement welcomed rural women and men over sixteen
years of age who displayed a “good moral character,” believed in God, and
demonstrated “industrious habits.” The slogan of the Southern Alliance was
“equal rights to all, special privileges to none.” A North Carolina woman
relished the “grand opportunities” the Alliance provided women, allowing
them to emerge from household drudgeries. “Drudgery, fashion, and gossip,”
she declared, “are no longer the bounds of woman’s sphere.” One Alliance
publication made the point explicitly: “The Alliance has come to redeem
woman from her enslaved condition, and place her in her proper sphere.”
The number of women in the movement grew rapidly, and many assumed
key leadership roles in the “grand army of reform.”
The Alliance movement sponsored some one thousand rural newspapers
to spread the word about the farm problem. It also recruited forty thousand
lecturers, who fanned out across the countryside to help people understand

Members of the Texas Farmers’ Alliance, 1880s

Alliances united local farmers, fostered a sense of community, and influenced politi-
cal policies.
868 • GILDED AGE POLITICS AND AGRARIAN REVOLT (CH. 21)

the “tyrannical” forces arrayed against the farm sector: bankers and credi-
tors, Wall Street financiers, railroads, and corporate giants who controlled
both the commodities markets and the political process. Unlike the Grange,
however, the Alliance proposed an elaborate economic reform program cen-
tered on the creation of farm cooperatives.
In 1887, Charles W. Macune, the Alliance president, proposed that Texas
farmers create their own Alliance Exchange in an effort to free themselves
from their dependence upon commercial warehouses and grain elevators,
food processors, and banks. Members of the exchange would act collectively,
pooling their resources to borrow money from banks and purchase their
goods and supplies from a new corporation created by the Alliance in Dal-
las. The exchange would also build its own warehouses to store and market
members’ crops. While their crops were being stored, member farmers
would be able to obtain cash loans to buy household goods and agricultural
supplies. Once the stored crop was sold, the farmers would pay back the
credit provided by the Alliance warehouse.
This grand cooperative scheme collapsed when Texas banks refused to
accept the paper money from Alliance members. Macune and others then
focused their energies on what Macune called a “subtreasury plan,” whereby
farmers would be able to store their harvested crops in new government
warehouses and obtain cash in the form of government loans for up to
80 percent of the value of their crops at 1 percent interest. Besides providing
immediate cash, the plan would allow farmers the leeway to store a crop in
hopes of getting a better price later. The plan would also promote inflation
because the loans to farmers would be made in new legal-tender notes. Mon-
etary inflation was a popular idea with farmers because so many farmers
were debtors, and debtors like inflation because it allows them to repay their
long-term debts with cheaper money.
The subtreasury plan was immensely popular with distressed farmers, but
it never became law. In 1890, Congress nixed the proposal. Its defeat, as well
as setbacks to other Alliance proposals, convinced many farm leaders that
they needed more political power in order to secure the reforms necessary to
save the agricultural sector: railroad regulation, currency inflation, state
departments of agriculture, anti-trust laws, and more accessible farm-based
credit (loans).

FA R M P O L I T I C S In the farm states west of the Mississippi River, hard

times had descended after the terrible blizzards of 1887, which killed most of
the cattle and hogs across the northern plains. Two years later, a prolonged
drought destroyed millions of acres of corn, wheat, and oats. Distressed
 The Farm Problem and Agrarian Protest Movements • 869

farmers lashed out against what they considered to be a powerful conspiracy

of eastern financial and industrial interests, which they variously called
“monopolies,” “the money power,” “Wall Street,” or “organized wealth.” Des-
perate for assistance, they agitated for third-party political action to address
their economic concerns. In Colorado in 1890, farm radicals joined with
miners and railroad workers to form the Independent party. That same year,
Nebraska farmers formed the People’s Independent party. Across the
South, however, white Alliance members hesitated to bolt the Democratic
party, seeking instead to influence or control it. Both approaches gained
startling success. New third parties under various names upset the political
balance in western states, almost electing a governor under the banner of
the new People’s party (also known as the Populist party) in Kansas (where
a Populist was elected governor in 1892) and taking control of one house of
the state legislature there and both houses in Nebraska. In South Dakota
and Minnesota, Populists gained a balance of power in the state legislatures,
and Kansas sent a Populist to the U.S. Senate. The Populist party claimed to
represent small farmers and wage laborers, blacks and poor whites, in their
fight against greedy banks and railroads, corporate monopolies, and cor-
rupt politics. The Populists called for more rather than less government
intervention in the economy, for only government was capable of expand-
ing the money supply, counterbalancing the power of big business, and
providing efficient national transportation networks to support the needs
of agribusiness.
The farm protest movement produced colorful leaders, especially in
Kansas, where Mary Elizabeth Lease
emerged as a fiery speaker. Born in
Pennsylvania, Lease migrated to
Kansas, taught school, raised a family,
and failed at farming in the mid-
1880s. She then studied law, “pinning
sheets of notes above her wash tub,”
and became one of the state’s first
female attorneys. At the same time,
she took up public speaking on behalf
of various causes, including freedom
for her ancestral Ireland, temperance,
and women’s suffrage. By the end of the
1880s, Lease had joined the Alliance Mary Elizabeth Lease, 1890
as well as the Knights of Labor, and A charismatic leader in the farm
she soon applied her considerable protest movement.
870 • GILDED AGE POLITICS AND AGRARIAN REVOLT (CH. 21)

oratorical gifts to the cause of currency inflation, arguing for the coining of
massive amounts of silver. A tall, proud, and imposing woman, Lease drew
attentive audiences. “The people are at bay,” she warned in 1894; “let the
bloodhounds of money beware.” She urged angry farmers to obtain their
goals “with the ballot if possible, but if not that way then with the bayonet.”
Like so many of the Populists, Lease viewed the urban-industrial East as the
enemy of the working classes. “The great common people of this country,”
she shouted, “are slaves, and monopoly is the master. The West and South are
bound and prostrate before the manufacturing East.”
Jeremiah “Sockless Jerry” Simpson was an equally charismatic agrarian
radical. Born in Canada, he served as a seaman on Great Lakes steamships
before buying a farm in northern Kansas. A shrewd man with huge, callused
hands, he reduced the complex economic and political issues of the day to a
simple formula: “Man must have access to the land,” he maintained, “or he is
a slave.” He warned Republicans that Populism was the wave of the future:
“You can’t put this movement down by sneers or by ridicule, for its founda-
tion was laid as far back as the foundation of the world. It is a struggle
between the robbers and the robbed.” Simpson dismissed his Republican
opponent, a wealthy railroad lawyer, as an indulgent pawn of the corpora-
tions whose “soft white hands” and “silk hosiery” betrayed his true priorities.
His outraged opponent thereupon shouted that it was better to have silk
socks than none at all, unwittingly providing Simpson with his folksy nick-
name. Sockless Jerry won a seat in Congress, and so, too, did many other
friends of “the people” in the Midwest.
In the South, the Alliance forced Democrats to nominate candidates
pledged to their program. The southern states elected four pro-Alliance
governors, seven pro-Alliance legislatures, forty-four pro-Alliance congress-
men, and several senators. Among the most respected of the southern Alliance
leaders was Thomas E. Watson of Georgia. The son of prosperous slaveholders
who had lost everything after the Civil War, Watson became a successful
lawyer and orator on behalf of the Alliance cause. He took the lead in urging
African American tenant farmers and sharecroppers to join with their white
counterparts in ousting the white political elite. “You are kept apart,” he told
black and white farmers, “that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings.”

T H E P O P U L I S T PA R T Y A N D T H E E L E C T I O N O F 1 8 9 2 The
success of the Alliances led to the formation of a third political party on the
national level. In 1892, a gathering of Alliance leaders in St. Louis called for a
national convention of the People’s Party at Omaha, Nebraska, to adopt a
platform and choose candidates. The Populist Convention opened on July 4,
 The Farm Problem and Agrarian Protest Movements • 871

The Populist party

A Populist gathering in Callaway, Nebraska, 1892.

1892. Delegates drafted a platform that included the subtreasury plan,

unlimited coinage of silver, a progressive income tax whose rates would rise
with personal income levels, and federal control of the railroads. The Pop-
ulists also called for the government to reclaim from railroads and other
corporations lands “in excess of their actual needs” and to forbid land owner-
ship by immigrants who had not gained citizenship. Finally, the platform
endorsed the eight-hour workday (rather than ten or twelve hours) and
restriction of immigration. The party took these last positions in an effort to
win support from urban factory workers, whom Populists looked upon as fel-
low “producers.” The party’s platform turned out to be more exciting than its
candidate. Iowa’s James B. Weaver, an able, prudent man, carried the stigma
of his defeat on the Greenback ticket twelve years before. To attract southern
voters who might be put off by Weaver’s service in the Civil War as a Union
general, the party named a former Confederate general for vice president.
The Populist party was the startling new feature of the 1892 campaign.
The major parties renominated the same candidates who had run in 1888:
Democrat Grover Cleveland and Republican Benjamin Harrison. The tariff
issue monopolized their attention. Both major candidates polled over 5 mil-
lion votes, but Cleveland carried a plurality of the popular votes and a
majority of the Electoral College. The Populist Weaver polled over 1 million
votes and carried Colorado, Kansas, Nevada, and Idaho, for a total of
twenty-two electoral votes. Alabama was the banner Populist state of the
South, with 37 percent of its vote going to Weaver.
872 • GILDED AGE POLITICS AND AGRARIAN REVOLT (CH. 21)

THE ECONOMY AND THE S I LV E R S O L U T I O N

THE DEPRESSION OF 1893 While the farmers were funneling their

discontent into politics during the fall of 1892, a fundamental weakness in
the economy was about to cause a major collapse and a social rebellion. Just
ten days before Grover Cleveland started his second term, in the winter of
1893, the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad declared bankruptcy, setting
off a national financial panic that mushroomed into the worst depression
the nation had ever experienced. Other overextended railroads collapsed,
taking many banks with them. A quarter of unskilled urban workers lost
their jobs, and by the fall of 1893 over six hundred banks had closed and fif-
teen thousand businesses had failed. Entire farm regions in the South and
West were devastated by the spreading depression that brought unprece-
dented suffering. Farm foreclosures soared. Between 1890 and 1894, more
than eleven thousand farm mortgages were foreclosed in Kansas alone. In
fifteen rural Kansas counties, three quarters of the people lost their farms.
Residents grimly said: “In God we trusted, in Kansas we busted.” By 1900, a
third of all farmers were tenants
rather than landowners. As the agri-
cultural sector struggled, so too did
county governments dependent on
farm taxes.
By 1894, the nation’s economy had
reached bottom. The catastrophic
depression lasted another four years,
with unemployment hovering at 20
percent and hunger stalking the
streets of many cities. In New York
City, some 35 percent were unem-
ployed, and twenty thousand home-
less people camped out at police
stations and other makeshift shelters.
President Cleveland’s response to the
economic catastrophe was recklessly
conservative: he sought to convince
Congress to return the nation’s money
supply to a gold standard by repealing
National panic the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of
The New York Stock Exchange on the 1890, a move that worsened rather
morning of Friday, May 5, 1893. than improved the financial situation.
 The Economy and the Silver Solution • 873

The economy needed more money in circulation, not less. Unemploy-

ment and labor unrest only increased as investors rushed to exchange their
silver for gold, thus further constricting the money supply. Violent labor
strikes at Pullman, Illinois, and at the Homestead Works outside Pitts-
burgh symbolized the fracturing of the social order. In 1894 some 750,000
workers went on strike; railroad construction workers, laid off in the West,
began tramping east and talked of marching on Washington, D.C. The dev-
astating depression of the 1890s was reshaping America’s economic and
political landscape.
One protest group that reached Washington, D.C., was called Coxey’s
Army, led by Jacob S. Coxey, a wealthy Ohio quarry owner turned Populist
who demanded that the federal government provide the unemployed with
meaningful work. Coxey, his wife, and their son, Legal Tender Coxey, rode in
a carriage ahead of some four hundred hardy protesters who marched hun-
dreds of miles to the nation’s capital. Police arrested Coxey for walking on the
grass. Although his ragtag army dispersed peacefully, the march on Washing-
ton, as well as the growing political strength of Populism, struck fear into the
hearts of many American conservatives. Critics portrayed Populists as “hay-
seed socialists” whose election would endanger the capitalist system.
The 1894 congressional elections, taking place amid this climate of mush-
rooming anxiety, produced a severe setback for the Democrats, who paid
politically for the economic downturn. The Republicans were the chief ben-
eficiaries. The Republicans gained 121 seats in the House, the largest
increase ever. Only in the “Solid South” did the Democrats retain their
advantage. The third-party Populists emerged with six senators and seven
representatives. They polled 1.5 million votes for their congressional candi-
dates and expected the festering discontent in rural areas to carry them to
national power in 1896.

S I LV E R I T E S V E R S U S G O L D B U G SThe course of events would dash

that hope, however. In the mid-1890s, radical efforts to address the ravages
of the depression focused on the currency issue. President Cleveland’s suc-
cess in convincing Congress to repeal the Sherman Silver Purchase Act cre-
ated an irreparable division in his own party. One embittered pro-silver
Democrat labeled the president a traitor.
The western states with large silver deposits now escalated their demands
for the “unlimited” coinage of silver, presenting a strategic dilemma for Pop-
ulists: Should the party promote the long list of varied reforms it had origi-
nally advocated, or should it try to ride the silver issue into power? The latter
seemed the practical choice. Although the coinage of silver would not have
874 • GILDED AGE POLITICS AND AGRARIAN REVOLT (CH. 21)

provided the economic panacea its advocates claimed, the “free silver” cru-
sade took on powerful symbolic overtones. The Populist leaders decided,
over the protests of more radical members, to hold their 1896 nominating
convention after the two major party conventions, confident that the Repub-
licans and Democrats would at best straddle the silver issue, enabling the
Populists to lure away silverite Republicans and Democrats.

T H E R E M A R K A B L E E L E C T I O N O F 1 8 9 6 Contrary to those expec-

tations, the major parties took opposite positions on the currency issue.
The Republicans, as expected, nominated William McKinley on a gold
standard–only platform. McKinley, a former congressman and governor of
Ohio, symbolized the mainstream Republican values that had served the
party well during the Gilded Age. After the convention, a friend told McKin-
ley that the “money question” would determine the election. The Republican
candidate dismissed that notion, insisting that the tariff would continue to
govern national political campaigns. But one of McKinley’s advisers dis-
agreed. “In my opinion,” said Judge William Day of Ohio, “in thirty days you
won’t hear of anything else” but the money question. He was right.
The Democratic nominating convention in the Chicago Coliseum, the
largest building in the world, was one of the great turning points in Amer-
ican political history. The pro-silver delegates, mostly from rural areas,
surprised the party leadership and the “Gold Democrats” by capturing the
convention for their inflationary crusade. Thirty-six-year-old William
Jennings Bryan from Nebraska gave the convention’s final speech before
the balloting began for the party’s presidential nominee.
And what a speech it was. A fervent evangelical moralist, Bryan was a two-
term congressman who had been defeated in the Senate race in 1894, when
Democrats were swept out of office by the dozens. In the months before the
1896 Democratic convention, he had traveled throughout the South and the
West, speaking passionately for the unlimited coinage of silver and against
President Cleveland’s “do-nothing” response to the depression. Bryan cham-
pioned the poor, the discontented, and the oppressed against the financial
and industrial titans. He was the first leader of a major party to call for the
expansion of the federal government to promote the welfare of the working
and middle classes by providing subsidies for farmers, legalizing labor
strikes, regulating railroads, taxing the rich, and breaking up “trusts” (finan-
cial and industrial monopolies). Bryan spoke for the evangelical Protestant
tradition, for the rural America that was losing ground to urban America,
for the South and West regions that remained dependent on the financial
and corporate interests of the East.
 The Economy and the Silver Solution • 875

Bryan was a magnetic public

speaker with a booming voice,
a crusading minister in the role of
a politician, self-infatuated and
self-dramatizing. At the 1896
Democratic Convention, Bryan
was a “dark horse” candidate in a
field of more prominent com-
petitors for the presidential
nomination. So he had to take
a calculated risk: he would be
intentionally provocative and
even disruptive. In his famous
speech to the convention, his
carefully rehearsed phrases and William Jennings Bryan
gestures were designed to arouse His “cross of gold” speech at the 1896
passions and seize control of the Democratic Convention roused the
delegates and secured him the party’s
convention from the party lead- presidential nomination.
ers. Bryan claimed to speak for
the “producing masses of this
nation” against the eastern “financial magnates” who enslaved them by con-
stricting the money supply. As his melodramatic twenty-minute speech
reached a crescendo, Bryan fused Christian imagery with Populist anger:

I come to speak to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty—

the cause of humanity. . . . We have petitioned, and our petitions have been
scorned. We have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded. We
have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no
longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!

The messianic Bryan then stretched his fingers across his forehead and
shouted his dramatic conclusion: “You shall not press down upon the brow
of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of
gold!” He then extended his arms straight out from his sides, posing as if
being crucified. It was a riveting performance.
As Bryan strode triumphantly off the stage, the delegates erupted in a
frenzy of wild applause and adulation. “Everybody seemed to go mad at
once,” reported the New York World. It was pure theater, but it worked
better than even Bryan had anticipated. Republicans were not impressed,
however. A partisan newspaper observed that no political movement had
876 • GILDED AGE POLITICS AND AGRARIAN REVOLT (CH. 21)

“ever before spawned such hideous and repulsive vipers” as the populist
Democrats had done.
The day after his riveting speech, Bryan won the presidential nomination
on the fifth ballot, but in the process the Democratic party was fractured.
Disappointed pro-gold, pro-Cleveland Democrats dismissed Bryan as a
socialist fanatic. They were so alienated by Bryan’s inflationary crusade and
populist rhetoric that they walked out of the convention and nominated
their own candidate, Senator John M. Palmer of Illinois. “Fellow Democ-
rats,” Palmer announced, “I will not consider it any great fault if you decide
to cast your vote for [the Republican] William McKinley.”
Two weeks later, when the Populists gathered in St. Louis for their own
presidential nominating convention, they faced an impossible choice. They
could name their own candidate and divide the pro-silver vote with the
Democrats, or they could endorse the Democratic Bryan and probably lose
their identity as an independent party. In the end they backed Bryan, the
“matchless champion of the people,” but chose their own vice-presidential
candidate, former congressman Thomas E. Watson of Georgia, and invited
the Democrats to drop their vice-presidential nominee. Bryan refused the
request.
The election of 1896 was one of the most dramatic in history, in part
because of the striking contrast between the candidates, and in part because
the severity of the economic depression made the stakes so high. Bryan, the
nominee of both the Democrats and the Populists, crisscrossed the country
like a man on a mission, delivering impassioned speeches on behalf of “the
struggling masses” of workers, farmers, and small-business owners. At every
stop he promised that the unlimited coinage of silver would solve the
nation’s economic problems. He said that strikes by labor unions should be
legalized, farmers should be given federal subsidies, the rich should be taxed,
corporate campaign contributions should be banned, and liquor should be
outlawed. Bryan’s populist crusade was for whites only, however. Like so
many otherwise progressive Democratic leaders, he never challenged the
pattern of racial segregation and violence against blacks in the solid Demo-
cratic South. In fact, he believed in white racial superiority.
McKinley, meanwhile, stayed at home during the campaign. He knew he
could not compete with Bryan as an orator, so he conducted a traditional
“front-porch campaign,” receiving select delegations of Republican support-
ers at his home in Canton, Ohio, and giving only prepared statements to the
press. McKinley’s brilliant campaign manager, Marcus “Mark” Hanna, a
wealthy business executive, shrewdly portrayed Bryan as a “Popocrat,” a rad-
ical whose “communistic spirit” would ruin the capitalist system and create a
 The Economy and the Silver Solution • 877

WA
4 NH 4
MT ND ME
3 VT 4 6
OR 3 MN
4 ID 9
3 SD WI MI NY MA 15
WY 4 12 14 36
3 RI 4
IA PA CT 6
NV NE 13
8 OH 32 NJ 10
3 UT IL IN 23 WV
CA 3 CO 24 15 DE 3
7 4 KS MO VA MD 8
(+1 Dem.) 10 KY 11 8 12
17 (+1 Dem.)
OK NC
AZ NM TERR.IND. AR TN 12 11
TERR. TERR. SC
TERR. 8
MS AL GA 9
9 11 13
TX
15 LA
8
FL
4

THE ELECTION OF 1896 Electoral Vote Popular Vote

William McKinley 271 7,100,000
(Republican)
William J. Bryan 176 6,500,000
(Democrat/Populist)

How did Bryan’s “cross of gold” speech divide the Democratic party? How did
McKinley’s strategy differ from Bryan’s? Why was Bryan able to carry the West and
the South but unable to win in cities and the Northeast?

class war. Hanna convinced the Republican party to proclaim that it was
“unreservedly for sound money.” Theodore Roosevelt, a rising star among
the Republicans, was aghast at the thought of Bryan becoming president.
“The silver craze surpasses belief,” he wrote a friend. “Bryan’s election would
be a great calamity.”
By preying upon such fears, the McKinley campaign raised vast sums of
money from corporations and wealthy donors to finance an army of 1,400
Republican speakers who traveled the country in his support. It was the
most sophisticated—and expensive—presidential campaign up to that point
in history. McKinley promoted himself as the “advance agent of prosperity”
who would provide workers with a “full dinner pail.” In the end, Bryan
and the Democratic-Populist-silverite candidates were overwhelmed by the
better-organized Republican campaign. McKinley won the popular vote by
878 • GILDED AGE POLITICS AND AGRARIAN REVOLT (CH. 21)

7.1 million to 6.5 million and the Electoral College vote by 271 to 176. Two
million more voters cast their ballot than in 1892.
Bryan carried most of the West and the South but found little support in
the metropolitan centers east of the Mississippi River and north of the Ohio
and Potomac Rivers. In the critical Midwest, from Minnesota and Iowa east-
ward to Ohio, Bryan carried not a single state. Bryan’s evangelical Protes-
tantism repelled many Roman Catholic voters, who were normally drawn to
the Democrats. Farmers in the Northeast, moreover, were less attracted to
agrarian radicalism than were farmers in the wheat and cotton belts of the
West and South, where there were higher rates of tenancy. Among factory
workers in the cities, Bryan aroused little support. Wage laborers found it
easier to identify with McKinley’s pledge to restore the industrial economy
than with Bryan’s free-silver evangelism. Some workers, moreover, may have
been intimidated by owners’ threats to close their businesses if Bryan won.
Whatever the factors, Bryan, the supposed “communist,” accepted defeat
with magnanimity. He telegraphed McKinley that “We have submitted the
issue to the American people and their will is law.” Although Bryan had lost,
his candidacy had begun the process of transforming the Democratic party
from being a bulwark of pro-business conservatism and fiscal restraint to
the twentieth-century party of liberal reform. The Populist party virtually dis-
integrated. Having garnered a million votes in 1896, it collected only fifty
thousand votes in 1900. Conversely, McKinley’s victory climaxed a generation-
long struggle for the political control of industrializing America. The
Republicans were dominant.

R A C E R E L AT I O N S DURING THE 1890S

The turbulence in American life during the 1890s also affected race
relations—for the worse. The civil rights fought for in the Civil War and
codified in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments after-
ward fell victim to the complex social, economic, political, and cultural
forces unleashed by America’s rapid growth. Even the supposedly radical
William Jennings Bryan was not willing to support the human rights of
African Americans.

D I S E N F R A N C H I S I N G A F R I C A N A M E R I C A N S Race relations were

in part a victim of the terrible depression of the 1890s. At the end of the nine-
teenth century, a violent “Negrophobia” swept across the South and much of
the nation. In part, the new wave of racism was spurred by the revival in the
 Race Relations during the 1890s • 879

United States and Europe of the old idea that the Anglo-Saxon “race” was
genetically and culturally superior to other races. Another reason for the
intensification of racism was that many whites had come to resent any signs
of African American economic success and political influence in the midst of
the decade’s economic downturn. An Alabama newspaper editor declared
that “our blood boils when the educated Negro asserts himself politically.” By
the 1890s, a new generation of African Americans born and educated since
the end of the Civil War was determined to gain true equality. This younger
generation was more assertive and less patient than their parents. “We are not
the Negro from whom the chains of slavery fell a quarter century ago, most
assuredly not,” a black editor announced. A growing number of young white
adults, however, were equally determined to keep “Negroes in their place.”
Racial violence and repression escalated dramatically during the last
decade of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth.
Ruling whites ruthlessly exercised their will over all areas of black life,
imposing racial subjugation and segregation by preventing blacks from vot-
ing and by enacting “Jim Crow” laws mandating separation of the races in
various public places. The phrase “Jim Crow” derived from “Jump Jim
Crow,” an old song-and-dance caricature of African Americans performed
by white actor Thomas D. Rice in blackface during the 1830s. Thereafter,
“Jim Crow” had become a pejorative expression meaning “Negro.” The
renewal of statutory racial segregation resulted from a calculated campaign
by white elites and racist thugs to limit African American political, eco-
nomic, and social participation at the end of the nineteenth century.
The political dynamics of the 1890s exacerbated the rise of racial tensions.
The Populist revolt in the rural South divided the white vote (which had
become all-Democratic) to such an extent that in some southern states the
black vote determined election outcomes. Some white Populist leaders
courted black votes and brought African Americans prominently into their
leadership councils. In response, race-baiting white politicians argued that the
black vote should be eliminated from southern elections. Because the Fif-
teenth Amendment made it impossible simply to deny African Americans the
right to vote, white officials pursued disenfranchisement indirectly, through
such “legal” devices as poll taxes (also called head taxes) and literacy tests
designed to impede often-illiterate black voters—and many poor whites as
well. And where such “legal” means were insufficient, insurgent white candi-
dates were willing to use fraud and violence to overthrow the white ruling elite
by eliminating the black vote.
Benjamin Tillman, the white supremacist governor of South Carolina
(1890–1894), was a good example of the transformation in southern politics
880 • GILDED AGE POLITICS AND AGRARIAN REVOLT (CH. 21)

at the end of the nineteenth century. He and other political rebels ousted the
Bourbon elite (“aristocrats”) that had long governed in the former Confed-
erate states. Tillman claimed that “I organized the majority [of voters] and
put the old families out of business, and we became and are the rulers of the
state.” He also boasted about defeating the Bourbons by eliminating the
black vote. “We have done our level best [to prevent blacks from voting] . . .
we have scratched our heads to find out how we could eliminate the last one
of them. We stuffed ballot boxes. We shot them. We are not ashamed of it.”
Mississippi led the way to the near-total disenfranchisement of blacks and
many poor whites as well. The state called a constitutional convention in
1890 to change the suffrage provisions included in the Radical Republican
constitution of 1868. The so-called Mississippi Plan set the pattern that
seven more states would follow over the next twenty years. First, a residence
requirement—two years in the state, one year in an election district—struck
at those African American tenant farmers who were in the habit of moving
yearly in search of better economic opportunities. Second, voters were dis-
qualified if convicted of certain crimes disproportionately involving blacks.
Third, all taxes, including a poll tax, had to be paid before a person could
vote. This proviso fell most heavily on poor whites and blacks. Fourth and
finally, all voters had to be literate, and white registrars determined who was
literate.
Other states added variations on the Mississippi Plan for eliminating
black voting. In 1898, Louisiana invented the “grandfather clause,” which
allowed illiterate whites to vote if their fathers or grandfathers had been
eligible to vote on January 1, 1867, when African Americans were still disen-
franchised. By 1910, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, and Okla-
homa had adopted the grandfather clause. Every southern state, moreover,
adopted a statewide Democratic primary between 1896 and 1915, which
became the only meaningful election outside isolated areas of Republican
strength. With minor exceptions, the Democratic primaries excluded
African American voters altogether. The effectiveness of these measures can
be seen in a few sample figures. Louisiana in 1896 had 130,000 registered
black voters. By 1900, the number was only 5,320. In Alabama in 1900,
121,159 black men over twenty-one were literate, according to the census;
only 3,742, however, were registered to vote.

T H E S P R E A D O F R A C I A L S E G R E G AT I O N At the same time that

southern blacks were being shoved out of the political arena, they were being
segregated in the social sphere. The symbolic first target was the railroad
passenger car. In 1885, the novelist George Washington Cable noted that in
South Carolina, blacks “ride in first class [rail] cars as a right” and “their
 Race Relations during the 1890s • 881

presence excites no comment.” From 1875 to 1883, in fact, any local or state
government-mandated racial segregation violated the federal Civil Rights
Act (1875), which forbade racial discrimination in public places such as
hotels, restaurants, and trains. By 1883, however, many northern whites
endorsed the resegregation of southern life. In that year the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled jointly on five separate civil rights cases involving discrimina-
tion against blacks by businesses or individuals. The Court held, with only
one dissenting vote, that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional.
The judges explained that private individuals and organizations could engage
in acts of racial discrimination because the Fourteenth Amendment speci-
fied only that “no State” could deny citizens equal protection of the law.
The Court’s interpretation in what came to be called the Civil Rights Cases
(1883) left as an open question the validity of various state laws requiring
racially separate public facilities under the principle of “separate but equal,”
a slogan popular in the South in the late nineteenth century. In the 1880s,
Tennessee and Mississippi required railroad passengers to occupy the car
set aside for their race. When Louisiana followed suit in 1890, dissidents
challenged the law in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, which the Supreme Court
decided in 1896.
The test case originated in New Orleans when Homer Plessy, an octoroon
(a person having one-eighth African ancestry), refused to leave a whites-
only railroad car when told to do so and was later convicted of violating the
law. The Supreme Court ruled in 1896 that states had a right to create laws
segregating public places such as schools, hotels, and restaurants. Justice
John Marshall Harlan, a Kentuckian who had once owned slaves, was the
only member of the Court to dissent from the ruling. He stressed that the
Constitution is “color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among
citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.” He
feared that the Court’s ruling would plant the “seeds of race hate” under “the
sanction of law.”
That is precisely what happened. The shameful ruling in the Plessy case
legitimized the practice of racially “separate but equal” facilities in virtu-
ally every area of southern life, including streetcars, hotels, restaurants,
hospitals, parks, sports stadiums, and places of employment. In 1900, the
editor of the Richmond Times expressed the prevailing view throughout the
South:

It is necessary that this principle be applied in every relation of Southern life.

God Almighty drew the color line and it cannot be obliterated. The negro must
stay on his side of the line and the white man must stay on his side, and the
sooner both races recognize this fact and accept it, the better it will be for both.
882 • GILDED AGE POLITICS AND AGRARIAN REVOLT (CH. 21)

“Separate but equal”

Students exercising during the school day at an all-black elementary school in
Washington, D.C.

Widespread violence accompanied the creation of Jim Crow laws. From

1890 to 1899, lynchings in the United States averaged 188 per year, 82 per-
cent of which occurred in the South; from 1900 to 1909, they averaged
93 per year, with 92 percent in the South. Whites were 32 percent of the
victims during the former period but only 11 percent in the latter. Lynch-
ings usually involved a black man (or men) accused of a crime, often rape
of a white woman. White mobs would seize the accused, torture, and kill
him, often by hanging but always in ghastly ways. Lynchings became so
common as a grisly method of keeping blacks “in their place” that partici-
pating whites viewed them as forms of outdoor recreation. Crowds,
including women and children, would watch the grisly event amid a carnival-
like atmosphere.
By the end of the nineteenth century, legalized racial discrimination—
segregation of public facilities, political disenfranchisement, and vigi-
lante justice—had elevated government-sanctioned bigotry to an official
way of life in the South. South Carolina governor Benjamin Tillman
murderously declared in 1892 that blacks “must remain subordinate or
be exterminated.”
 Race Relations during the 1890s • 883

M O B RU L E I N N O RT H C A RO L I NA The widespread efforts of white

southerners to strip blacks on their civil rights was violently illustrated in
the thriving coastal port of Wilmington, North Carolina, then the largest
city in the state, with about twenty thousand residents. In 1894 and 1896,
black voters, by then a majority in the city, elected a coalition of Republicans
and Populists to various municipal offices. That blacks had come to control
the electoral process infuriated the city’s white elite. “We will never surren-
der to a ragged raffle of Negroes,” warned a former congressman and Con-
federate colonel named Alfred Waddell, “even if we have to choke the Cape
Fear River with [black] carcasses.” It was not an idle threat.
On the morning of November 10, 1898, some two thousand well-armed
white men and boys rampaged through the streets of Wilmington. They first
destroyed the offices of The Daily Record, the city’s black-owned newspaper.
The vigilantes then moved into the black neighborhoods, indiscriminately
shooting African Americans and destroying homes and businesses. Scores,
perhaps a hundred, all black, were killed. The white mob then stormed the
city hall, forced the white mayor and his board of black and white aldermen to
resign, and declared that Colonel Waddell was the new mayor. The racist
mob next forced the African American business leaders and elected offi-
cials to board northbound trains, taking them out of the state. The new

The Wilmington Insurrection

A mob of armed white supremacists destroyed the printing press of the The Daily
Record, a black-owned newspaper in Wilmington, North Carolina.
884 • GILDED AGE POLITICS AND AGRARIAN REVOLT (CH. 21)

self-appointed, all-white city government issued their own “Declaration of

White Independence” that stripped blacks of their voting rights and their
jobs. Desperate black residents appealed for help to the governor as well as
to President William McKinley, but they did nothing.
The Wilmington Insurrection marked the first time in history that a law-
fully elected municipal government had been overthrown in the United
States. Two years later, in the 1900 statewide elections, white supremacist
Democrats vowed to cement their control of the political process. The night
before the election, Colonel Waddell urged supporters to use any means nec-
essary to suppress black voting: “You are Anglo-Saxons. You are armed and
prepared and you will do your duty. . . . Go to the polls tomorrow, and if you
find the negro out voting, tell him to leave the polls and if he refuses, kill
him, shoot him down in his tracks. We shall win tomorrow if we have to do it
with guns.” The Democratic party won by a landslide.

T H E B L AC K R E S P O N S E African Americans responded to the resur-

gence of racism and statutory segregation in various ways. Some left the
South in search of greater equality, security, and opportunity, but the vast
majority stayed in their native region. In the face of overwhelming force and
prejudicial justice, most accommodated themselves to the realities of white
supremacy and segregation. “Had to walk a quiet life,” explained James Plun-
kett, a Virginia African American. “The least little thing you would do, they
[whites] would kill ya.”
Yet accommodation to the realities of white power did not mean submis-
sion. Excluded from the dominant white world and eager to avoid confronta-
tions, black southerners after the 1890s adapted to the reality of segregation
by nurturing their own culture and racial pride. A young white visitor to
Mississippi in 1910 noticed that nearly every black person he met had “two
distinct social selves, the one he reveals to his own people, the other he
assumes among the whites.”
African American churches continued to serve as the hub for black com-
munity life. Churches were used not only for worship but also for activities
that had nothing to do with religion: social gatherings, club meetings, politi-
cal rallies. For men especially, churches offered leadership roles and political
status. Serving as a deacon was often one of the most prestigious positions an
African American man could achieve. Churches enabled African Americans
of all classes to interact and exercise roles denied them in the larger society.
One irony of mandated racial segregation was that it opened up economic
opportunities for blacks. A new class of African American entrepreneurs
emerged to provide services—insurance, banking, mortuaries, barbering—
 Race Relations during the 1890s • 885

to the black community in the segregated South. At the same time, African
Americans formed their own social and fraternal clubs and organizations, all
of which helped bolster black pride and provided both fellowship and
opportunities for service.
Middle-class black women formed thousands of racial-uplift organiza-
tions across the South and around the nation. The women’s clubs were
engines of social service in their communities. Members cared for the aged
and the infirm, the orphaned and the abandoned. They created homes for
single mothers and provided nurseries for working mothers. They spon-
sored health clinics and classes in home economics for women. In 1896, the
leaders of such women’s clubs from around the country converged to form
the National Association of Colored Women, an organization created to
combat racism and segregation. Its first president, Mary Church Terrell, told
members that they had an obligation to serve the “lowly, the illiterate, and
even the vicious to whom we are bound by the ties of race and sex, and put
forth every effort to uplift and reclaim them.”

L O N E LY WA R R I O R — I D A B . W E L L S One of the most outspoken

African American activists of the time was Ida B. Wells. Born into slavery in
1862 in Mississippi, she attended a school staffed by white missionaries. In
1878, an epidemic of yellow fever killed her parents as well as an infant
brother. At age sixteen, Wells assumed responsibility for her five younger
siblings and secured a job as a rural
schoolteacher. In about 1880, she
moved to nearby Memphis, Tennessee,
along the Mississippi River, where
she taught in segregated schools and
gained entrance to the social life of
the city’s striving African American
middle class.
In 1883, Wells confronted the
reality and power of white sup-
remacy. After being denied a seat on a
railroad car because she was black,
she became the first African Ameri-
can to file suit against such discrimi-
nation. The circuit court decided in Ida B. Wells
her favor and fined the railroad, but
While raising four children, Wells sus-
the Tennessee Supreme Court over- tained her commitment to ending
turned the ruling. Wells thereafter racial and gender discrimination.
886 • GILDED AGE POLITICS AND AGRARIAN REVOLT (CH. 21)

discovered “[my] first and [it] might be said, my only love”—journalism—

and, through it, a weapon with which to wage her crusade for justice. Writ-
ing under the pen name Iola, she became a prominent editor of Memphis
Free Speech, a newspaper focusing on African American issues.
In 1892, when three of her friends were murdered by a white mob, Wells
launched a lifelong crusade against lynching. Angry whites responded to the
efforts of the “lonely warrior” by destroying her office and threatening to
lynch her. The undaunted, tireless Wells moved to New York City and con-
tinued to use her fiery journalistic talent to criticize Jim Crow laws and
demand that blacks have their voting rights restored. In the spring of 1898,
the lynching of an African American postmaster in South Carolina so
incensed Wells that she spent five weeks in Washington, D.C., fruitlessly try-
ing to persuade the federal government to intervene. Wells remained res-
olute and resilient. Eleven years later, in 1909, she helped found the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She also
endorsed women’s suffrage. In promoting full equality, Wells often found
herself in direct opposition to Booker T. Washington, the most prominent
black leader in the late nineteenth century.

WA S H I N G T O N A N D D U B O I S By the 1890s Booker T. Washington,

born in Virginia of a slave mother and a white father, had become the fore-
most black educator in the nation. He argued that blacks should not focus on
fighting racial segregation. Instead,
they should first establish an economic
base for their advancement before
striving for social equality and politi-
cal rights. In a famous speech at the
Cotton States and International
Exposition in Atlanta in 1895, Wash-
ington advised fellow African Ameri-
cans: “Cast down your bucket where
you are—cast it down in making
friends . . . of the people of all races by
whom we are surrounded. Cast it
down in agriculture, mechanics, in
commerce, in domestic service, and
in the professions.” He conspicuously
Booker T. Washington omitted politics from that list and
Founder of the Tuskegee Institute. offered an indirect endorsement of
 Race Relations during the 1890s • 887

segregation: “In all things that are

purely social we can be as separate as
the five fingers, yet one as the hand
in all things essential to mutual
progress.” In sum, Washington
wanted first to build a prosperous
black community; civil rights and
social integration could wait.
By the turn of the century, Booker
T. Washington had become the most
influential African American leader in
the nation. Some people, however, bit-
terly criticized him for making a bad
bargain: the sacrifice of broad educa- W.E.B. Du Bois
tional and civil rights for increased A fierce advocate for black education.
economic opportunities. W.E.B. Du
Bois led this criticism. A native of
Massachusetts, Du Bois first experienced southern racial prejudice as a stu-
dent at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. Later he was the first African
American to earn degrees from Harvard (in history and sociology) and briefly
attended the University of Berlin. In addition to an active career promoting
civil rights, he left a distinguished record as a scholar, authoring over twenty
books. Trim and dapper, sporting a goatee, carrying a cane, and often wearing
gloves, Du Bois had a flamboyant personality and a combative spirit. Not long
after he began his teaching career at Atlanta University in 1897, he began a
very public assault on Booker T. Washington’s strategy for improving the qual-
ity of life for African Americans.
Du Bois called Washington’s 1895 speech “the Atlanta Compromise” and
said that he would not “surrender the leadership of this race to cowards.”
Washington, Du Bois argued, preached “a gospel of Work and Money to
such an extent as . . . to overshadow the higher aims of life.” Washington was
asking blacks to give up aspirations for political power, civil rights, and
higher education so as to “concentrate all their energies on industrial educa-
tion, the accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South.” Du Bois
stressed that the priorities should be reversed. African American leaders
should adopt a strategy of “ceaseless agitation” directed at ensuring the right
to vote and winning civil equality. The education of blacks, Du Bois main-
tained, should not be merely vocational but should develop bold leaders
willing to challenge segregation and discrimination through political action.
888 • GILDED AGE POLITICS AND AGRARIAN REVOLT (CH. 21)

He demanded that disenfranchisement and legalized segregation cease

immediately and that the laws of the land be enforced. The dispute between
Washington and Du Bois came to define the tensions that would divide the
twentieth-century civil rights movement: militancy versus conciliation, sep-
aratism versus assimilation, social justice versus economic opportunities.

A NEW ERA The dispute between W.E.B. Dubois and Booker T. Wash-
ington over the best strategy for blacks to regain their civil rights occurred at
the same time that William Jennings Bryan and William McKinley were dis-
puting the best way to end the terrible economic depression that had come
to define the decade of the 1890s. The presidential election of 1896 was a cli-
mactic political struggle between the forces representing urban-industrial
America and rural-agrarian America. Over 79 percent of eligible voters par-
ticipated. McKinley’s victory demonstrated that urban-industrial values had
indeed taken firm hold of the political system. President McKinley’s first
important act was to call a special session of Congress to raise the tariff
again. The Dingley Tariff of 1897 was the highest ever. By 1897, economic
prosperity was returning, helped along by inflation of the currency, which
confirmed the arguments of the Greenbackers and silverites that the money
supply was inadequate. But the inflation came, in one of history’s many
ironies, not from the federal government printing more greenbacks or coin-
ing more silver dollars but from a flood of new gold discovered in South
Africa, northwest Canada, and Alaska. In 1900, Congress passed and Presi-
dent McKinley signed a bill affirming that the United States money supply
would be based only on gold.
The decade of the 1890s marked the end of one era and the beginning of a
new one. At the close of the nineteenth century, the longstanding issues of
tariff and currency policy gave way to global concerns: the outbreak of the
War of 1898 and the U.S. acquisition of territories outside the Western
Hemisphere. At the same time, the advent of a new century brought new
social and political developments. The most disturbing of those new devel-
opments was ever-deepening racial segregation and racial violence. The
most positive was the emergence of progressivism, a diverse new national
movement promoting social and political reform. Even though the Populist
movement faded with William Jennings Bryan’s defeat, most of the progres-
sive agenda promoted by Bryan Democrats and Populists, dismissed as too
radical and controversial in 1896, would be implemented by “progressive”
political forces over the next two decades. Bryan’s impassioned candidacy
 Race Relations during the 1890s • 889

helped transform the Democratic party into a vigorous instrument of “pro-

gressive” reform during the early twentieth century. As the United States
entered the twentieth century, it began to place more emphasis on the role of
the national government in society and the economy. Bigness in government
began to counteract bigness in business.
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Gilded Age Politics Americans were intensely loyal to the two major parties,
which operated on a local level by distributing favors. “City machines” also pro-
vided working-class men with jobs and gave relief (money or necessities) to the
poor, thereby winning votes. The major political parties shared power nearly
equally during the Gilded Age; such parity made neither party willing to
embrace bold initiatives.
• National Politics Politicians focused on tariff reform, the regulation of corpo-
rations, Indian wars and Indian policy, civil service reform, and immigration. In
the 1884 presidential election, Republicans favoring reform, dubbed Mug-
wumps, bolted their party to support Democrat Grover Cleveland, a reformer.
• Farm Problems Farmers had serious grievances at the end of the nineteenth
century. Commodity prices were falling because of domestic overproduction
and international competition, and many farmers had gone into debt buying
new machinery on credit and paying the railroads exorbitant rates to ship their
goods to market. In addition, high tariffs allowed manufacturers to raise the
price of goods that farmers needed.
• Farm Movements Despite farmers’ traditional reluctance to organize, many
reacted to their difficulties by joining the Granger movement, which promoted
farmer-owned cooperatives and, subsequently, Farmers’ Alliances, grassroots
social organizations that also promoted political action. Influenced by their suc-
cess, delegates from farm, labor, and reform organizations in 1892 established
the People’s party, also known as the Populist party. Populists sought greater
regulation of business by the federal government and the free coinage of silver
(because they hoped that the ensuing inflation of the money supply would make
it easier for them to repay their debts).
• Rise of Populism The Populists did well in 1892 and, with the depression of
1893, had high hopes for the next presidential election. But the Democrat,
William Jennings Bryan, stole the silver issue from the Populists. The Populists
thus fused with the Democrats, but Bryan lost the election to the Republicans.
The People’s party did not recover from the blow.
• Southern Segregation By 1900 elite southern whites had regained control of
state governments; prominent black Republicans had been squeezed out of
political positions; and black men were being kept from exercising their right to
vote. Segregation became the social norm. Some African American leaders, most
prominently Booker T. Washington, believed that by showing deference to
whites, blacks could avoid violence while quietly acquiring an education and
property. Others, like Ida B. Wells and W. E. B. Du Bois, wanted to fight segrega-
tion and lynching through the courts and the political system.
 CHRONOLOGY

1877
1877
1881
Rutherford B. Hayes is inaugurated president
Supreme Court issues Munn v. Illinois decision
James A. Garfield is assassinated
1883 Congress passes the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act
1886 Supreme Court issues Wabash, St. Louis, and Pacific Railroad
Company v. Illinois decision
1887 Interstate Commerce Commission is created
1890 Congress passes the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, the Sherman
Silver Purchase Act, and the McKinley Tariff
1892 People’s party drafts its Omaha platform
1893 Economic depression affects a substantial proportion of the
population
1890 Mississippi Plan resegregates public facilities by race
1895 Booker T. Washington delivers his Atlanta Compromise speech
1896 Supreme Court issues Plessy v. Ferguson decision
1909 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) is created

KEY TERMS & NAMES

Gilded Age p. 849 Farmers’ Alliances p. 866 Mississippi Plan p. 880

political “machine” p. 849 Populist/People’s party “separate but equal” p. 881

p. 869
Stalwarts p. 854 Ida B. Wells p. 885
Mary Elizabeth Lease p. 869
James Gillepsie Blaine Booker T. Washington
p. 857 William McKinley p. 874 p. 886

Mugwumps p. 858 William Jennings Bryan W.E.B. Du Bois p. 887

p. 874
Granger movement p. 866
“Jim Crow” laws p. 879
 Part Six


MODERN

AMERICA
T he United States entered the twentieth century on a wave of
unrelenting change, not all of it beneficial. In 1800, the nation was a
rural, agrarian society largely detached from the concerns of interna-
tional affairs. By 1900, the United States had become a highly industrial-
ized urban society with a growing involvement in world politics and
international commerce. In other words, the nation was on the thresh-
old of modernity.
The prospect of modernity both excited and scared Americans. Old
truths and beliefs clashed with unsettling scientific discoveries and
social practices. People debated the legitimacy of Darwinism, the
existence of God, the dangers of jazz, and proposals to prohibit the
sale of alcoholic beverages. The advent of automobiles and airplanes
helped shrink distance, and such communications innovations as radio
and film helped strengthen a sense of national consciousness. In the
process, the United States began to emerge from its isolationist shell.
Throughout most of the nineteenth century, policy makers had sought
to isolate America from the intrigues and conflicts of the great European
powers. As early as 1780, John Adams had warned Congress against
involving the United States in the affairs of Europe. “Our business with
them, and theirs with us,” he wrote, “is commerce, not politics, much
less war.”
With only a few exceptions, statesmen during the nineteenth century
followed such advice. Noninvolvement in foreign wars and noninterven-
tion in the internal affairs of foreign governments formed the pillars of
American foreign policy until the end of the century. During the 1890s,
however, expanding commercial interests around the world led Ameri-
cans to broaden the horizons of their concerns. Imperialism was the
grand imperative among the great European powers, and a growing
number of American expansionists demanded that the United States also
adopt a global ambition and join in the hunt for new territories and
markets. Such mixed motives helped spark the War of 1898 and helped
to justify the resulting acquisition of colonies outside the continental
United States. Entangling alliances with European powers soon followed.
The outbreak of the Great War in Europe in 1914 posed an even
greater challenge to the tradition of isolation and nonintervention. The
prospect of a German victory over the French and the British threatened
the European balance of power, which had long ensured the security
of the United States. By 1917 it appeared that Germany might emerge
triumphant and begin to menace the Western Hemisphere. Woodrow
Wilson’s crusade to transform international affairs in accordance with
his idealistic principles during the First World War severed American
foreign policy from its isolationist moorings. It also spawned a pro-
longed debate about the role of the United States in world affairs, a
debate that World War II would resolve for a time on the side of
internationalism.
While the United States was entering the world stage as a formidable
military power, it was also settling into its role as a great industrial
power. Cities and factories sprouted across the landscape. An abundance
of new jobs and affordable farmland served as a magnet attracting
millions of immigrants from nearly every landmass on the globe. They
were not always welcomed, nor were they readily assimilated. Ethnic
and racial strife, as well as labor agitation, increased at the turn of the
century. In the midst of such social turmoil and unparalleled economic
development, reformers made their first sustained attempt to adapt
political and social institutions to the realities of the industrial age.
The worst excesses and injustices of urban-industrial development—
corporate monopolies, child labor, political corruption, hazardous
working conditions, urban ghettos—were finally addressed in a compre-
hensive way. During the Progressive Era (1890–1917), local, state, and
federal governments sought to rein in the excesses of industrial capital-
ism and develop a more rational and efficient public policy.
A conservative Republican resurgence challenged the notion of the
new regulatory state during the 1920s. Free enterprise and corporate
capitalism witnessed a dra-
matic revival. But the stock
market crash of 1929 helped
propel the United States and
the world into the worst eco-
nomic downturn in history.
The unprecedented severity of
the Great Depression renewed
public demands for federal programs to protect the general welfare.
“This nation asks for action,” declared President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt in his 1933 inaugural address. The many New Deal initiatives
and agencies instituted by Roosevelt and his Democratic administration
created the framework for a welfare state that has since served as the
basis for public policy.
The New Deal helped revive public confidence and put people back to
work, but it did not end the Great Depression. It took a world war to
restore full employment. The necessity of mobilizing the nation in sup-
port of the Second World War also accelerated the growth of the federal
government. And the unparalleled scope of the war helped catapult the
United States into a leadership role in world politics. The use of atomic
bombs to end the war against Japan ushered in a new era of nuclear
diplomacy that held the fate of the world in the balance. For all of the
new creature comforts associated with modern life, Americans in 1945
found themselves living amid an array of new anxieties.

22
SEIZING AN AMERICAN
EMPIRE

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• What motivated America’s “new imperialism”?

• What was the role of religion as a motive for American territorial
expansion?
• What were the causes of the War of 1898?
• What did America gain from the War of 1898?
• What were the main achievements of President Roosevelt’s foreign
policy?

T hroughout the nineteenth century Americans displayed

what one senator called “only a languid interest” in foreign
affairs. The overriding priorities were at home: industrial
development, western settlement, and domestic politics. Foreign relations
simply were not important to the vast majority of Americans. After the Civil
War, an isolationist mood swept across the United States as the country
basked in its geographic advantages: wide oceans as buffers, the powerful
British navy situated between America and the powers of Europe, and mili-
tarily weak neighbors in the Western Hemisphere.
Yet the notion of the United States having been ordained by God to
expand its territory and its democratic values remained alive in the decades
after the Civil War. Several prominent political and business leaders argued
that sustaining rapid industrial development required the acquisition—or
conquest—of foreign territories in order to gain easier access to vital raw
materials. In addition, as their exports grew, American manufacturers and
commercial farmers became increasingly intertwined in the world economy.
This growing involvement in international commerce, in turn, required an
898 • SEIZING AN AMERICAN EMPIRE (CH. 22)

expanded naval force to protect the shipping lanes from hostile action. And
a modern steam-powered navy needed bases where its ships could replenish
their supplies of coal and water.
For these and other reasons, the United States during the last quarter of
the nineteenth century expanded its military presence and territorial posses-
sions beyond the Western Hemisphere. Its motives for doing so were a mix-
ture of moral and religious idealism (spreading the benefits of democratic
capitalism and Christianity to “backward peoples”), popular assumptions of
racial superiority, and naked greed. Such confusion over ideals and purposes
ensured that the results of America’s imperialist adventures would be decid-
edly mixed. Within the span of a few months in 1898 the United States,
which was born in a revolution against British colonial rule, would itself
become an imperial power whose expanding overseas commitments would
have unforeseen—and tragic—consequences.

T O WA R D THE NEW IMPERIALISM

By the late nineteenth century, the major European nations had

unleashed a new surge of imperialism in Africa and Asia, where they had
seized territory, established colonies, and promoted economic exploitation,
racial superiority, and Christian evangelism. Writing in 1902, the British
economist J. A. Hobson declared that imperialism was “the most powerful
factor in the current politics of the Western world.”

IMPERIALISM IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT Western imperialism and

industrial growth generated a quest for new markets, new sources of raw
materials, and new opportunities for investment. The result was a wide-
spread process of aggressive imperial expansion into Africa and Asia. Begin-
ning in the 1880s, the British, French, Belgians, Italians, Dutch, Spanish, and
Germans used military force and political guile to conquer those continents.
Each of the imperial nations, including the United States, dispatched mis-
sionaries to convert conquered peoples to Christianity. By 1900, some
18,000 missionaries were scattered around the world. Often the conversion
to Christianity was the first step in the loss of a culture’s indigenous tradi-
tions. Western religious efforts also influenced the colonial power structure.
A British expansionist explained the global ambitions of the imperialist
nations: “Today, power and domination rather than freedom and indepen-
dence are the ideas that appeal to the imagination of the masses—and the
 Toward the New Imperialism • 899

national ideal has given way to the imperial.” This imperial outlook triggered
clashes among the Western powers that would lead to unprecedented con-
flict in the twentieth century.

AMERICAN IMPERIALISTS As the European nations expanded their

control over much of the rest of the world, the United States also began to
acquire new territories. A small yet vocal and influential group of public
officials aggressively promoted the idea of acquiring overseas possessions.
The expansionists included Senators Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana and
Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, as well as Theodore Roosevelt and
naval captain Alfred Thayer Mahan.
During the 1880s, Captain Mahan had become a leading advocate of sea
power and Western imperialism. In 1890 he published The Influence of Sea
Power upon History, 1660–1783, in which he argued that national greatness
and prosperity flowed from maritime power. Mahan insisted that modern
economic development required a powerful navy, a strong merchant marine,
foreign commerce, colonies, and naval bases. A self-described imperialist,
Mahan championed America’s “destiny” to control the Caribbean, build an
isthmian canal to connect the Pacific and the Caribbean, and spread Western
civilization in the Pacific. His ideas were widely circulated in popular jour-
nals and within political and military circles. Theodore Roosevelt, the war-
loving assistant secretary of the navy, ordered a copy of Mahan’s book for
every American warship. Yet even before Mahan’s writings became influen-
tial, a gradual expansion of the navy had begun. In 1880, the nation had
fewer than a hundred seagoing vessels, many of them rusting or rotting at
the docks. By 1896, eleven powerful new steel battleships had been built or
authorized.

I M P E R I A L I S T T H E O R Y Claims of racial superiority bolstered the new

imperialist spirit. Spokesmen in each industrial nation, including the United
States, used the arguments of social Darwinism to justify economic exploita-
tion and territorial conquest. Among nations as among individuals, expan-
sionists claimed, the fittest survive and prevail. John Fiske, a historian and
popular lecturer on Darwinism, developed racial corollaries from Charles
Darwin’s ideas. In American Political Ideas Viewed from the Standpoint of
Universal History (1885), he stressed the superior character of “Anglo-Saxon”
institutions and peoples. The English-speaking “race,” he argued, was destined
to dominate the globe and transform the institutions, traditions, language—
even the blood—of the world’s peoples. Josiah Strong added the sanction of
900 • SEIZING AN AMERICAN EMPIRE (CH. 22)

religion to theories of racial and national superiority. In his best-selling

book Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis (1885), Strong
asserted that the “Anglo-Saxon” embodied two great ideas: civil liberty and
“a pure spiritual Christianity.” The Anglo-Saxon was “divinely commis-
sioned to be, in a peculiar sense, his brother’s keeper.”

E X PA N S I O N IN THE PA C I F I C

For Josiah Strong and other expansionists, Asia offered an especially

alluring target for American imperialism. In 1866, the secretary of state,
William H. Seward, had predicted that the United States must inevitably exer-
cise commercial domination “on the Pacific Ocean, and its islands and conti-
nents.” Eager for American manufacturers to exploit Asian markets, Seward
believed the United States first had to remove all foreign interests from the
northern Pacific coast and gain access to that region’s valuable ports. To that
end, he cast covetous eyes on the British colony of British Columbia, sand-
wiched between Russian America (Alaska) and the Washington Territory.
Late in 1866, while encouraging British Columbians to consider making
their colony a U.S. territory, Seward learned of Russia’s desire to sell Alaska.
He leaped at the opportunity, in part because its acquisition might influ-
ence British Columbia to join the union. In 1867, the United States bought
Alaska for $7.2 million, thus removing Russia, the most recent colonial
power, from North America. Critics scoffed at “Seward’s folly” of buying the
Alaskan “icebox,” but it proved to be the biggest bargain since the Louisiana
Purchase. Seward’s successors at the State Department sustained his expan-
sionist vision. Acquiring key ports on islands in the Pacific Ocean was the
major focus of overseas activity throughout the rest of the nineteenth cen-
tury. Two island groups occupied especially strategic positions: Samoa and
Hawaii (the Sandwich Islands). Both had major harbors, Pago Pago and
Pearl Harbor, respectively. In the years after the Civil War, American interest
in those islands deepened.

S A M OA In 1878, the Samoans signed a treaty with the United States that
granted a naval base at Pago Pago and extraterritoriality for Americans
(meaning that in Samoa, Americans remained subject only to U.S. law),
exchanged trade concessions, and called for the United States to help resolve
any disputes with other nations. The Senate ratified this accord, and in the
following year the German and British governments worked out similar
arrangements with other islands in the Samoan group. There matters rested
 Expansion in the Pacific • 901

American expansion
In a critical comment on William H. Seward’s 1867 purchase of Alaska, this car-
toon represents the territory as a block of ice labeled “Russian America.”

until civil war broke out in Samoa in 1887. A peace conference in Berlin in
1889 established a protectorate over Samoa, with Germany, Great Britain,
and the United States in an uneasy partnership.

H AWA I I In Hawaii, the Americans had a clearer field to exploit. The

islands, a united kingdom since 1795, had a sizable population of American
missionaries and sugar planters and were strategically more important to
the United States than Samoa. In 1875, the kingdom had signed a reciprocal
trade agreement, according to which Hawaiian sugar would enter the United
States duty-free, and Hawaii promised that none of its territory would be
leased or granted to a third power. This agreement resulted in a boom in
sugar production, and American planters in Hawaii soon formed an eco-
nomic elite that built its fortunes on cheap immigrant labor, mainly Chinese
and Japanese. By the 1890s, the native Hawaiian population had been
reduced to a minority by smallpox and other foreign diseases, and Asians
quickly became the most numerous group.
In 1885, President Grover Cleveland called the Hawaiian Islands “the
stepping-stone to the growing trade of the Pacific.” Two years later, Ameri-
cans in Hawaii forced the king to convert the monarchy to a constitutional
government, which they dominated. In 1890, however, the McKinley Tariff
902 • SEIZING AN AMERICAN EMPIRE (CH. 22)

Cutting sugar cane

Heightened demand for cheap labor in the sugar cane fields dramatically affected
the demographic and political conditions of the Hawaiian islands.

destroyed Hawaii’s favored position in the sugar trade by putting the sugar
of all countries on the duty-free list and granting growers in the continental
United States a 2¢ subsidy per pound of sugar. This change led to an eco-
nomic crisis in Hawaii and brought political turmoil as well.
In 1891, when Liliuokalani, the king’s sister, ascended the throne, she
tried to eliminate the political power exercised by American planters. Two
years later, Hawaii’s white population revolted and seized power. The U.S.
ambassador brought in marines to support the coup. As he cheerfully
reported to the secretary of state, “The Hawaiian pear is now fully ripe, and
this is the golden hour for the United States to pluck it.” Within a month a
committee of the new government in Hawaii turned up in Washington, D. C.
with a treaty calling for the island nation to be annexed to the United States.
President Cleveland then sent a special commissioner to investigate the
situation in Hawaii. The commissioner removed the marines and reported
that the Americans in Hawaii had acted improperly. Most Hawaiians
opposed annexation to the United States, the commissioner found. He con-
cluded that the revolution had been engineered mainly by the American
planters hoping to take advantage of the subsidy for sugar grown in the
 The War of 1898 • 903

United States. Cleveland proposed to

restore the queen to power in return
for amnesty to the revolutionists. The
provisional government controlled by
the sugar planters refused to give up
power, however, and on July 4, 1894, it
created the Republic of Hawaii, which
included in its constitution a standing
provision for American annexation.
In 1897, when William McKinley
became president, he was looking for
an excuse to annex the islands. “We
need Hawaii,” he claimed, “just as
much and a good deal more than we
did California. It is manifest destiny.”
Queen Liliuokalani
When the Japanese, also hoping to take
over the islands, sent a naval flotilla to The Hawaiian queen sought to
preserve her nation’s independence.
Hawaii, McKinley responded by send-
ing U.S. warships and asked the Sen-
ate to approve a treaty to annex the islands. When the Senate could not
muster the two-thirds majority needed to approve the treaty, McKinley used
a joint resolution of the House and the Senate to achieve his aims. The reso-
lution passed by simple majorities in both houses, and Hawaii was annexed
by the United States in the summer of 1898.

T H E WA R OF 1898

Until the 1890s, reservations about acquiring overseas possessions had

checked America’s drive to expand. Suddenly, in 1898 and 1899, such inhibi-
tions collapsed, and the United States aggressively thrust its way to the far
reaches of the Pacific. The spark for this explosion of imperialism lay not in
Asia but in Cuba, a Spanish colony ninety miles southwest of the southern
tip of Florida. Ironically, the chief motive was a sense of outrage at another
country’s imperialism. Americans wanted the Cubans to gain their indepen-
dence from Spain.

“ C U B A L I B R E ” Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century,

Cubans had repeatedly revolted against centuries-old Spanish rule, only to
be ruthlessly suppressed. As one of Spain’s oldest colonies, Cuba was a major
904 • SEIZING AN AMERICAN EMPIRE (CH. 22)

export market for the mother country. Yet American sugar and mining com-
panies had also invested heavily in Cuba. The United States in fact traded
more with Cuba than Spain did.
On February 24, 1895, insurrection again broke out as Cubans waged guer-
rilla warfare against Spanish troops. In 1896 the Spanish commanding general,
Valeriano Weyler, adopted a controversial policy whereby his troops herded
Cubans behind Spanish lines, housing them in detention (reconcentrado) cen-
ters so that no one could join the insurrections by night and appear peaceful by
day. In some of the centers, a combination of tropical climate, poor food, and
unsanitary conditions quickly produced a heavy toll of disease and starvation.
Tens of thousands of Cuban peasants died in the primitive camps.
Events in Cuba supplied dramatic headlines for newspapers and maga-
zines. William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s
New York World were at the time locked in a monumental competition for
readers, striving to outdo each other with sensational headlines about every
Spanish atrocity in Cuba, real or invented. “It was a battle of gigantic pro-
portions,” one journalist later wrote, “in which the sufferings of Cuba merely
chanced to furnish some of the most convenient ammunition.” Hearst, for
example, christened the Spanish commander “Butcher Weyler.” The newspa-
pers’ sensationalism as well as their intentional efforts to manipulate public
opinion came to be called yellow journalism. Hearst wanted a war against
Spain to catapult the United States into global significance. Once war was
declared against Spain, Hearst took credit for it. One of his newspaper head-
lines blared: “HOW DO YOU LIKE THE JOURNAL’S WAR?”

P R E S S U R E F O R WA R At the outset of the Cuban rebellion in 1895,

President Grover Cleveland tried to protect U.S. business interests in Cuba
while avoiding military involvement. Mounting public sympathy for the
rebel cause prompted acute concern in Congress, however. By concurrent
resolutions on April 6, 1896, the House and Senate endorsed the granting of
official recognition to the Cuban rebels. After his inauguration in March
1897, President William McKinley continued the posture of sympathetic
neutrality, but with each passing month Americans called for greater assis-
tance to the Cuban insurgents. In 1897, Spain offered Cubans autonomy
(self-government without formal independence) in return for ending the
rebellion. The Cubans rejected the offer. Spain was impaled on the horns of
a dilemma, unable to end the insurrection and unready to give up Cuba.
Early in 1898, events pushed the two nations into a war that neither gov-
ernment wanted. On January 25, the U.S. battleship Maine docked in
Havana harbor, ostensibly on a courtesy call. On February 9, the New York
 The War of 1898 • 905

The sinking of the Maine in Havana Harbor

The uproar created by the incident and its coverage in the “yellow press” helped to
push President William McKinley to declare war.

Journal released the text of a letter from the Spanish ambassador Depuy de
Lôme to a friend in Havana. In the so-called de Lôme letter, which had been
stolen from the post office by a Cuban spy, de Lôme called President McKin-
ley “weak and a bidder for the admiration of the crowd, besides being a
would-be politician who tries to leave a door open behind himself while
keeping on good terms with the jingoes of his party.” De Lôme resigned to
prevent further embarrassment to his government.
Six days later, during the night of February 15, 1898, the Maine exploded
and sank in Havana harbor, with a horrible loss of 260 men. The ship’s cap-
tain, one of only 84 survivors, scribbled a telegram to Washington: “Maine
blown up in Havana Harbor at nine forty tonight and destroyed. Many
wounded and doubtless more killed or drowned. . . . Public opinion should
be suspended until further report.”
Although years later the sinking was ruled an accident caused by a coal
explosion, those eager for a war with Spain in 1898 saw no need to withhold
906 • SEIZING AN AMERICAN EMPIRE (CH. 22)

judgment. Upon learning about the loss of the Maine, the thirty-nine-
year-old assistant secretary of the navy, Theodore Roosevelt, told a friend
that he “would give anything if President McKinley would order the fleet
to Havana tomorrow.” He called the sinking “an act of dirty treachery on
the part of the Spaniards.” The United States, he claimed, “needs a war.” The
outcry against Spain rose in a crescendo with the words “Remember the
Maine!” The weight of outraged public opinion and the influence of Repub-
lican militants such as Roosevelt and the president’s closest friend, Senator
Henry Cabot Lodge, eroded McKinley’s neutrality. On March 9, the presi-
dent asked Congress for a $50 million appropriation for defense. Still
McKinley sought to avoid war, as did many business leaders. Their caution
infuriated Roosevelt. “We will have this war for the freedom of Cuba,” he
fumed on March 26, “in spite of the timidity of the commercial interests.”
Roosevelt grumbled to a friend that McKinley “has no more backbone than
a chocolate éclair.” The president grew so frustrated by the jingoistic Roo-

News announcements, 1898

A crowd watches men post news announcements outside the New York Tribune
building during the War of 1898.
 The War of 1898 • 907

sevelt that he refused to see him. “He is too pugnacious,” McKinley objected.
“I want peace.”
In March 1898 McKinley demanded that Spain declare a cease-fire in
Cuba by April 1. The Spanish government grudgingly complied. On April
10, the Spanish agreed that the Cubans could form an autonomous govern-
ment, but the message came too late. The following day, McKinley asked
Congress for authority to use armed forces in Cuba. On April 20, Congress
declared Cuba independent and demanded the withdrawal of Spanish
forces. The Teller Amendment, added on the Senate floor to the war resolu-
tion, disclaimed any intention of the U.S. eventually taking control of Cuba.
McKinley signed the war resolution, and a copy went off to the Spanish gov-
ernment. Never has an American war, so casually begun and so enthusiasti-
cally supported, generated such unexpected and far-reaching consequences.
Why such a rush to war after the American ambassador had predicted that
Spain would cave in before the summer was out? Chiefly because public
pressure demanded war. Leaders of the business community wanted a quick
resolution of the problem. Still, it is fair to ask why McKinley did not take a
stronger and more patient stand for peace. He might have defied Congress
and public opinion, but in the end he decided that the political risk was
too high. The ultimate blame for war, if blame must be levied, belongs to
the American people for letting themselves be whipped into such a hostile
frenzy.
McKinley called for 125,000 volunteers to supplement the 28,000 men in
the U.S. Army. Among the first to enlist was the man who most lusted for
war against Spain: Theodore Roosevelt. His wife and friends in the Congress
urged him to remain at his post with the navy. Even President McKinley
told Roosevelt to stay put, but the militant New Yorker felt he had “to live up
to the doctrines I have tried to preach.” Roosevelt viewed war as a means
of testing his own masculinity and fulfilling the nation’s destiny to be a great
power.

M A N I L A The war with Spain lasted only 114 days. The conflict was
barely under way before the U.S. Navy produced a spectacular victory in an
unexpected location in the Pacific Ocean: Manila Bay in the Philippines, an
archipelago of seven thousand islands some seven thousand miles away. Just
before war had been declared, Theodore Roosevelt, still serving as the assis-
tant secretary of the navy, had ordered (without getting the permission of
his superiors) Commodore George Dewey, commander of the small U.S.
fleet in Asia, to engage Spanish forces in the Philippines in case of war in
Cuba. President McKinley had approved the orders.
908 • SEIZING AN AMERICAN EMPIRE (CH. 22)

Commodore Dewey arrived late on April 30 with four cruisers and two
gunboats, and they quickly destroyed or captured all the outdated Spanish
warships in Manila Bay without suffering any major damage themselves.
Dewey was now in awkward possession of the bay without any ground forces
to go onshore. Promised reinforcements, he stayed while German and
British warships cruised offshore like watchful vultures, ready to take con-
trol of the Philippines if the United States did not do so. In the meantime,
Emilio Aguinaldo, the leader of the Filipino nationalist movement, declared
the Philippines independent on June 12. With Aguinaldo’s help, Dewey’s
forces entered Manila on August 13. The Spanish garrison preferred to sur-
render to the Americans rather than to the vengeful Filipinos. News of the
American victory sent President McKinley scurrying to find a map of Asia to
locate “these darned islands” now occupied by U.S. soldiers and sailors.

T H E C U B A N C A M PA I G N While these events transpired halfway around

the world, the fighting in Cuba reached a surprisingly quick climax. The U.S.
Navy blockaded the Spanish navy inside Santiago harbor while some 17,000
American troops hastily assembled at Tampa, Florida. One prominent unit
was the First Volunteer Cavalry, better known as the Rough Riders, a regi-
ment with “special qualifications” made up of former Ivy League athletes,
ex-convicts, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Pawnee, and Creek Indians, and
southwestern sharpshooters. Of course, the Rough Riders are best remem-
bered because Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt was second in com-
mand. Roosevelt did not care about the sordid backgrounds of some of the
Rough Riders: “Wherever they came from, and whatever their social posi-
tion,” he wrote, they “possessed in common the traits of hardihood and a
thirst for adventure” that he himself displayed. One of the Rough Riders said
that Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt was “nervous, energetic, virile. He may
wear out some day, but he will never rust out.” Roosevelt wrote President
McKinley that he hoped “we will be put in Cuba with the very first troops,
the sooner the better.” When the 578 Rough Riders, accompanied by a gaggle
of reporters and photographers, landed in oppressive heat on June 22, 1898,
at the undefended southeastern tip of Cuba, they were the first American
troops ever sent overseas. But chaos ensued upon their arrival, as their
horses and mules were mistakenly sent elsewhere, leaving the Rough Riders
to become the “Weary Walkers.” Only Roosevelt ended up with his horse,
Little Texas.
Land and sea battles around Santiago quickly broke Spanish resistance.
On July 1, about seven thousand U.S. soldiers took the fortified village of
 The War of 1898 • 909

CHINA THE WAR OF 1898

IN THE PACIFIC

FORMOSA 0 100 200 300 Miles

HONG KONG
0 100 200 300 Kilometers

S O U T H
C H I N A
PA C I F I C
Dew

S E A
e y’
s fl

LUZON O C E A N
eet

Manila
Bay
Manila PHILIPPINE

ISLANDS

S U L U
S E A MINDANAO

Manila
BATAAN Manila
PENINSULA Bay
Cavite
t
e
fl e

BRITISH SPANISH
y’s

NORTH FLEET
CORREGIDOR
e

BORNEO
ew

D
BORNEO

Why did Theodore Roosevelt order Commodore Dewey to take Manila? What role
did Emilio Aguinaldo play? Why were many Americans opposed to the acquisition
of the Philippines?
910 • SEIZING AN AMERICAN EMPIRE (CH. 22)

El Caney. While a much larger force attacked San Juan Hill, a smaller unit,
including the dismounted Rough Riders together with African American
soldiers from two cavalry units, with Roosevelt at their head yelling
“Charge!”, seized nearby Kettle Hill. Roosevelt later claimed that he “would
rather have led that charge than [have] served three terms in the U.S. Sen-
ate.” A friend wrote to Roosevelt’s wife that her husband was “reveling in
victory and gore.” Thanks to widespread media coverage, much of it exag-
gerated, Roosevelt had become a home-front legend, the most beloved hero
of the brief war. Roosevelt’s oversized ego and penchant for self-promotion
led him to lobby Congress—unsuccessfully—to award him a Congressional
Medal of Honor for his much-publicized headlong gallop at the head of his
troops in Cuba. (President Bill Clinton finally awarded Roosevelt the medal
posthumously in 2001.)
On July 3, the Spanish navy made a gallant run for it, but its decrepit
ships were little more than sitting ducks for the newer American fleet. The
casualties were as one-sided as those at Manila: 474 Spanish were killed or
wounded and 1,750 taken prisoner, while only one American was killed and
one wounded. Spanish officials in Santiago surrendered on July 17. On July
25 an American force moved into Spanish-held Puerto Rico, meeting only
minor resistance as it took control of the island.
The next day, the Spanish government in Madrid sued for peace. After
discussions lasting two weeks, an armistice was signed on August 12, less
than four months after the war’s start and the day before Americans entered
Manila. In Cuba, the Spanish forces formally surrendered to the U.S. com-
mander, boarded ships, and sailed for Spain. Excluded from the ceremony
were the Cubans, for whom the war had been fought. The peace treaty
specified that Spain should give up Cuba and that the United States should
annex Puerto Rico and occupy Manila pending the transfer of power in the
Philippines.
In all, over 60,000 Spanish soldiers died of disease or wounds in the four-
month war. Among the 274,000 Americans who served during the war, 5,462
died, but only 379 in battle. Most succumbed to malaria, typhoid, dysentery,
or yellow fever. At such a cost the United States was launched onto the world
scene as a great power, with all the benefits—and burdens—of a new colo-
nial empire of its own.
America’s role in the world was changed forever by the campaign, for the
United States emerged as an imperial power. Halfway through the brief con-
flict in Cuba, John Hay, soon to be secretary of state, wrote a letter to his
close friend, Theodore Roosevelt. In acknowledging Roosevelt’s trial by fire,
Hay called it “a splendid little war, begun with the highest motives, carried
 The War of 1898 • 911

THE WAR OF 1898

IN THE CARIBBEAN

What started the War of 1898? What caused most of the casualties in the war?

on with magnificent intelligence and spirit, favored by that fortune that

loves the brave.”
The end of the “splendid little war” was also the pathetic end of Spain’s
once-great New World empire. Fighting backward Spain, said the young
writer Sherwood Anderson, was “like robbing an old gypsy woman in a
vacant lot at night after the fair.” Victory in the War of 1898 boosted Ameri-
can self-confidence and reinforced the self-serving American belief, tinged
with racism, that the nation had a “manifest destiny” to reshape the world in
its own image. Josiah Strong had boasted in 1895 that Americans “are a race
of unequaled energy” who represent “the largest liberty, the purest Chris-
tianity, the highest civilization” in the world. “Can anyone doubt that this
race . . . is destined to dispossess many weaker races, assimilate others, and
mold the remainder until . . . it has Anglo-Saxonized mankind?”
912 • SEIZING AN AMERICAN EMPIRE (CH. 22)

The United States liberated Spain’s remaining colonies, yet in some cases
it would substitute its own oppression for Spain’s. If war with Spain saved
many lives by ending the insurrection in Cuba, it also led the United States
to suppress another anti-colonial insurrection, in the Philippines, and the
acquisition of its own imperial colonies created a host of festering problems
that persisted into the twentieth century. What happened in the Philippines
after 1898 would be replicated in Iraq and Afghanistan a century later: U.S.
troops were initially greeted as saviors but then became quickly despised as
occupiers. The United States triumphantly declared a victorious end to the
war, even as bitter “insurgent” fighting continued. Allegations of American
forces regularly using torture against the insurgents horrified the public.

T H E D E B AT E O V E R A N N E X AT I O N The United States and Spain

signed the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898, ending the war between the
two nations. It granted Cuba its independence, but the status of the Philip-
pines remained unresolved. American business leaders wanted to keep the
Philippines so that they could more easily penetrate the vast markets of pop-
ulous China. Missionary societies also wanted the United States to annex the
Philippines so that they could bring Christianity to “the little brown brother.”
The Philippines promised to provide a useful base for all such activities. Pres-
ident McKinley pondered the alternatives and later explained his reasoning
for annexing the Philippines (a “holy cause”) to a group of fellow Methodists:

And one night late it came to me this way—I don’t know how it was,
but it came: (1) that we could not give them back to Spain—that
would be cowardly and dishonorable; (2) that we could not turn them
over to France or Germany—our commercial rivals in the Orient—
that would be bad business and discreditable; (3) that we could not
leave them to themselves—they were unfit for self-government—and
they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than
Spain’s was; and (4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take
them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and
Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by
them, as our fellowmen for whom Christ also died. And then I went
to bed, and went to sleep and slept soundly.

In one brief statement, McKinley had summarized the motivating ideas of

American imperialism: (1) national glory, (2) commerce, (3) racial superi-
ority, and (4) evangelism. American negotiators in Paris finally offered the
Spanish $20 million for the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam, a Spanish-
controlled island in the Pacific with a valuable harbor.
 The War of 1898 • 913

Meanwhile, Americans had taken other giant steps in the Pacific. Con-
gress had annexed Hawaii in the midst of the War of 1898. In 1898, the
United States had also claimed Wake Island, located between Guam and the
Hawaiian Islands, which would become a vital link in a future transpacific
telegraph cable. Then, in 1899, Germany and the United States agreed to
partition the Samoa Islands. The United States annexed the easternmost
islands; Germany took the rest.
By early 1899, the Treaty of Paris, ending the War of 1898, had yet to be rat-
ified in the Senate, where most Democrats and Populists and some Republi-
cans opposed it. Anti-imperialists argued that acquisition of the Philippines
would corrupt the American principle, dating back to the Revolution, that
people should be self-governing rather than colonial subjects. Opponents
also noted the inconsistency of liberating Cuba and annexing the Philippines,
as well as the danger that the Philippines would become impossible to defend
if a foreign power such as Japan attacked. The opposition might have been
strong enough to kill the treaty had not the Democrat William Jennings
Bryan influenced the vote for approval. Ending the war, he argued, would
open the way for the future independence of the Philippines. His support
convinced enough Democrats to enable passage of the peace treaty in the
Senate on February 6, 1899, by the narrowest of margins: only one vote more
than the necessary two thirds. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts
described his efforts to gain approval of the treaty as “the closest, hardest
fight” he had witnessed in the Senate. He also admitted that if U.S. troops had
not provoked a clash with Filipino insurgents the weekend before, the treaty
would have been rejected and the Philippines would have been set free.
But McKinley had no intention of granting the Philippines independence.
He insisted that the United States take control of the islands as an act of
“benevolent assimilation” and launch America’s first exercise in nation
building. In February 1899, in the incident Senator Lodge referred to, an
American soldier outside Manila fired on soldiers in the Filipino Army of
Liberation, and two of them were killed. Suddenly, the United States found
itself in a new war, this time a crusade to suppress the Filipino independence
movement. Since Aguinaldo’s forces, called insurrectos, were more or less in
control of the islands outside Manila, what followed was largely a brutal
American war of conquest.

T H E P H I L I P P I N E - A M E R I C A N WA RThe American effort to quash

Filipino nationalism lasted three years, eventually involved some 126,000 U.S.
troops, and took the lives of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos (most of
them civilians) and 4,234 American soldiers. The nature of the war also cost
914 • SEIZING AN AMERICAN EMPIRE (CH. 22)

Turmoil in the Philippines

Emilio Aguinaldo (seated third from right) and other leaders of the Filipino
insurgence.

the United States much of its professed benevolence. It was a sordid conflict,
with grisly massacres committed by both sides. It did not help matters that
many American soldiers referred to their Filipino opponents as “niggers.”
Within the first year of the war in the Philippines, American newspapers
had begun to report an array of atrocities committed by U.S. troops—
villages burned, prisoners tortured and executed. A favorite means of torture
was the “water cure,” an old technique developed in the Spanish Inquisition
during the sixteenth century whereby a captured Filipino insurgent would
be placed on his back on the ground. While soldiers stood on his out-
stretched arms and feet, they pried his mouth open, holding it in place with
a stick. They then poured salt water into the captive’s mouth and nose until
his stomach was bloated, whereupon the soldiers would stomp on the pris-
oner’s abdomen, forcing out of his mouth and nose all of the water, now
mixed with gastric juices. This process would be repeated until the captive
told the soldiers what they wanted to know—or he died. A Senate investiga-
tion revealed the scope of such atrocities, but the senators did nothing. Their
attitude resembled that of President Theodore Roosevelt, who was con-
vinced that “nobody was seriously damaged” by the “water cure,” whereas
“Filipinos had inflicted terrible tortures upon our own people.” The “dark
abuses” stained American claims of solely noble intentions in the Philip-
pines. Thus did the United States alienate and destroy a Filipino indepen-
 The War of 1898 • 915

dence movement modeled after America’s own struggle for independence

from Great Britain. Organized Filipino resistance had collapsed by the end
of 1899, but even after the American capture of Aguinaldo in 1901, sporadic
guerrilla action lasted until mid-1902.
Against the backdrop of this nasty guerrilla war, the great debate over
imperialism continued in the United States. In 1899 several anti-imperialist
groups combined to form the American Anti-Imperialist League. The league
attracted members representing many shades of opinion. Former presidents
Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison urged President McKinley to with-
draw U.S. forces from the Philippines. Andrew Carnegie footed the bills for
the League; and on imperialism, at least, the union leader Samuel Gompers
agreed with the steel king. Presidents Charles Eliot of Harvard and David
Starr Jordan of Stanford University supported the group, along with the
social reformer Jane Addams. The drive for imperialism, said the philoso-
pher William James, had caused the nation to “puke up its ancient soul.”

RELIGION AND EMPIRE Many religious leaders energetically sup-

ported the war against Spain and the imperial conquest of Spain’s colonies
around the globe. In Boston, for example, the Herald reported that Protes-
tant ministers were the most rabid advocates of the new imperialism because

“The water cure”

A prisoner of war being tortured during the Philippine-American War.
916 • SEIZING AN AMERICAN EMPIRE (CH. 22)

it afforded them opportunities for “evangelization of the world.” Global mis-

sionary activity had soared after the Civil War as religious organizations
asserted that Christianity was the “highest and purest form of religion in
the world.” Evangelicals eagerly spread the blessings of Christianity around
the globe.
Protestant missionaries and their supporting organizations unabashedly
promoted the global superiority of the Anglo-Saxon “race” and the Christian
religion, and they were often virulently anti-Catholic. The California Christian
Advocate, for example, cheered the declaration of war with Catholic Spain in
1898: “The war is the Kingdom of God coming!” Another Protestant maga-
zine, the Pacific Advocate, announced that “the cross will follow the flag” as
“righteous” American soldiers prepared to liberate Cuba from Spanish con-
trol. Another evangelical declared that missionary activity was itself “a war of
conquest.” For Catholic Americans, however, the war against Spain, one of the
oldest and most intensely Catholic nations in the world, was more problem-
atic. They objected to Protestant plans to evangelize the Catholic Cubans. A
Catholic official warned that efforts to convert the Catholics of Cuba, Puerto
Rico, and the Philippines “would be the speediest and most effective way to
make the inhabitants of those islands discontented and opposed to America.”
In the debate over America’s annexing the Spanish colonies, religious argu-
ments held sway. Senator Albert J. Beveridge, an ardent imperialist, declared
that “we are God’s chosen people.” The United States, he added, had a “sacred
duty” to bring the blessings of American Christianity to the lands acquired
from Spain. Others shared this notion of providential responsibility for the
“backward” peoples of the world. Lyman Abbott, a prominent Protestant
clergyman and editor, said that America was a divine instrument of Christian
imperialism. It was, he said, “the function of the Anglo-Saxon race to confer
these gifts of civilization, through law, commerce, and education, on the
uncivilized people of the world.” Abbott lambasted the anti-imperialists:

It is said that we have no right to go to a land occupied by barbaric

people and interfere with their life. It is said that if they prefer
barbarism they have a right to be barbarians. I deny the right of
a barbaric people to retain possession of any quarter of the globe.
What I have already said I reaffirm: barbarism has no rights which
civilization is bound to respect. Barbarians have rights which civilized
people are bound to respect, but they have no right to their barbarism.

Abbott and others insisted that the United States could not shirk its provi-
dential duty to “save” the former Spanish colonies from degenerating into
chaos.
 The War of 1898 • 917

PRIBILOF ALASKA
SOVIET UNION ISLANDS CANADA
1867
1910
BERING SEA

ALEUTIAN ISLANDS 1889

LIAO-TUNG PENINSULA
Port Arthur (Lü-shun) UNITED
SHAN-TUNG PEN. KOREA STATES
Wei-hai
JAPAN
CHINA PA C I F I C OCEAN
HONG
KONG FORMOSA BONIN MIDWAY ISLANDS 1867
(TAIWAN) ISLANDS HAWAIIAN ISLANDS 1898
PESCADORES (PÕENG-HU)
Kwangchow
Bay MARIANA WAKE ISLAND 1898
PHILIPPINE ISLANDS JOHNSTON ATOLL 1858
ISLANDS
1898 GUAM 1898
MARSHALL KINGMAN REEF 1858
ISLANDS PALMYRA ATOLL 1898
CAROLINE ISLANDS
DU GILBERT
HOWLAND ISLAND 1857 Equator
TC ISLANDS BAKER ISLAND 1857
(IN H EAST
DON INDIES SOLOMON
ESIA) ISLANDS
SAMOA ISLANDS 1889
NEW HEBRIDES
(VANUATU)
U.S. INTERESTS
FIJI
AUSTRALIA ISLANDS
IN THE PACIFIC
Dates indicate year of acquisition
or occupation by the United States.

Why was President McKinley eager to acquire territory in the Pacific and the
Caribbean? What kind of political system did the U.S. government create in Hawaii
and in the Philippines? How did Filipinos and Hawaiians resist the Americans?

O RG A N I Z I N G T H E AC Q U I S I T I O N S The debate in the United States

over the future of the Philippines was intense. In the U.S. Senate, George Fris-
bie Hoar of Massachusetts, a Republican, was the most vocal of the anti-
imperialists. He infuriated President Roosevelt when he claimed on the Senate
floor that the war-loving president had “wasted $600 millions of treasure. You
have sacrificed nearly 10,000 American lives—the flower of our youth. You
have devastated provinces. You have slain uncounted thousands of the people
you desire to benefit. Your practical statesmanship has succeeded in convert-
ing a people who three years ago were ready to kiss the hem of the garment of
the American and to welcome him as liberator . . . into sullen and irreconcil-
able enemies, possessed of a hatred which centuries cannot eradicate.”
918 • SEIZING AN AMERICAN EMPIRE (CH. 22)

“Well, I Hardly Know Which to Take First!”

At the end of the nineteenth century, it seemed that Uncle Sam had developed a
considerable appetite for foreign territory.

In the end, however, the imperialists won the debate over the status of the
territories acquired from Spain. Senator Beveridge boasted in 1900: “The
Philippines are ours forever. And just beyond the Philippines are China’s
illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either. . . . The power that rules
the Pacific is the power that rules the world.” On July 4, 1901, the U.S. mili-
tary government in the Philippines came to an end, and Judge William
Howard Taft became the civil governor. The Philippine Government Act,
passed by Congress in 1902, declared the Philippine Islands an “unorganized
territory” and made the inhabitants citizens of the Philippines. In 1917, the
Jones Act affirmed America’s intention to grant the Philippines indepen-
dence on an unspecified date. Finally, the Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934
offered independence after ten more years. The Philippines would finally
become independent on July 4, 1946.
Closer to home, Puerto Rico had been acquired in part to serve as a U.S.
outpost guarding the approach to the Caribbean Sea and any future isth-
mian canal in Central America. On April 12, 1900, the Foraker Act estab-
lished a government on the island. The president appointed a governor and
 The War of 1898 • 919

eleven members of an executive council, and an elected House of Delegates

made up the lower house of the legislature. Residents of the island were
declared citizens of Puerto Rico; they were not made citizens of the United
States until 1917, when the Jones Act granted them U.S. citizenship and
made both houses of the legislature elective. In 1947 the governor also
became elective, and in 1952 Puerto Rico became a commonwealth with its
own constitution and elected officials, a unique status. Like a state, Puerto
Rico is free to change its constitution insofar as it does not conflict with the
U.S. Constitution.
Finally, there was Cuba. Having liberated the Cubans from Spanish rule,
the Americans found themselves propping up a shaky new government
whose economy was in shambles. Technically, Cuba had not gained its inde-
pendence in 1898. Instead, it remained a protectorate of the United States.
American troops remained in control of Cuba for four years, after which
they left, but on the condition that the United States could intervene again if
the political conditions in Cuba did not satisfy American expectations.
Clashes between U.S. soldiers and Cubans erupted almost immediately.
When President McKinley set up a military government for the island late in
1898, it was at odds with rebel leaders from the start. The United States
finally fulfilled the promise of independence after the military regime had
restored order, organized schools, and improved sanitary conditions. The
problem of disease in Cuba prompted the work of Dr. Walter Reed, who
made an outstanding contribution to health in tropical regions around the
world. Named head of the Army Yellow Fever Commission in 1900, he
proved that mosquitoes carried yellow fever. The commission’s experiments
led the way to effective control of the disease worldwide.
In 1900, on President McKinley’s order, Cubans drafted a constitution
modeled on that of the United States. The Platt Amendment, added to an
army appropriations bill passed by Congress in 1901, sharply restricted the
new Cuban government’s independence, however. The amendment required
that Cuba never impair its independence by signing a treaty with a third
power, that it keep its debt within the government’s power to repay it out of
ordinary revenues, and that it acknowledge the right of the United States to
intervene in Cuba whenever it saw fit. Finally, Cuba had to sell or lease to the
United States lands to be used for coaling or naval stations, a proviso that led
to a U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, which still exists today.
Under pressure, the Cuban delegates added the Platt Amendment to their
constitution. But resentments against America festered. As early as 1906, an
insurrection arose against the new government, and President Theodore
Roosevelt responded by sending now Secretary of War William Howard Taft
920 • SEIZING AN AMERICAN EMPIRE (CH. 22)

to suppress the rebels. Backed by U.S. armed forces, Taft assumed full gov-
ernment authority, as he had in the Philippines, and the American army
stayed until 1909, when a new Cuban president was peacefully elected. Spo-
radic interventions by U.S. troops would follow for more than two decades.

I M P E R I A L R I VA L R I E S IN EAST ASIA

During the 1890s, the United States was not the only nation to emerge
as a world power. Japan defeated China in the First Sino-Japanese War
(1894–1895). China’s weakness enabled European powers to exploit it. Rus-
sia, Germany, France, and Great Britain established spheres of influence in
China by the end of the century. In early 1898 and again in 1899, the British
asked the American government to join them in preserving the territorial
integrity of China against further imperialist actions. Both times the Senate
rejected the request because it risked an entangling alliance in a region—
Asia—where the United States as yet had no strategic investment.

THE “ OPEN D O OR ” The Amer-

ican outlook toward Asia changed
with the defeat of Spain and the
acquisition of the Philippines. Instead
of acting jointly with Great Britain,
however, the U.S. government decided
to act alone. What came to be known
as the Open Door policy was out-
lined in Secretary of State John
Hay’s Open Door Note, dispatched
in 1899 to his counterparts in Lon-
don, Berlin, and St. Petersburg (Rus-
sia) and a little later to Tokyo, Rome,
and Paris. It proposed to keep China
open to trade with all countries on
an equal basis. More specifically, it
called upon foreign powers, within
“The Open Door”
their spheres of influence, (1) to
Cartoon depicting Uncle Sam propping
open a door for China with a brick refrain from interfering with any
labeled “U.S. Army and Navy Prestige,” treaty port (a port open to all by
as colonial powers look on. treaty) or any vested interest, (2) to
 Imperial Rivalries in East Asia • 921

permit Chinese authorities to collect tariffs on an equal basis, and (3) to

show no favors to their own nationals in the matter of harbor dues or rail-
road charges. As it turned out, none of the European powers except Britain
accepted Hay’s principles, but none rejected them either. So Hay simply
announced that all the major powers involved in China had accepted
the policy.
The Open Door policy was rooted in desire of American businesses to
exploit Chinese markets. However, it also tapped the deep-seated sympathies
of those who opposed imperialism, especially as the policy pledged to pro-
tect China’s territorial integrity. But the much-trumpeted Open Door policy
had little legal standing. When the Japanese, concerned about Russian pres-
sure in Manchuria, asked how the United States intended to enforce the pol-
icy, Hay replied that America was “not prepared . . . to enforce these views.”
So it would remain for forty years, until continued Japanese expansion in
China would bring America to war in 1941.

T H E B OX E R R E B E L L I O NA new Asian crisis arose in 1900 when a

group of Chinese nationalists known to the Western world as Boxers (Fists
of Righteous Harmony) rebelled against foreign encroachments on China,

Trade with China

U.S. troops marching in Beijing after quelling the Boxer Rebellion.
922 • SEIZING AN AMERICAN EMPIRE (CH. 22)

especially Christian missionary efforts, and laid siege to foreign embassies in

Peking. An international expedition of British, German, Russian, Japanese,
and American forces mobilized to relieve the embassy compound. Hay, fear-
ful that the intervention might become an excuse to dismember China, took
the opportunity to further refine the Open Door policy. The United States,
he said in a letter of July 3, 1900, sought a solution that would “preserve Chi-
nese territorial and administrative integrity” as well as “equal and impartial
trade with all parts of the Chinese Empire.” Six weeks later the expedition
reached Peking and quelled the Boxer Rebellion.

B I G - S T I C K D I P LO M AC Y

More than any other American of his time, Theodore Roosevelt trans-
formed the role of the United States in world affairs. The nation had
emerged from the War of 1898 a world power with major new responsibili-
ties. To ensure that the United States accepted its international obligations,
Roosevelt stretched both the Constitution and executive power to the limit.
In the process, he pushed a reluctant nation onto the center stage of world
affairs.

R O O S E V E LT ’ S R I S EBorn in 1858, Roosevelt had grown up in Man-

hattan in cultured comfort, had visited Europe as a child, spoke German flu-
ently, and had graduated from Harvard with honors in 1880. A sickly,
scrawny boy with poor eyesight and chronic asthma, he built himself up into
a physical and intellectual athlete, a man of almost superhuman energies
who became a lifelong practitioner of the “strenuous life.” Roosevelt loved
rigorous exercise and outdoor activities. A boxer, wrestler, mountain climber,
hunter, and outdoorsman, he also displayed extraordinary intellectual curios-
ity. He became a voracious reader, a learned natural scientist, dedicated bird-
watcher, a renowned historian and essayist, and a zealous moralist. He wrote
thirty-eight books on a wide variety of subjects. His boundless energy and
fierce competitive spirit were infectious, and he was ever willing to express
an opinion on any subject. Within two years of graduating from Harvard,
Roosevelt won election to the New York legislature. “I rose like a rocket,” he
later observed.
But with the world seemingly at his feet, disaster struck. In 1884, Roo-
sevelt’s beloved mother Mittie, only forty-eight years old, died. Eleven hours
later, in the same house, his twenty-two-year-old wife Alice died in his arms
of kidney failure, having recently given birth to their only child. The double
 Big-Stick Diplomacy • 923

funeral was so wrenching that the officiating minister wept throughout his
prayer. In an attempt to recover from this “strange and terrible fate,” a dis-
traught Roosevelt turned his baby daughter Alice over to his sister, quit his
political career, sold the family house, and moved west to take up cattle
ranching in the Dakota Territory. The blue-blooded New Yorker escaped his
grief by plunging himself into virile western activities: he relished hunting
big game, leading cattle roundups, capturing outlaws, fighting Indians
(whom he termed a “lesser race”)—and reading novels by the campfire.
When a drunken cowboy, a gun in each hand, tried to bully the tinhorn Roo-
sevelt, teasing him about his glasses, the feisty Harvard dude laid him out
with one punch. Although his western career lasted only two years, he never
got over being a cowboy.
Back in New York City, Roosevelt remarried and ran unsuccessfully for
mayor in 1886; he later served six years as civil service commissioner and
two years as New York City’s police commissioner. In 1896, Roosevelt cam-
paigned hard for William McKinley, and the new president was asked to
reward him with the position of assistant secretary of the navy. McKinley
initially balked, saying that young Roosevelt was too “hotheaded,” but he
eventually relented and appointed the war-loving aristocrat. Roosevelt took
full advantage of his celebrity with the Rough Riders during the war in Cuba
to win the governorship of New York in November 1898. By then he had
become the most prominent Republican in the nation.
In the 1900 presidential contest, the Democrats turned once again to
William Jennings Bryan, who sought to make American imperialism the
“paramount issue” of the campaign. The Democratic platform condemned
the Philippine conflict as “an unnecessary war” that had placed the United
States “in the false and un-American position of crushing with military force
the efforts of our former allies to achieve liberty and self-government.”
The Republicans welcomed the chance to disagree. They renominated
McKinley and named Theodore Roosevelt, now virtually Mr. Imperialism,
his running mate. Marcus “Mark” Hanna, now a senator from Ohio but still
a powerful Republican strategist, had strenuously opposed Roosevelt’s nom-
ination at a party caucus: “Don’t any of you realize that there’s only one life
between this madman and the White House?” Yet Hanna’s concerns went
unheeded because Roosevelt’s much-publicized combat exploits in Cuba
had made him a national celebrity. Colonel Roosevelt was named “Man of
the Year” in 1898. Elected governor of New York that year, Roosevelt never-
theless leapt at the chance to be vice president in part because he despised
Bryan as a dangerous “radical” who called for the federal government to take
ownership of railroads. Roosevelt was more than a match for Bryan as a
924 • SEIZING AN AMERICAN EMPIRE (CH. 22)

campaign speaker, and he criss-

crossed the nation on behalf of
McKinley, speaking in opposition to
Bryan’s “communistic and socialistic
doctrines” promoting higher taxes
and the free coinage of silver. McKin-
ley outpolled Bryan by 7.2 million to
6.4 million popular votes and 292 to
155 electoral votes. Bryan even lost
his own state of Nebraska.
Less than a year after McKinley’s
victory, however, his second term
ended tragically. On September 6,
1901, at a reception at the Pan-
Mr. Imperialism American Exposition in Buffalo, an
This 1900 cartoon shows the Republican unemployed anarchist named Leon
vice-presidential candidate, Theodore Czolgosz (pronounced chole-gosh)
Roosevelt, overshadowing his running approached the fifty-eight-year-old
mate, President William McKinley.
president with a gun concealed in a
bandaged hand and fired at point-
blank range. McKinley died eight days later, and Theodore Roosevelt was
elevated to the White House. “Now look,” erupted Mark Hanna, the Ohio
businessman and politico, “that damned cowboy is President of the United
States!”
Six weeks short of his forty-third birthday, Roosevelt was the youngest
man ever to reach the White House, but he had more experience in public
affairs than most and perhaps more vitality than any. One observer com-
pared him to Niagara Falls, “both great wonders of nature.” Even Woodrow
Wilson, Roosevelt’s main political opponent, said that the former “Rough
Rider” was “a great big boy” at heart. “You can’t resist the man.” Roosevelt’s
glittering spectacles, glistening teeth, and overflowing gusto were a godsend
to the cartoonists, who added another trademark when he pronounced the
adage “Speak softly, and carry a big stick.”
Along with Roosevelt’s boundless energy went a sense of unshakable
self-righteousness, which led him to cast nearly every issue in moral and
patriotic terms. He was the first truly activist president. He considered the
presidency his “bully pulpit,” and he delivered fist-pumping speeches on the
virtues of righteousness, honesty, civic duty, and strenuosity. Nowhere was
President Roosevelt’s forceful will more evident than in his conduct of for-
eign affairs.
 Big-Stick Diplomacy • 925

T H E PA N A M A C A N A L After the War of 1898, the United States

became more deeply involved in the Caribbean. One issue overshadowed
every other in the region: the Panama Canal. The narrow isthmus of Panama
had first become a major concern of Americans in the late 1840s, when
it became an important overland route to the California goldfields. Two
treaties dating from that period loomed years later as obstacles to the con-
struction of a canal. The Bidlack Treaty (1846) with Colombia (then New
Granada) guaranteed both Colombia’s sovereignty over Panama and the
neutrality of the isthmus. In the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850) the British
agreed to acquire no more Central American territory, and the United States
joined them in agreeing to build or fortify a canal only by mutual consent.
After the War of 1898, Secretary of State John Hay asked the British ambas-
sador for such consent. The outcome was the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of 1901.
Other obstacles remained, however. From 1881 to 1887, a French company
under Ferdinand de Lesseps, who had engineered the Suez Canal in Egypt
between 1859 and 1869, had spent nearly $300 million and some twenty
thousand lives to dig less than a third of a canal across Panama, still under the
control of Colombia. The company asked that the United States purchase its
holdings, which it did.
Meanwhile, Secretary Hay had
opened negotiations with Ambas-
sador Tomás Herrán of Colom-
bia. In return for acquiring a canal
zone six miles wide, the United
States agreed to pay $10 million in
cash and a rental fee of $250,000
a year. The U.S. Senate ratified
the Hay-Herrán Treaty in 1903,
but the Colombian senate held
out for $25 million in cash. In
response to this act by those
“foolish and homicidal corrup-
tionists in Bogotá,” Theodore
Roosevelt, by then president,
flew into a rage. Meanwhile the
Panamanians revolted against
Colombian rule. Philippe Bunau- Digging the canal
Varilla, an employee of the French President Theodore Roosevelt operating a
canal company, assisted them, and steam shovel during his 1906 visit to the
reported, after visiting Roosevelt Panama Canal.
926 • SEIZING AN AMERICAN EMPIRE (CH. 22)

Why did America want to build the Panama Canal? How did the U.S. government
interfere with Colombian politics in an effort to gain control of the canal? What was
the Roosevelt Corollary?

and Hay in Washington, D.C., that American warships would arrive at

Colón, Panama, on November 2.
The Panamanians revolted the next day. Colombian troops, who could
not penetrate the overland jungle, found U.S. ships blocking the sea-lanes.
On November 13, the Roosevelt administration received its first ambassador
from Panama, who happened to be Philippe Bunau-Varilla; he eagerly
signed a treaty that extended the Canal Zone from six to ten miles in width.
For $10 million down and $250,000 a year, the United States received “in
perpetuity the use, occupation and control” of the Canal Zone. The U.S.
attorney general, asked to supply a legal opinion upholding Roosevelt’s
actions, responded wryly, “No, Mr. President, if I were you I would not have
 Big-Stick Diplomacy • 927

any taint of legality about it.”

Roosevelt later explained that “I
took the Canal Zone and let Con-
gress debate; and while the debate
goes on the [construction of the]
Canal does also.” The strategic
canal opened on August 15, 1914,
two weeks after the outbreak of
World War I in Europe.

T H E R O O S E V E LT C O R O L -
L A R Y The behavior of the
United States in gaining control
of the Panama Canal created ill
will throughout Latin America
The world’s policeman
that would last for generations.
President Theodore Roosevelt wields “the big
Equally galling to Latin American stick,” symbolizing his aggressive diplomacy.
sensibilities was the United States’
constant meddling in the internal
affairs of various nations. A prime excuse for intervention in those days was
to force the collection of debts owed to foreign corporations. In 1904, a crisis
over the debts of the Dominican Republic prompted Roosevelt to formulate
U.S. policy in the Caribbean. In his annual address to Congress in 1904,
he outlined what came to be known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the
Monroe Doctrine: the principle, in short, that since the Monroe Doctrine
prohibited intervention in the region by Europeans, the United States was
justified in intervening first to forestall involvement by outsiders.

T H E R U S S O - J A PA N E S E WA RIn east Asia, meanwhile, the principle of

equal trading rights embodied in the Open Door policy was tested when
rivalry between Russia and Japan flared into warfare. By 1904, the Japanese
had decided that the Russians threatened their ambitions in China and
Korea. On February 8, Japanese warships devastated the Russian fleet. The
Japanese then occupied the Korean peninsula and drove the Russians back
into Manchuria. But neither side could score a knockout blow, and neither
relished a prolonged war. Roosevelt offered to mediate their conflict. When
the Japanese signaled that they would welcome a negotiated settlement,
Roosevelt sponsored a peace conference in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
With the Treaty of Portsmouth, signed on September 5, 1905, the conces-
sions all went to the Japanese. Russia acknowledged Japan’s “predominant
928 • SEIZING AN AMERICAN EMPIRE (CH. 22)

political, military, and economic interests in Korea” (Japan would annex the
kingdom in 1910), and both powers agreed to evacuate Manchuria.

R E L AT I O N S W I T H J A PA N Japan’s show of strength against Russia

raised doubts among American leaders about the security of the Philippines.
During the Portsmouth talks, Roosevelt sent William Howard Taft to meet
with the Japanese foreign minister in Tokyo. The two men negotiated the
Taft-Katsura Agreement of July 29, 1905, in which the United States accepted
Japanese control of Korea, and Japan disavowed any designs on the Philip-
pines. Three years later the Root-Takahira Agreement, negotiated by Secre-
tary of State Elihu Root and the Japanese ambassador, endorsed the status
quo and reinforced the Open Door policy by supporting “the independence
and integrity of China” and “the principle of equal opportunity for com-
merce and industry in China.”
Behind the diplomatic facade of goodwill, however, lay mutual distrust.
For many Americans the Russian threat in east Asia now gave way to con-
cerns about the “yellow peril” (a term apparently coined by Kaiser Wilhelm
II of Germany). Racial animosities on the West Coast helped sour relations
with Japan. In 1906, San Francisco’s school board ordered students of Asian
descent to attend a separate public school. The Japanese government sharply
protested such prejudice, and President Roosevelt persuaded the school
board to change its policy, but only after making sure that Japanese authori-
ties would not issue “visas” to “laborers,” except former residents of the
United States; the parents, wives, or children of residents; or those who
already possessed an interest in an American farming enterprise. This “Gen-
tlemen’s Agreement” of 1907, the precise terms of which have never been
revealed, halted the influx of Japanese immigrants and brought some respite
to racial agitation in California.

T H E U N I T E D S TAT E S A N D E U R O P E At the same time that the

United States was expanding into Asia and the Caribbean, tensions in
Europe were boiling over. While Roosevelt was moving toward mediation of
the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, a dangerous crisis was brewing in Morocco.
There, on March 31, 1905, the German kaiser, Wilhelm II, stepped ashore at
Tangier and gave a saber-rattling speech criticizing French and British inter-
ests in North Africa. The kaiser’s speech aroused a diplomatic firestorm.
Roosevelt felt that the United States had a huge stake in preventing the out-
break of a major war. At the kaiser’s behest, he talked the French and the
British into attending an international conference at Algeciras, Spain, with
 Big-Stick Diplomacy • 929

U.S. delegates present. Roosevelt then maneuvered the Germans into accept-
ing his compromise proposal.
The Act of Algeciras, signed in 1906, affirmed the independence of Morocco
and guaranteed an open door for trade there but provided for the training
and control of Moroccan police by France and Spain. The U.S. Senate rati-
fied the agreement, but stipulated that America remain committed to neu-
trality in European affairs. Roosevelt received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906
for his diplomacy at Portsmouth and Algeciras. Despite his bellicosity on
other occasions, he had earned it.
Before Roosevelt left the White House, he celebrated America’s rise to the
status of a world power with one great flourish. In 1907, he sent the entire
U.S. Navy, by then second in strength only to the British fleet, on a grand
tour around the world, announcing that he was ready for “a feast, a frolic, or
a fight.” He got mostly the first two and none of the last. At every port of call
down the Atlantic coast of South America, up the west coast, out to Hawaii,
and down to New Zealand and Australia, the “Great White Fleet” received
rousing welcomes. The triumphal procession continued home by way of the
Mediterranean and steamed back into American waters in early 1909, just in
time to close out Roosevelt’s presidency on a note of success.
Yet it was a success that would have mixed consequences. Roosevelt’s
effort to deploy American power abroad was accompanied by a racist ideol-
ogy shared by many prominent political figures of the time. He once told
the graduates of the Naval War College that all “the great masterful races
have been fighting races, and the minute that a race loses the hard fighting
virtues . . . it has lost the right to stand as equal to the best.” On another occa-
sion he called warfare the best way to promote “the clear instinct for race
selfishness” and insisted that “the most ultimately righteous of all wars is a
war with savages.” Such a belligerent, self-righteous bigotry defied America’s
egalitarian ideals and would come back to haunt the United States in world
affairs—and at home.
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• New Imperialism By the beginning of the twentieth century, the idea of a

manifest destiny and American industrialists’ need for new markets for their
goods fueled America’s “new imperialism.” The ideology of social Darwinism
was used to justify the colonization of less developed nations as white Americans
held that their own industrial superiority proved their racial superiority and,
therefore, the theory of the survival of the fittest. White Americans rationalized
further that they had a duty to Christianize and uplift “backward” peoples.
• Religion and Imperialism Protestant missionaries felt impelled to take
Christianity to native peoples throughout the world. An indigenous people’s
acceptance of Christianity was the first step toward the loss of their own culture.
• War of 1898 Spain still had an extensive empire, and Cuba was one of its oldest
colonies. When Cubans revolted against Spain in 1895, many Americans were
sympathetic to their demand for independence. The insurrection was harshly
suppressed, and sensational coverage in certain New York newspapers further
aroused Americans’ sympathy. Early in 1898, the publication of a letter by
Spain’s minister to the United States, Depuy de Lôme, which criticized President
McKinley, and then the explosion of the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana Har-
bor, propelled America into a war with Spain despite the reluctance of President
McKinley and many business interests.
• Results of the War of 1898 Although the Teller Amendment declared that the
United States had no intention of annexing Cuba, America curtailed Cuba’s
freedom and annexed other territories taken from Spain in the War of 1898.
Insurrection followed in the Philippines when insurgents saw that the islands
would be administered by the United States. In the treaty that ended the war,
the United States gained Puerto Rico as well as Guam and other islands in the
Pacific. Meanwhile, Hawaii had been annexed during the war.
• Big-Stick Diplomacy As president, Theodore Roosevelt actively pursued an impe-
rialist foreign policy, confirming the United States’ new role as a world power. With
his Big-Stick Diplomacy, he arbitrated the treaty that ended the Russo-Japanese
War, proclaimed the Open Door policy with China, allowed his administration to
engage in dealings that made possible American control over the Panama Canal,
and sent the navy’s entire fleet around the world as a symbol of American might.
He articulated an extension of the Monroe Doctrine whereby the United States
might intervene in disputes between North and South America and other world
powers.
 CHRONOLOGY

1894
1895
1898
Republic of Hawaii is proclaimed
Cuban insurrection breaks out against Spanish rule
U.S. battleship Maine explodes in Havana Harbor
1898 War of 1898
1898 United States annexes Hawaii
1899 U.S. Senate ratifies the Treaty of Paris, ending the War of 1898
1899–1902 Filipino insurgents resist U.S. domination
1900 Army Yellow Fever Commission confirms the cause of yellow
fever
1900 International alliance quells the Boxer Rebellion
1903 Panamanians revolt against Colombia
1905 Russo-Japanese War
1907 Great White Fleet circumnavigates the globe in a demonstra-
tion of America’s rise to world-power status
1914 Panama Canal opens

KEY TERMS & NAMES

Alfred Thayer Mahan’s The Joseph Pulitzer’s New York Emilio Aguinaldo p. 908
Influence of Sea Power upon World p. 904
History, 1660–1783 p. 899 Rough Riders p. 908
yellow journalism p. 904
Theodore Roosevelt p. 899 Dr. Walter Reed p. 919
de Lôme letter p. 905
Queen Liliuokalani p. 902 Open Door policy p. 920
Teller Amendment p. 907
William Randolph Hearst’s Roosevelt Corollary to the
New York Journal p. 904 George Dewey p. 907 Monroe Doctrine p. 927

23
“MAKING THE
WORLD OVER”: THE
PROGRESSIVE ERA

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• Who were the progressives, and what were their major causes?
• Who were the muckrakers, and what impact did they have?
• What were Theodore Roosevelt’s and William Howard Taft’s
progressive programs, and what were those programs’ goals?
• Why was the election of 1912 significant?
• How was Woodrow Wilson’s progressivism different from
Roosevelt’s?

T heodore Roosevelt’s emergence as a national political leader

coincided with the onset of what historians have labeled the
Progressive Era (1890–1920), a period of dramatic political
reform and social activism. During those thirty years, governments—local,
state, and federal—grew in scope, power, and activism. Progressive reformers
attacked corruption and inefficiency in government and used government
authority to regulate businesses and workplaces through regular on-site
inspections, regulatory commissions, and antitrust laws. The Progressive Era
also witnessed the passage of a graduated (“progressive”) federal income tax,
the creation of a new national banking system, and the first governmental
attempts to conserve natural resources and environmental treasures. In
addition, the Progressive Era saw an explosion of grassroots reform efforts
across the United States, including the prohibition of alcoholic beverages
and the awarding of voting rights for women.
Progressivism was a wide-ranging impulse rather than a single organized
movement, a multifaceted, often fragmented, and at times contradictory
 “Making the World Over”: The Progressive Era • 933

response to the urgent problems created by unregulated industrialization,

unplanned urbanization, unrelenting immigration, and the unequal distrib-
ution of wealth and power. Progressives believed that America was in a seri-
ous crisis by the late nineteenth century, and the crisis would not resolve
itself. It required action—by governments, by churches, by experts, and by
volunteers. As Jane Addams, the nation’s leading social reformer, who would
become the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, stressed, “Action is
indeed the sole medium of expression for ethics.”
Beginning in the late nineteenth century, progressives emerged in every
area of life: neighborhood churches, organized labor, local political life,
social service organizations, higher education, and the professions. The
progressives were optimistic that society could be improved through cre-
ative initiatives and concerted action, moral idealism and social scientific
research. They were reformers but not radicals; they opposed violence and
only a few flirted with socialism. By working together in a spirit of commu-
nity, individuals, organizations, and “good” governments could ensure social
“progress.”
Progressives came in all stripes: men and women; Democrats, Republi-
cans, and Populists; labor unionists and business executives; teachers and
professors; social workers and municipal workers; ardent religionists as well
as atheists and agnostics. Whatever their motives and methods, they were
earnest, well-intentioned, good-hearted people who greatly improved the
quality of life and the effectiveness and integrity of government. By the
1920s, progressives had implemented significant changes at all levels of gov-
ernment and across all levels of society.
Yet progressivism had flaws too. The progressives were mostly middle-
class urban reformers armed with Christian moralism as well as the latest
research from the new social sciences, but their “do-good” perspective was
often limited by class biases and racial prejudices. Progressivism had blind
spots, especially concerning the volatile issues of race relations and immi-
gration policy. Some reform efforts were in fact intended as middle-class
tools to exercise paternalistic oversight of “common” people.
By the start of the twentieth century, so many activists were trying to
improve social conditions that people began to speak of a Progressive Era, a
time of fermenting idealism and sweeping social, economic, and political
changes. The scope of the social crisis was so vast and complex that new
remedies were needed. As the inventive genius Thomas Edison said, “We’ve
stumbled along for a while, trying to run a new civilization in old ways, but
we’ve got to start to make this world over.”
934 • “MAKING THE WORLD OVER”: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA (CH. 23)

ELEMENTS OF REFORM

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, political progres-

sives at the local and state levels crusaded against the abuses of urban politi-
cal bosses and corporate barons. Their goals were greater democracy, honest
and efficient government, more effective regulation of business, and greater
social justice for working people. Only by expanding the scope of local, state,
and federal government involvement in society, they believed, could these
goals be accomplished. The “real heart of the movement,” declared one
reformer, was “to use the government as an agency of human welfare.”
Progressivism also contained an element of conservatism, however. In
some cases the regulation of business was proposed by business leaders who
preferred regulated stability in their marketplace to the chaos and uncer-
tainty of unrestrained competition. In addition, many reformers were moti-
vated by conservative religious beliefs that led them to focus their energies
on moral regulations such as the prohibition of alcoholic beverages and
Sunday closing laws, whereby businesses were not allowed to be open on the
Christian Sabbath.
In sum, progressivism was diverse in both its motives and its agenda. Few
people embraced all of the progressive causes. What reformers shared was a
common assumption that the complex social ills and tensions generated by
the urban-industrial revolution required new responses and better, more
honest, more efficient, and expanded governments. Progressives asked local,
state, and federal governments to provide a broad range of direct public
services: public schools, good roads (a movement propelled first by cyclists
and then by automobilists), environmental conservation and preservation,
workplace regulations, limitations on the use of child labor, public health
and welfare, care of the disabled, and farm loans and technical expertise,
among others. Such initiatives represented the first steps toward what would
become known during the 1930s and thereafter as the welfare state.

T H E VA R I E D S O U R C E S O F P R O G R E S S I V I S M The progressive
impulse arose in response to many societal changes, the most powerful of
which were the growing tensions between labor and management in the
1880s, the chronic corruption in political life, the abusive power of big busi-
ness, the hazards of the industrial workplace, especially for women and chil-
dren, and the social miseries created by the devastating depression of the
1890s. The depression brought hard times to the cities, worsened already
dreadful working conditions in factories, mines, and mills, deepened distress
 The Social Gospel • 935

in rural areas, and aroused both the fears and the conscience of the rapidly
growing middle class. Although the United States boasted the highest per
capita income in the world, it also harbored some of the poorest people. In
1900, an estimated 10 million of the 82 million Americans lived in desperate
poverty. Most of the destitute were among the record number of arriving
immigrants, many of whom lived in city slums.
Populism was one of the primary catalysts of progressivism. The Populist
platform of 1892 outlined many political reforms that would be accom-
plished during the Progressive Era. After the collapse of the farmers’ move-
ment and the revival of the agricultural economy at the turn of the century,
the reform spirit shifted to the cities, where middle-class activists had for
years attacked the problems of political corruption and urban development.
The Mugwumps, those gentlemen reformers who had fought the spoils
system and insisted that government jobs be awarded on the basis of merit,
supplied progressivism with an important element of its thinking: the
honest-government ideal. Over the years the honest-government movement
had been broadened to include efforts to address festering urban problems
such as crime, vice, and the efficient provision of gas, electricity, water, sew-
ers, mass transit, and garbage collection.
Another significant force in fostering the most radical wing of progres-
sivism was the influence of socialist doctrines. The small Socialist party
served as the left wing of progressivism. Most progressives balked at the rad-
icalism of socialist remedies and labor violence. In fact, the progressive
impulse arose in part from a desire to counter the growing influence of mili-
tant socialism by promoting more mainstream reforms. As Theodore Roo-
sevelt explained, “In the interest of the working man himself, we need to set
our faces like flint against mob violence just as against corporate greed.” The
prominent role played by religious activists and women reformers was also
an important source of progressive energy.

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

During the late nineteenth century, more and more people took
action to address the complex social problems generated by rapid urban and
industrial growth. Some reformers focused on legislative solutions to social
problems; others stressed direct assistance to the laboring poor in their
neighborhoods or organized charity. Whatever the method or approach,
however, social reformers were on the march at the turn of the century, and
their activities gave to American life a new urgency and energy.
936 • “MAKING THE WORLD OVER”: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA (CH. 23)

CHRISTIAN C RU S A D E R S FOR REFORM Churches responded

slowly to the mounting social concerns of urban America, for American
Protestantism had become one of the main props of the established social
order. The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, pastor of the fashionable Ply-
mouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn, preached the virtues of unregu-
lated capitalism, social Darwinism, and the unworthiness of the poor. As the
middle classes moved out to the new suburbs made possible by streetcar lines,
their churches followed, leaving inner-city neighborhoods churchless. From
1868 to 1888, for instance, seventeen Protestant churches abandoned the area
below Fourteenth Street in Manhattan. As ministers catered to the wealthy,
they used their sermons to reinforce the economic and social inequalities that
grew ever wider during the second half of the nineteenth century.
By the 1870s, however, a younger generation of Protestant and Catholic
religious leaders had grown concerned that Christianity had turned its back
on the poor and voiceless, the very people that Jesus had focused on. During
the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a growing number of churches
and synagogues began devoting their resources to community service and
care of the unfortunate. The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA)
entered the United States from England in the 1850s and grew rapidly after
1870; the Salvation Army, founded in London in 1878, came to the United
States a year later.

RELIGIOUS REFORMERS Church reformers who feared that Chris-

tianity was losing its relevance among the masses began to preach what came
to be called the social gospel. In 1875, Washington Gladden, a widely
respected Congregational pastor in Springfield, Massachusetts, invited strik-
ing workers at a shoe factory to attend his church. They refused because the
factory owners and managers were members of the church. Gladden decided
that there was something wrong when churches were divided along class
lines, so he wrote a pathbreaking book titled Working People and Their
Employers (1876). Gladden argued that true Christianity lies not in rituals,
dogmas, or even the mystical experience of God but in the principle that
“thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” He rejected the notion put forth by
social Darwinists that the poor deserved their destitute fate and should not
be helped. Christian values and virtues should govern the workplace, with
worker and employer united in serving each other’s interests. Gladden
endorsed labor’s right to organize unions and complained that class distinc-
tions should not split congregations.
Gladden’s efforts helped launch a new era in the development of American
religious life. He and other like-minded ministers during the 1870s and 1880s
 Early Efforts at Urban Reform • 937

reached out to the working poor who worked long hours for low wages, had
inadequate housing, lacked insurance coverage for on-the-job accidents, and
had no legal right to form unions. By the start of the twentieth century, the
acknowledged intellectual leader of the social gospel movement was the Bap-
tist Walter Rauschenbusch, a seminary professor in New York who spent a
decade ministering to the destitute poor in New York City’s “Hell’s Kitchen”
neighborhood. In an influential book, Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907),
as well as other writings, Rauschenbusch developed a theological basis for the
social gospel movement. “If society continues to disintegrate and decay,” he
warned, “the Church will be carried down with it.” But if the religious commu-
nity “can rally such moral forces that injustice will be oversome . . . it will itself
rise to higher liberty and life.” The Church was indispensable to religion, he
insisted, but “the greatest future awaits religion in the public life of humanity.”
One young minister who was transformed by Rauschenbusch’s compelling
case for a “holistic social gospel” said that his efforts “ushered in a new era in
Christian thought and action.”

E A R LY E F F O R T S AT URBAN REFORM

T H E S E T T L E M E N T H O U S E M OV E M E N T While preachers of the

social gospel dispensed inspiration, other dedicated reformers attacked the
problems of the slums from residential community centers called settle-
ment houses. By 1900, perhaps a hundred settlement houses existed in the
United States, some of the best known being Jane Addams and Ellen Gates
Starr’s Hull-House in Chicago (1889), Robert A. Woods’s South End House
in Boston (1891), and Lillian Wald’s Henry Street Settlement (1893) in New
York City.
The settlement houses were designed to bring together prosperous men
and women with the working poor, often immigrants. The houses were in
rundown neighborhoods. They usually were segregated by gender and staffed
mainly by young middle-class idealists, a majority of them college-trained
women who had few other outlets for meaningful work outside the home. Set-
tlement workers sought to broaden the horizons of the upper-middle-class
volunteers and improve the lives of slum dwellers in diverse ways. At Hull-
House, for instance, Jane Addams rejected the “do-goodism” spirit of religious
reformers. Her approach used pragmatism rather than preaching, focusing
on the practical needs of the working poor and newly arrived immigrants—
as well as the benefits of affluent volunteers being exposed to the realities
of underclass life. As Addams insisted, citizens in a democracy “cannot
938 • “MAKING THE WORLD OVER”: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA (CH. 23)

cooperate so long as one group sets

itself up as superior [to another].” She
and her staff helped enroll neighbor-
hood children in clubs and kinder-
gartens and set up a nursery to care for
the infant children of working moth-
ers. The program gradually expanded
as Hull-House sponsored health clin-
ics, lectures, music and art studios,
an employment bureau, men’s clubs,
training in skills such as bookbinding,
a gymnasium, and a savings bank. Flo-
rence Kelley, who joined the Hull-
House settlement in 1891 and eight
years later moved to the Henry Street
Jane Addams Settlement in the Lower East Side of
By the end of the century, religious New York City, played a powerful role
groups were taking up the settlement in getting an array of legislation passed
house movement. that addressed horrible housing and
working conditions.
Settlement house leaders realized, however, that the spreading slums
made their work as effective as bailing out the ocean with a teaspoon. They
therefore organized political support for local and state laws that would
ensure sanitary housing codes and create public playgrounds, juvenile
courts, mothers’ pensions, workers’ compensation laws, and legislation pro-
hibiting child labor and monitoring the working conditions in factory
“sweatshops.” Lillian Wald promoted the establishment of the federal Chil-
dren’s Bureau in 1912, and Jane Addams, for her work in the peace move-
ment, received the Nobel Peace Prize for 1931. When Addams died, in 1935,
she was the most venerated woman in America. The settlement houses pro-
vided portals of opportunity for women to participate and even lead many
progressive efforts to improve living and working conditions for newly
arrived immigrants as well as American citizens.

WO M E N ’ S E M P L O Y M E N T A N D A C T I V I S M Settlement house
workers, insofar as they were paid, made up but a fraction of all gainfully
employed women. With the rapid growth of the general population, the
number of employed women steadily increased, as did the percentage of
women in the labor force. The greatest leaps forward came in the 1880s and
the first decade of the new century, which were also peak decades of immi-
 Early Efforts at Urban Reform • 939

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

In this 1870s engraving, Stanton speaks at a meeting of the National Woman
Suffrage Association.

gration, a correlation that can be explained by the immigrants’ need for

income. The number of employed women went from over 2.6 million in
1880 to 4 million in 1890, then from 5.1 million in 1900 to 7.8 million in
1910. The employment of women in large numbers was the most significant
event in women’s history. Through all those years domestic work remained
the largest category of employment for women; teaching and nursing also
remained among the leading fields. The main change was that clerical work
(bookkeeping, stenography, and the like), and sales jobs became increasingly
available to women.
These changes in occupational status had little connection to the women’s
rights movement, which increasingly focused on the issue of suffrage.
Immediately after the Civil War, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stan-
ton, seasoned leaders of the suffrage movement, demanded that the Fif-
teenth Amendment give the vote to women as well as to black men. They
refused to support the amendment without such a change, and they stooped
to using racist arguments to promote their cause. In 1868, New Yorker Stan-
ton appealed to the pervasive racism across America when she wrote in her
suffragist newspaper, The Revolution, that women deserved the vote more
than African American and immigrant men. “Think of Patrick and Sambo,
940 • “MAKING THE WORLD OVER”: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA (CH. 23)

and Hans and Yung Tung,” she advised readers. In her view, illiterate, igno-
rant men had no right to help elect politicians and help make laws affecting
educated women. Such arguments, however, made little impression on the
defenders of a man’s prerogative, who insisted that women belonged in the
domestic sphere.
Although denied voting rights, women became increasingly involved in the
public sphere outside the home. Women’s organizations grew exponentially
during the Gilded Age. Church groups, book clubs, women’s clubs, mothers’
clubs, and temperance societies provided active outlets outside the home. The
largest and most influential women’s organization was the Women’s Christian
Temperance Union (WCTU). Founded in 1874, it expanded throughout the
nation during the 1880s. By 1890, the WCTU counted some 150,000 mem-
bers, most of whom were white, urban, middle class Protestants. Led by
Frances Willard, the WCTU focused on stopping alcohol abuse but also agi-
tated for prison reforms, aid for homeless children, pre-school education
(kindergartens), sex education, aid to working women, and women’s suffrage.
The WCTU did more than any other organization to mobilize women in sup-
port of progressive social reforms.
In 1869, a divisive issue broke the unity of the women’s movement: whether
the movement should concentrate on gaining the vote at the expense of pro-
moting other women’s issues. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
founded the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) to promote a
women’s suffrage amendment to the Constitution, but they considered gaining
the right to vote as but one among many feminist causes to be promoted. Later
that year, activists formed the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA),
which focused single-mindedly on the suffrage as the first and basic reform.
It would be another half century before the battle would be won, and the
long struggle focused the women’s cause ever more on the primary objective
of the vote. In 1890, after three years of negotiation, the rival groups united
as the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), with Eliz-
abeth Cady Stanton as president for two years, to be followed by Susan B.
Anthony until 1900. The work thereafter was carried on by a new generation
of activists, led by Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt.
The suffrage movement remained in the doldrums until the cause of vot-
ing rights at the state level easily won a Washington state referendum in 1910
and then carried California by a close majority in 1911. The following year
three more western states—Arizona, Kansas, and Oregon—joined in to make
a total of nine western states with full suffrage. In 1913, Illinois granted
women suffrage in presidential and municipal elections. Yet not until New
York acted in 1917 did a state east of the Mississippi adopt universal suffrage.
 Early Efforts at Urban Reform • 941

NH
VT ME
WA
MT ND
MN
OR NY MA
ID WI MI
SD RI
WY PA CT
IA NJ
NE OH DE
NV IL IN MD
UT WV VA
CA CO
KS MO KY
NC
TN
OK AR SC
AZ
NM GA
AL
MS
LA
TX

WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE, 1869–1914 FL

States that adopted full women’s suffrage

from 1869 to 1896
States that adopted full women’s suffrage 0 200 Miles
from 1910 to 1914
0 200 Kilometers
States that had not adopted full women’s
suffrage by 1914

Which states first gave women the right to vote? Why did it take fifty-one years,
from Wyoming’s grant of full suffrage to women until ratification of the Nineteenth
Amendment, for women to receive the right to vote? How was suffrage part of a
larger women’s reform movement?

Despite the focus on the vote, women did not confine their public work to
that issue. In 1866 the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), a par-
allel to the YMCA, appeared in Boston and spread elsewhere. The New Eng-
land Women’s Club, started in 1868 by Julia Ward Howe and others, was an
early example of the women’s clubs that proliferated to such an extent that a
General Federation of Women’s Clubs was established in 1890 to tie them all
together. Many women’s clubs focused solely on “literary” and social activi-
ties, but others became deeply involved in charities and reform. The New
York Consumers’ League, formed in 1890, and the National Consumers’
League, formed nine years later, sought to make the buying public, chiefly
women, aware of unfair labor conditions. One of its devices was the “White
List” of firms that met its minimum standards. The National Women’s Trade
Union League, founded in 1903, performed a similar function of bringing
942 • “MAKING THE WORLD OVER”: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA (CH. 23)

educated and middle-class women together with working women for the
benefit of women unionists.

S TAT E R E F O R M S A N D L E G A L B A C K L A S H Even without the sup-

port of voting women in most places, many states during the late nineteenth
century started regulating big business and working conditions in the public
interest. By the end of the century, nearly every state had begun to regulate
railroads, if not always effectively, and had moved to supervise banks and
insurance companies. By one count, the states and territories passed more
than 1,600 laws between 1887 and 1897 relating to conditions in the work-
place: limiting the number of hours required of workers, providing special
protection for women, limiting or forbidding child labor, requiring that
wages be paid regularly and in cash, and calling for factory inspections.
Nearly all states had boards or commissioners of labor, and some had boards
of conciliation and arbitration. Still, conservative judges limited the practi-
cal impact of the laws.
In thwarting such new regulatory efforts, the conservative U.S. Supreme
Court used a revised interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment clauses
forbidding the states to “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, with-
out due process of law” or to deny any person “the equal protection of the
laws.” Two significant steps of legal reasoning turned the due-process clause
into a bulwark of private property. First, the judges reasoned that the word
person in the clause included corporations. Second, the courts moved away
from the old view that “due process” referred only to correct procedures,
adopting instead the doctrine of “substantive due process,” which allowed
courts to review the substance of a legislative action. The principle of sub-
stantive due process enabled judges to overturn laws that deprived persons
(and corporations) of property to an unreasonable degree and thereby vio-
lated due process.

THE MUCKRAKERS Chronic urban poverty, unsafe working condi-

tions, and worrisome child labor in mills, mines, and factories were complex
social issues; remedying them required raising public awareness and political
action. The “muckrakers,” investigative journalists who thrived on exposing
social ills and corporate and political corruption, got their name from
Theodore Roosevelt, who acknowledged that crusading journalists were
“often indispensable to . . . society, but only if they know when to stop raking
the muck.” By writing exposés of social ills in newspapers and magazines, the
muckrakers gave journalism a new social purpose, a political voice beyond
simply endorsing one party or another.
 Early Efforts at Urban Reform • 943

The golden age of muckraking is

sometimes dated from 1902, when
Sam McClure, the owner of best-
selling McClure’s Magazine, decided
to use the publication to expose the
rampant corruption in politics and
corporations. “Capitalists, working-
men, politicians, citizens—all break-
ing the law or letting it be broken.
Who is left to uphold” American
demo cracy, McClure asked. His
answer was investigative journalism.
McClure’s bravely took on corporate
monopolies and crooked political
machines while revealing the awful
living and working conditions expe-
rienced by masses of Americans.
McClure’s published articles by Lin-
coln Steffens on municipal corrup- Cover of McClure’s Magazine, 1902
tion, later collected into a book, The This cover features Ida Tarbell’s
Shame of the Cities (1904). McClure’s muckracking series on the Standard Oil
Company.
also published Ray Stannard Baker’s
account of the strike by coal miners
in West Virginia and Ida M. Tarbell’s devastating History of the Standard Oil
Company (1904). Tarbell’s revelations helped convince the Supreme Court
in 1911 to rule that John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company must be
dismantled. Other reform-minded books that began as magazine articles
exposed corruption in the stock market, the meat-processing industry, the
life-insurance business, and the political world. Many of the muckrakers
were animated by their own version of the Social Gospel. Steffens, for exam-
ple, stressed that “the doctrine of Jesus is the most revolutionary propaganda
that I have ever encountered.”
Without the muckrakers, the far-flung reform efforts of progressivism
would never have achieved widespread popular support. In feeding the pub-
lic’s appetite for sordid social facts, the muckrakers demonstrated one of the
salient features of the Progressive movement, and one of its central failures:
the progressives were stronger on diagnosis than on remedy. They professed
a naive faith in the power of democracy. Give the people the facts, expose
corruption, and bring government close to the people, reformers believed,
and the correction of evils would follow automatically. The cure for the ills
944 • “MAKING THE WORLD OVER”: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA (CH. 23)

of democracy, it seemed, was a more informed and a more active democracy.

What they failed to acknowledge was that no reform would change the
essentially flawed nature of human beings.

F E AT U R E S OF PROGRESSIVISM

D E M O C R AC Y Progressives at the local and state levels focused on clean-

ing up governments. Too many elected officials, they believed, did the bid-
ding of corporations rather than served the interests of all the people. The
most important reform that political progressives promoted to democratize
government and encourage greater political participation was the direct pri-
mary, whereby all party members would participate in the election of candi-
dates, rather than the traditional practice in which an inner circle of party
activists chose the nominee. Under the traditional convention system, only a
small proportion of voters attended the local caucuses or precinct meetings
that sent delegates to party nominating conventions. While this traditional
method allowed seasoned leaders to sift the candidates, it also lent itself to
domination by political professionals. Direct primaries at the local level had
been held sporadically since the 1870s, but after South Carolina adopted the
first statewide primary in 1896, the movement spread within two decades to
nearly every state.
The party primary was but one expression of a broad progressive move-
ment for greater public participation in the political process. In 1898, South
Dakota became the first state to adopt the initiative and referendum, proce-
dures that allow voters to enact laws directly rather than having to wait for leg-
islative action. If a designated number of voters petitioned to have a measure
put on the ballot (the initiative), the electorate could then vote it up or down
(the referendum). Oregon adopted a spectrum of reform measures, including
a voter-registration law (1899), the initiative and referendum (1902), the direct
primary (1904), a sweeping corrupt-practices act (1908), and the recall (1910),
whereby corrupt or incompetent public officials could be removed by a public
petition and vote. Within a decade, nearly twenty states had adopted the initia-
tive and referendum, and nearly a dozen had accepted the recall.
Most states adopted the party primary even in the choice of U.S. senators,
heretofore selected by state legislatures. Nevada was first, in 1899, to let
voters express a choice that state legislators of their party were expected to
follow in choosing senators. The popular election of U.S. senators required a
constitutional amendment, and the House of Representatives, beginning in
1894, four times adopted such an amendment, only to see it defeated in the
 Features of Progressivism • 945

Senate, which came under increasing attack as a “millionaires’ club.” In 1912

the Senate finally accepted the inevitable and agreed to the Seventeenth
Amendment, authorizing popular election of senators. The amendment was
ratified in 1913.

EFFICIENCY A second major theme of progressivism was the “gospel of

efficiency.” In the business world during the early twentieth century, Freder-
ick W. Taylor, the original “efficiency expert,” was developing the techniques
he summed up in his book The Principles of Scientific Management (1911).
Taylorism, as scientific industrial management came to be known, promised
to reduce waste and inefficiency in the workplace through the scientific
analysis of labor processes. By breaking down the production of goods into
sequential steps and meticulously studying the time it took each worker to
perform a task, Taylor prescribed the optimum technique for the average
worker and established detailed performance standards for each job classifi-
cation. The promise of higher wages for higher productivity, he believed,
would motivate workers to exceed “average” expectations.
Instead, many workers resented Taylor’s innovations. They saw in scientific
management a tool for employers to make people work faster than was
healthy, sustainable, or fair. Yet Taylor’s controversial system brought con-
crete improvements in productivity, especially among those industries whose
production processes were highly standardized and whose jobs were rigidly
defined. “In the future,” Taylor predicted in 1911, “the system [rather than
the individual workers] will be first.”
In government, the efficiency movement demanded the reorganization of
agencies to eliminate redundancy, to establish clear lines of authority, and to
assign responsibility and accountability to specific officials. Two progressive
ideas for making municipal government more efficient gained headway in
the first decade of the new century. One, the commission system, was first
adopted by Galveston, Texas, in 1901, when local government there collapsed
in the aftermath of a devastating hurricane and tidal wave. The system placed
ultimate authority in a board composed of elected administrative heads of
city departments—commissioners of sanitation, police, utilities, and so on.
The more durable idea, however, was the city-manager plan, under which a
professional administrator ran the municipal government in accordance
with policies set by the elected council and mayor. Staunton, Virginia, first
adopted the plan in 1908. By 1914 the National Association of City Man-
agers had heralded the arrival of a new profession.
By the early twentieth century, many complex functions of government
and business had come to require specialists with technical expertise. As
946 • “MAKING THE WORLD OVER”: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA (CH. 23)

Woodrow Wilson wrote, progressive

ideals could be achieved only if gov-
ernment at all levels—local, state, and
national—was “informed and admin-
istered by experts.” This principle of
government by nonpartisan experts
was promoted by progressive Governor
Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin,
who established a Legislative Reference
Bureau to provide elected officials
with research, advice, and help in the
drafting of legislation. The “Wisconsin
idea” of efficient and more scientific
Robert M. La Follette government was widely publicized and
A progressive proponent of expertise copied. La Follette also pushed for
in government. such reforms as the direct primary,
stronger railroad regulation, the con-
servation of natural resources, and workmen’s compensation programs to
support laborers injured on the job.

A N T I - T R U S T R E G U L AT I O N Of all the problems facing American

society at the turn of the century, one engaged a greater diversity of progres-
sive reformers and elicited more solutions than any other: the regulation of
giant corporations, which became a third major theme of progressivism.
Bipartisan concern over the concentration of economic power had brought
passage of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1890, but the act had turned out to
be more symbolic than effective.
The problem of concentrated economic power and its abuse offered a
dilemma for progressives. Four broad solutions were available, but of these,
two were extremes that had limited support: letting the capitalist system
operate without regulation (laissez-faire) or, at the other extreme, adopting
a socialist program mandating government ownership of big businesses. At
the municipal level, however, the socialist alternative was rather widely
adopted for public utilities and transportation—so-called gas and water
socialism; otherwise, it was not seriously considered as a general policy. The
other choices were either to adopt a policy of trust-busting in the belief that
restoring old-fashioned competition would best prevent economic abuses or
to accept big business in the belief that it brought economies of scale but to
regulate it to prevent abuses.
 Features of Progressivism • 947

Efforts to restore the competition of small firms proved unworkable,

however, partly because breaking up large corporations was a complicated
process. To some extent, regulation and “stabilization” won acceptance
among business leaders; whatever respect they paid to competition in the
abstract, they preferred not to face it in practice. As time passed, however,
regulatory agencies often came under the influence or control of those they
were supposed to regulate. Railroad executives, for instance, generally had
more intimate knowledge of the intricate details involved in their business,
giving them the advantage over the outsiders who might be appointed to the
Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC).

SOCIAL JUSTICE A fourth important feature of the Progressive move-

ment was the effort to promote greater social justice through the creation of
nonprofit charitable service organizations; efforts by reformers to clean up
cities through personal hygiene, municipal sewers, and public-awareness
campaigns; and reforms aimed at regulating child labor and the consump-
tion of alcohol.
Middle-class women were the driving force behind the grassroots social
justice movement. In massive numbers they fanned out to address social ills.
The Women’s Christian Temperance
Union (WCTU), founded in 1874,
was the largest women’s group in
the nation at the end of the nine-
teenth century, boasting three hun-
dred thousand members. Frances
Willard, the dynamic president of
the WCTU between 1879 and 1898,
believed that all social problems were
interconnected and that most of
them resulted from alcohol abuse.
Members of the WCTU strove to
close saloons, improve prison condi-
tions, shelter prostitutes and abused
women and children, support female
labor unions, and champion women’s
suffrage. The WCTU also lobbied
for the eight-hour workday, the reg- Frances Elizabeth Willard
ulation of child labor, better nutri- Willard founded the WCTU and lobbied
tion, the federal inspection of food for women’s suffrage.
948 • “MAKING THE WORLD OVER”: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA (CH. 23)

processors and drug manufacturers, free kindergartens and public play-

grounds, and uniform marriage and divorce laws across the states.
With time it became apparent that social evils extended beyond the reach
of private charities and grassroots organizations and demanded government
intervention. In 1890, almost half of American workers toiled up to twelve
hours a day—sometimes seven days a week—in unsafe, unsanitary, and
unregulated conditions for bare subsistence wages. Labor legislation was per-
haps the most significant reform to emerge from the drive for progressive
social justice. It emerged first at the state level. The National Child Labor
Committee, organized in 1904, led a movement for laws prohibiting the
employment of young children. Within ten years, through the organization
of state and local committees and a graphic documentation of the evils of
child labor by the photographer Lewis W. Hine, the committee pushed
through legislation in most states banning the labor of underage children
(the minimum age varying from twelve to sixteen) and limiting the hours
older children might work.
Closely linked to the child-labor reform movement was a concerted effort
to regulate the hours of work for women. Spearheaded by Florence Kelley,
the head of the National Consumers’ League, this progressive crusade
promoted state laws to regulate
the long working hours imposed
on women who were wives and
mothers. Many states also outlawed
night work and labor in dangerous
occupations for both women and
children. But numerous exemp-
tions and inadequate enforcement
often nullified the intent of those
laws.
The Supreme Court pursued a
curiously erratic course in ruling
on state labor laws. In Lochner v.
New York (1905), the Court voided
a ten-hour-workday law because
it violated workers’ “liberty of
contract” to accept any jobs they
Child labor was commonplace wanted, no matter how bad the
A young girl working as a spinner in a working conditions or pay. But in
cotton mill in Vermont, 1910. Muller v. Oregon (1908), the high
 Features of Progressivism • 949

court upheld a ten-hour-workday law for women largely on the basis of socio-
logical data regarding the effects of long hours on the health and morals of
women. In Bunting v. Oregon (1917), the Court accepted a maximum ten-
hour day for both men and women but for twenty more years held out against
state minimum-wage laws.
Legislation to protect workers against avoidable accidents gained impetus
from disasters such as the March 25, 1911, fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist fac-
tory (called a “sweatshop”) in New York City, in which 146 of the 850 workers
died, mostly women in their teens, almost all of whom were Jewish and Ital-
ian immigrants. Escape routes were limited because the owner kept the stair-
way door locked to prevent theft. Workers trapped on the three upper floors
of the ten-story building died in the fire or leaped to their death. The work-
ers had wanted to form a union to negotiate safer working conditions, better
pay, and shorter hours, but the owner had refused. The tragic fire served as
the catalyst for progressive reforms. A state commission investigated the fire,
and thirty-six new city and state laws and regulations were implemented,
many of which were copied by other states around the nation. One of the most
important advances along these lines was the series of workers’ compensation
laws enacted after Maryland led the way in 1902. Accident-insurance systems
replaced the old common-law principle that an injured worker was entitled
to compensation only if employer negligence could be proved, a costly and
capricious procedure from which the worker was likely to win nothing or be
granted excessive awards from an overly sympathetic jury.

P R O G R E S S I V I S M A N D R E L I G I O N Religion was a crucial source of

energy for progressive reformers. Many Christians and Jews embraced the
social gospel, seeking to express their faith through aid to the less fortunate.
Jane Addams called the impulse to found settlement houses for the waves of
immigrants arriving in American cities “Christian humanitarianism.” She
and others often used the phrase “social righteousness” to explain the con-
nection between progressive social activism and religious belief. Protestants,
Catholics, and Jews worked closely together to promote state laws providing
for minimum-wage levels and shorter workdays. Some of the reformers
applied their crusade for social justice to organized religion itself. Frances
Willard, who spent time as a traveling evangelist, lobbied church organiza-
tions to allow women to become ministers. As she said, “If women can orga-
nize missionary societies, temperance societies, and every kind of charitable
organization . . . why not permit them to be ordained to preach the Gospel
and administer the sacraments of the Church?”
950 • “MAKING THE WORLD OVER”: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA (CH. 23)

PROHIBITION Opposition to alcohol abuse was an ideal cause in which

to merge the older religious-based ethics with the new social ethics promot-
ing reforms. Given the importance of saloons as arenas for often-corrupt
local political machines, prohibitionists could equate the “liquor traffic”
with progressive suspicion of bossism and “special interests.” By eliminating
booze and closing saloons, reformers hoped to remove one of the tools used
by political bosses to win over converts. The battle against alcoholic bever-
ages had begun in earnest during the nineteenth century. The WCTU had
promoted the cause since 1874, and a Prohibition party had entered the
national elections in 1876. But the most successful political action followed
the formation in 1893 of the Anti-Saloon League, an organization that pio-
neered the strategy of the single-issue pressure group. Through its singleness
of purpose, it forced the prohibition issue into the forefront of state and
local elections. At its “Jubilee Convention” in 1913, the bipartisan Anti-
Saloon League endorsed a prohibition amendment to the Constitution,
adopted by Congress in 1917. By the time it was ratified, two years later, state
and local action had already dried up areas occupied by nearly three fourths
of the nation’s population.

R O O S E V E LT ’ S P R O G R E S S I V I S M

While most progressive initiatives originated at the state and local

levels during the late nineteenth century, federal reform efforts coalesced
around 1900 with the emergence of Theodore Roosevelt as a national politi-
cal leader. He brought to the White House in 1901 perhaps the most com-
plex personality in American political history: he was a political reformer, an
environmentalist, an obsessive hunter, a racist, and a militaristic liberal.
Roosevelt developed an expansive vision of the presidency that well suited
the cause of progressive reform. In one of his first addresses to Congress, he
stressed the need for a new political approach. When the Constitution was
drafted in 1787, he explained, the nation’s social and economic conditions
were quite unlike those at the dawn of the twentieth century. “The condi-
tions are now wholly different and wholly different action is called for.”
More than any other president since Abraham Lincoln, Roosevelt possessed
an activist bent. A skilled political maneuverer, he greatly expanded the role
and visibility of the presidency by his use of the “bully pulpit,” as well as the
authority and scope of the federal government. He cultivated party leaders
in Congress and steered away from such divisive issues as the tariff and regu-
lation of the banks. And when he did approach the explosive issue of regu-
 Roosevelt’s Progressivism • 951

lating the trusts, he took care to reassure the business community of his
intentions. For him, politics was the art of the possible. Unlike the more rad-
ical progressives and the doctrinaire “lunatic fringe,” as he called it, he would
take half a loaf rather than none at all.

E X E C U T I V E A C T I O N Roosevelt accomplished more by vigorous exec-

utive action than by passing legislation. He argued that as president he might
do anything not expressly forbidden by the Constitution. The humorist Mark
Twain said that Roosevelt was ready “to kick the Constitution into the back-
yard whenever it gets in the way.” In 1902, Roosevelt endorsed a “Square
Deal” for all, calling for more rigorous enforcement of existing anti-trust
laws and stricter controls on big business. From the outset, however, Roosevelt
avoided wholesale trust-busting. Effective regulation of corporate giants was
better than a futile effort to dismantle large corporations. Because Congress
balked at regulatory legislation, Roosevelt sought to force the issue by a
more vigorous prosecution of the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act. In 1902,
Roosevelt ordered the U.S. attorney general to break up the Northern Secu-
rities Company, a giant conglomerate of interconnected railroads. In 1904,
the Supreme Court ordered the railroad combination dissolved.

T H E 1 9 0 2 C OA L S T R I K E Roosevelt also used the “big stick” against

corporations in the coal strike of 1902. On May 12, some 150,000 members
of the United Mine Workers (UMW) walked off the job in Pennsylvania and
West Virginia. They were seeking a 20 percent wage increase, a reduction in
daily working hours from ten to nine, and official recognition of the union
by the mine owners. The mine operators refused to negotiate. Instead, they
shut down the mines to starve out the miners, many of whom were immi-
grants from eastern Europe. One mine owner expressed the prejudices of
many other owners when he proclaimed, “The miners don’t suffer—why,
they can’t even speak English.”
By October 1902, the prolonged shutdown had caused the price of coal to
soar, and hospitals and schools reported empty coal bins. President Roo-
sevelt decided upon a bold move: he invited leaders of both sides to a confer-
ence in Washington, D.C., where he appealed to their “patriotism, to the
spirit that sinks personal considerations and makes individual sacrifices for
the public good.” The mine owners attended the conference but arrogantly
refused even to speak to the UMW leaders. The “extraordinary stupidity and
temper” of the “wooden-headed” owners infuriated Roosevelt. The presi-
dent wanted to grab the spokesman for the mine owners “by the seat of his
breeches” and “chuck him out” a window. Roosevelt threatened to take over
952 • “MAKING THE WORLD OVER”: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA (CH. 23)

Roosevelt’s duality
Theodore Roosevelt as an “apostle of prosperity” (top) and as a Roman tyrant
(bottom). Roosevelt’s energy, self-righteousness, and impulsiveness elicited sharp
reactions.
 Roosevelt’s Second Term • 953

the mines and send in the army to run them. When a congressman ques-
tioned the constitutionality of such a move, an exasperated Roosevelt roared,
“To hell with the Constitution when the people want coal!” The threat to
militarize the mines worked. The coal strike ended on October 23. The min-
ers won a reduction to a nine-hour workday but only a 10 percent wage
increase, and no union recognition by the owners. Roosevelt had become the
first president to use his authority to arbitrate a dispute between manage-
ment and labor.

E X PA N D I N G F E D E R A L P O W E R Roosevelt continued to use unprece-

dented executive powers to enforce the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890).
Altogether, his administration initiated about twenty-five anti-trust suits
against oversized corporations. In 1903, Congress passed the Elkins Act,
which made it illegal for railroads to take, as well as to give, secret rebates on
freight charges to their favorite customers. All shippers would pay the same
price. That same year, Congress created a new Bureau of Corporations to
monitor the activities of interstate corporations. When Standard Oil refused
to turn over its records, the government brought an anti-trust suit that
resulted in the breakup of the huge company in 1911. The Supreme Court
also ordered the American Tobacco Company to divide its enterprises
because it had come to monopolize the cigarette industry.

R O O S E V E LT ’ S S E C O N D T E R M

Roosevelt’s aggressive leadership built a coalition of progressives and

conservatives who assured his election in his own right in 1904. The Repub-
lican Convention chose him by acclamation. The Democrats, having lost
with William Jennings Bryan twice, turned to the more conservative Alton B.
Parker, chief justice of the New York Supreme Court. Roosevelt’s invincible
popularity plus the sheer force of his personality swept the president to an
impressive victory by a popular vote of 7.6 million to 5.1 million. With 336
electoral votes for the president and 140 for Parker, Roosevelt savored his
lopsided victory. The president told his wife that he was “no longer a politi-
cal accident.” He now had a popular mandate. On the eve of his inaugura-
tion in March 1905, Roosevelt announced: “Tomorrow I shall come into
office in my own right. Then watch out for me!”

L E G I S L AT I V E Elected in his own right, Roosevelt

LEADERSHIP
approached his second term with heightened confidence and an even
954 • “MAKING THE WORLD OVER”: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA (CH. 23)

stronger commitment to progres-

sive reform. In 1905, he devoted
most of his annual message to the
needed regulation of big business.
His comments irked many of his
corporate contributors and con-
gressional Republican leaders. Said
steel baron Henry Clay Frick, “We
bought the son of a bitch and then
he did not stay bought.”
The independent-minded Roo-
sevelt took aim at the railroads first.
The Elkins Act of 1903, finally out-
lawing rebates, had been a minor
step. Railroad executives them-
“The Lion-Tamer” selves welcomed it as an escape
Theodore Roosevelt confronts the beasts of from shippers clamoring for spe-
the steel trust, the oil trust, the beef trust, cial favors. But a new proposal for
and others in the arena of Wall Street. railroad regulation endorsed by
Roosevelt was something else
again. Enacted in 1906, the Hepburn Act for the first time gave the ICC the
power to set maximum freight rates for the railroad industry.
Regulating railroads was Roosevelt’s first priority, but he also embraced
the regulation of meat packers, food processors, and makers of drugs and
patent medicines. Muckraking journalists revealed that companies were
engaged in all sorts of unsanitary and dangerous activities in the preparation
of food products. Perhaps the most telling blow against such abuses was
struck by Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle (1906). Sinclair wrote the book
to promote socialism, but its main impact came from its portrayal of filthy
conditions in Chicago’s meatpacking industry:

It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could
run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the
dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers
would put poisoned bread out for them, they would die, and then
rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together.

Roosevelt read The Jungle—and reacted quickly. He sent two agents to

Chicago, and their report confirmed all that Sinclair had said about the
unsanitary conditions in the packing plants. Congress and Roosevelt
 Roosevelt’s Second Term • 955

responded by creating the Meat

Inspection Act of 1906. It required
federal inspection of meats des-
tined for interstate commerce and
empowered officials in the Agri-
culture Department to impose
sanitation standards in process-
ing plants. The Pure Food and
Drug Act, enacted the same day,
placed restrictions on the makers
of prepared foods and patent
medicines and forbade the man-
ufacture, sale, or transportation
of adulterated, misbranded, or
harmful foods, drugs, and liquors.

E N V I R O N M E N TA L CON-
S E R VAT I O N One of the most
enduring legacies of Roosevelt’s The meat industry
leadership was his energetic sup- Pigs strung up along the hog-scraping rail
port for the emerging environ- at Armour’s packing plant in Chicago, ca.
mental conservation movement. 1909.
Roosevelt was the first president
to challenge the long-standing myth of America’s having inexhaustible nat-
ural resources. In fact, Roosevelt declared that conservation was the “great
material question of the day.” Just as reformers promoted the regulation of
business and industry for the public welfare, conservationists championed
efforts to manage and preserve the natural environment for the benefit of
future generations.
The first promoters of resource conservation were ardent sportsmen
among the social elite (including Theodore Roosevelt), who worried that
unregulated commercial hunters and trappers were wantonly killing game
animals to the point of extermination. In 1886, for example, the sportsman-
naturalist George Bird Grinnell, editor of Forest and Stream, founded the
Audubon Society to protect wild birds from being killed for their plumage.
Two years later Grinnell, Roosevelt, and a dozen other recreational hunters
formed the Boone and Crockett Club, named in honor of Daniel Boone and
David (Davy) Crockett, the legendary frontiersmen. The club’s goal was to
ensure that big-game animals were protected for posterity. By 1900 most
states had enacted laws regulating game hunting and had created game
956 • “MAKING THE WORLD OVER”: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA (CH. 23)

Nathaniel Pitt Langford

The first superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, on Jupiter Terrace at
Mammoth Hot Springs, ca. 1875.

refuges and wardens to enforce the new rules, much to the chagrin of local
hunters, including Native Americans, who now were forced to abide by state
laws designed to protect the interests of wealthy recreational hunters.
Roosevelt and the sportsmen conservationists formed a powerful coali-
tion promoting rational government management of natural resources:
rivers and streams, forests, minerals, and natural wonders. Those concerns,
as well as the desire of railroad companies to transport tourists to destina-
tions featuring majestic scenery, led the federal government to displace Indi-
ans in order to establish the 2-million-acre Yellowstone National Park in
1872 at the junction of the Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho Territories (the
National Park Service would be created in 1916 after other parks had been
established). In 1881, Congress created a Division of Forestry (now the U.S.
Forest Service) within the Department of the Interior. As president, Theodore
Roosevelt created fifty federal wildlife refuges, approved five new national
parks, fifty-one federal bird sanctuaries, and designated eighteen national
monuments, including the Grand Canyon. Roosevelt’s brash style of getting
things done was no better illustrated than when he was at his desk in the
White House and asked an aide, “Is there any law that prevents me from
declaring Pelican Island a National Bird Sanctuary?” Not waiting for an
answer, he replied, “Very well, then,” reaching for his pen, “I declare it.”
In 1898, while serving as vice president, Roosevelt had endorsed the
appointment of Gifford Pinchot, a close friend and the nation’s first profes-
 Roosevelt’s Second Term • 957

sional forester, as the head of the

U.S. Division of Forestry. Pinchot
and Roosevelt were pragmatic
conservationists; they believed in
economic growth as well as envi-
ronmental preservation. To them,
conservation entailed the scien-
tific (“progressive”) management
of natural resources to serve the
public interest. Pinchot explained
that the conservation movement
sought to promote the “greatest
good for the greatest number for
the longest time.”
Roosevelt and Pinchot were
especially concerned about the
millions of acres still owned by
the federal government. Over the
years, vast tracts of public land
had been given away or sold at Gifford Pinchot
discount prices to large business Pinchot is seen here with two children at
enterprises. Roosevelt and Pin- the edge of a larch grove.
chot were determined to end such
careless exploitation. Roosevelt as president used the Forest Reserve Act
(1891) to protect some 172 million acres of timberland. Lumber companies
were furious, but Roosevelt held firm. As he bristled, “I hate a man who skins
the land.”
Theodore Roosevelt’s far-flung conservation efforts also encompassed
reclamation and irrigation projects. In 1902 the president signed the Recla-
mation Act (also known as the Newlands Act, after its sponsor, Nevada sena-
tor Francis G. Newlands). The Reclamation Act established a new federal
agency within the Interior Department, called the Reclamation Service
(renamed the Bureau of Reclamation in 1923), to administer a massive new
program designed to bring water to arid western states. Using funds from
the sale of federal lands in sixteen states in the West, the Reclamation Service
constructed dams and irrigation systems to transform barren desert acreage
into farmland.
Roosevelt also came to view spectacular environmental areas as natural
wonders worthy of human reverence and perpetual preservation. Overall,
Roosevelt’s conservation efforts helped curb the unregulated exploitation of
natural resources for private gain. He had set aside over 234 million acres of
958 • “MAKING THE WORLD OVER”: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA (CH. 23)

federal land for conservation purposes, including the creation of forty-five

national forests in eleven western states. As Pinchot recalled late in life,
“Launching the conservation movement was the most significant achieve-
ment of the T. R. Administration, as he himself believed.”

F R O M R O O S E V E LT TO TA F T

Toward the end of his second term, Roosevelt declared, “I have had a
great time as president.” Although eligible to run again, he opted for retire-
ment. Once out of office, the fifty-year-old Roosevelt set off in 1909 on a
prolonged safari in Africa, prompting his old foe J. Pierpont Morgan to mut-
ter, “Let every lion do his duty.”
Roosevelt decided that his successor should be his secretary of war, William
Howard Taft, and the Republican Convention ratified the choice on its first
ballot in 1908. The Democrats gave William Jennings Bryan one more chance
at the highest office. Still vigorous at forty-eight, Bryan retained a faithful fol-
lowing but struggled to attract national support. Roosevelt advised Taft: “Do
not answer Bryan; attack him. Don’t let him make the issues.” Taft followed
Roosevelt’s advice, declaring that Bryan’s election would result in a “paralysis
of business.”

William Howard Taft

Speaking at Manassas, Virginia, in 1911.
 From Roosevelt to Taft • 959

The Republican platform endorsed Roosevelt’s progressive policies. The

Democratic platform hardly differed on the need for regulation of business,
but it called for a lower tariff and opposed court injunctions against labor
unions that organized strikes. In the end, voters opted for Roosevelt’s chosen
successor: Taft swept the Electoral College, 321 to 162. The real surprise of
the election, however, was the strong showing of the Socialist party candi-
date, labor hero Eugene V. Debs. His 421,000 votes revealed again the depth
of working-class resentment in the United States.
William Howard Taft had superb qualifications to be president. Born in
Cincinnati in 1857, he had graduated second in his class at Yale and had
become a preeminent legal scholar, serving on the Ohio Supreme Court and
as U.S. solicitor general. In 1900, President William McKinley had appointed
Taft as the first governor-general of the Philippines, and three years later
Roosevelt named him secretary of war. Taft would become the only person
to serve both as president and as chief justice of the Supreme Court. He was
a progressive conservative who vowed to protect “the right of property” and
the “right of liberty.” In practice, this meant that the new president was even
more determined than Roosevelt to preserve “the spirit of commercial free-
dom” against monopolistic trusts. However, Taft was a very different presi-
dent than Roosevelt. He detested the give-and-take of backroom politics and
never felt comfortable in the White House. He once observed that whenever
someone said “Mr. President,” he looked around for Roosevelt.

TA R I F F R E F O R M Taft’s domestic policies generated a storm of contro-

versy within his own party. Contrary to longstanding Republican tradition,
Taft preferred a lower tariff, and he made this the first important issue of his
presidency. But Taft proved less skillful than Roosevelt in dealing with Con-
gress. The resulting tariff was a hodgepodge that on the whole changed very
little. Temperamentally conservative, inhibited by scruples about interfering
too much with the legislative process, Taft drifted into the orbit of the
Republican Old Guard and quickly alienated the progressive wing of his
party, whom he tagged “assistant Democrats.”

BALLINGER AND PINCHOT In 1910, President Taft’s policies drove

the wedge deeper between the conservative and progressive Republican fac-
tions. What came to be called the Ballinger-Pinchot controversy made Taft
appear to be abandoning Roosevelt’s conservation policies. The strongest con-
servation leaders, such as Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, a Pennsylvanian,
were often easterners, and Taft’s secretary of the interior, Richard A. Ballinger
of Seattle, was well aware that many westerners opposed conservation
960 • “MAKING THE WORLD OVER”: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA (CH. 23)

programs on the grounds that they held back full economic development of
the Far West. Ballinger therefore threw open to commercial use millions
acres of federal lands that Roosevelt had ordered conserved. As chief of
forestry, Pinchot reported to Taft his concerns about the land “giveaway,” but
the president refused to intervene. When Pinchot went public with the con-
troversy early in 1910, Taft fired him. In doing so, he set in motion a feud
with Roosevelt that would eventually cost him his reelection.

TA F T A N D R O O S E V E LT Taft’s dismissal of Pinchot infuriated Roo-

sevelt, who eventually decided that Taft had fallen under the spell of the
Republican Old Guard leadership. During the fall of 1910, Roosevelt made
several speeches promoting “sane and progressive” Republican candidates in
the congressional elections. In a speech at Osawatomie, a small town in east-
ern Kansas, he gave a catchy name to his latest progressive principles, the
“New Nationalism,” which greatly resembled the populist progressivism of
William Jennings Bryan. Roosevelt issued a stirring call for more stringent
federal regulation of huge corporations, a progressive income tax, laws limit-
ing child labor, and a “Square Deal for the poor man.” He also proposed the
first efforts at campaign finance reform. “There can be no effective control of
corporations while their political activity remains,” Roosevelt said. “To put an
end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done.” His pur-
pose was not to revolutionize the political system but to save it from the
threat of revolution. “What I have advocated,” he explained a few days later,
“is not wild radicalism. It is the highest and wisest kind of conservatism.”
On February 24, 1912, Roosevelt challenged Taft’s leadership by entering
the race for the presidency. He had decided that Taft had “sold the Square
Deal down the river,” and he now dismissed Taft as a “hopeless fathead.” Taft
was both stunned and hurt. A reporter who approached President Taft on a
train found him slumped over, his head in his hands. Taft looked up and
said, “Roosevelt was my closest friend.” Then he started weeping.
Roosevelt’s rebuke of Taft was in many ways undeserved. During Taft’s
first year in office, one political tempest after another had left his image
irreparably damaged. The three years of solid achievement that followed
came too late to restore its luster or reunite his divided party. Taft had at
least attempted tariff reform, which Roosevelt had never dared. He replaced
Roosevelt’s friend Gifford Pinchot with men with impeccable credentials as
conservationists. In the end his administration preserved more public land
in four years than Roosevelt’s had in nearly eight. Taft’s administration also
filed more anti-trust suits against big corporations, by a score of eighty to
twenty-five.
 From Roosevelt to Taft • 961

Political giants
A cartoon showing Roosevelt charging through the air at Taft, who is seated on a
mountaintop.

In 1910, with Taft’s support, Congress passed the Mann-Elkins Act, which
for the first time empowered the ICC to initiate changes in railroad freight
rates, extended its regulatory powers to telephone and telegraph companies,
and set up the Commerce Court to expedite appeals of ICC rulings. Taft also
established the Bureau of Mines and the federal Children’s Bureau (1912),
and he called for statehood for Arizona and New Mexico and territorial gov-
ernment for Alaska (1912). The Sixteenth Amendment (1913), authorizing
a federal income tax, was ratified with Taft’s support before he left office, and
the Seventeenth Amendment (1913), providing for the popular election of
senators, was ratified soon after he left office.
But Taft’s progressive record did not prevent Roosevelt from turning on
him. Roosevelt won all but two of the thirteen states that held presidential pri-
maries, even Taft’s home state of Ohio. But the groundswell of popular sup-
port for Roosevelt was no match for Taft’s decisive position as sitting president
and party leader. In state nominating conventions the Taft forces prevailed. So
Roosevelt entered the Republican National Convention about a hundred votes
short of victory. The Taft delegates proceeded to nominate their man by the
same steamroller tactics that had nominated Roosevelt in 1904.
Roosevelt was outraged at what he called Taft’s “successful fraud” in get-
ting the nomination. The angry Roosevelt delegates—mostly social workers,
962 • “MAKING THE WORLD OVER”: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA (CH. 23)

reformers, intellectuals, and exec-

utives who favored Roosevelt’s
leadership—assembled in a rump
convention to create a third polit-
ical party. “If you wish me to make
the fight I will make it,” Roosevelt
told the delegates, who then orga-
nized a Progressive party conven-
tion, which assembled in Chicago
on August 5. Roosevelt appeared
before the delegates, feeling “fit as
a bull moose.” He was “stripped to
the buff and ready for the fight,”
he said in a fiery speech that was
interrupted 145 times by applause.
“We stand at Armageddon, and
The “Bull Moose” candidate in 1912 we battle for the Lord.” Many of
A skeptical view of Theodore Roosevelt. the most prominent progressives
endorsed Roosevelt’s bid to be the
first president representing a third party, the “Bull Moose” progressive
party. In her speech seconding Roosevelt’s nomination, Jane Addams took
particular pride in the party’s commitment to give women the vote through
a constitutional amendment. But few professional politicians turned up.
Progressive Republicans decided to preserve their party credentials and fight
another day. The disruption of the Republican party caused by the rift
between Taft and Roosevelt gave hope to the Democrats, whose leader,
Virginia-born New Jersey governor Woodrow Wilson, had enjoyed remark-
able success in his brief political career.

WO O D R OW W I L S O N ’ S P R O G R E S S I V I S M

WILSON’S RISE The emergence of Thomas Woodrow Wilson as the

Democratic nominee in 1912 climaxed a political rise that was surprisingly
rapid. In 1910, before his nomination and election as governor of New Jersey,
Wilson had been president of Princeton University, but he had never run for
public office. Yet he had extraordinary abilities: a keen intellect and an analyti-
cal temperament, superb educational training, a fertile imagination, and a
penchant for boldness. Born in Staunton, Virginia, in 1856, the son of a “noble-
saintly mother” and a stern Presbyterian minister, Wilson had grown up in
 Woodrow Wilson’s Progressivism • 963

Georgia and the Carolinas during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Young
Wilson, tall and slender with a lean, long face, inherited his father’s unques-
tioning piety. He once declared that “so far as religion is concerned, argu-
ment is adjourned.” Wilson also developed a consuming ambition to “serve”
humankind. Driven by a sense of providential destiny, he nurtured an obstinate
righteousness and habitual intransigence that would prove to be his undoing.
Wilson graduated from Princeton in 1879. After finishing “terribly boring”
law school at the University of Virginia he had a brief, unfulfilling legal prac-
tice in Atlanta. From there he went to the new Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore, where he found his calling in the study of history and political sci-
ence. After a seventeen-year stint as a popular college professor, he was unan-
imously elected president of Princeton University in 1902. Eight years later, in
1910, Democratic party leaders in New Jersey offered Wilson their support for
the 1910 gubernatorial nomination. The party leaders sought a respectable
conservative to help them ward off progressive challengers, and Wilson fit the
bill: he was conservative in his background and temperament, a southern
Democrat who had displayed a profound distrust of radical ideas such as
those professed by William Jennings Bryan and other populists. Like Roo-
sevelt, however, Wilson began to view progressive reform as a necessary expe-
dient in order to stave off more radical social change. Elected as a reform
candidate, Governor Wilson turned the tables on the state’s Democratic party
bosses who had put him on the ticket by persuading the state legislature
to adopt an array of progressive reforms: a workers’ compensation law, a
corrupt-practices law, measures to regulate public utilities, and ballot reforms.
Such strong leadership brought Wilson to the attention of national
Democratic party leaders. At the 1912 Democratic nominating convention,
Wilson faced stiff competition from several party regulars, but with the sup-
port of William Jennings Bryan, he prevailed on the forty-sixth ballot. Wil-
son justifiably called his nomination a “political miracle.”

THE ELECTION OF 1912 The 1912 presidential campaign involved

four candidates: Wilson and Taft represented the two major parties, while
Eugene V. Debs of Indiana ran as a Socialist (“This is our year!” he declared),
and Roosevelt headed the Progressive party ticket. They all shared a basic
progressive assumption that the old notion of do-nothing government was
bankrupt; modern conditions required active measures to promote the gen-
eral welfare. The rise of big business, in other words, required a bigger role
for government. But they differed in the nature and extent of their activism.
No sooner did the formal campaign open than Roosevelt’s candidacy almost
ended. While entering a car on his way to deliver a speech in Milwaukee, he was
964 • “MAKING THE WORLD OVER”: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA (CH. 23)

shot by John Schrank, a mentally disturbed New Yorker who believed any pres-
ident seeking a third term should be shot. The bullet went through Roosevelt’s
overcoat, spectacles case, and fifty-page speech, then fractured a rib before
lodging just below his right lung, an inch from his heart. “Stand back, don’t
hurt the man,” he yelled at the crowd as they mobbed the attacker. Roosevelt
demanded that he be driven to the auditorium to deliver his speech. In a dra-
matic gesture he showed the audience his bloodstained shirt and punctured
text and vowed, “It takes more than this to kill a bull moose.”
As the campaign developed, Taft quickly lost ground. “There are so many
people in the country who don’t like me,” he lamented. The contest settled
down to a running debate over the competing programs touted by the two
front-runners: Roosevelt’s New Nationalism and Wilson’s New Freedom.
The miscellany of ideas that Roosevelt fashioned into his New Nationalism
had first been outlined in The Promise of American Life (1909) by Herbert
Croly, a then-obscure New York journalist. Croly stressed that progressives
were not romantic idealists; they were pragmatists and realists who believed
that “good” governments were needed to protect democratic ideals. Through
long-range planning, expert management, modern efficiencies, and orga-
nized discipline and integrity, progressive governance could ensure that
compassionate capitalism flourished. Herbert Croly’s central thesis about
progressivism was that government needed to expand its scope and powers
to match the growing size and power of corporate America.
Roosevelt viewed Croly’s book as the guide to his version of progressivism.
His New Nationalism would use government authority to promote social jus-
tice by enacting overdue reforms such as workers’ compensation programs for
on-the-job injuries, regulations to pro-
tect women and children in the work-
place, and a stronger Bureau of Corpo-
rations. These ideas and more went
into the platform of the Progressive
party, which called for a federal trade
commission with sweeping authority
over business and a tariff commission
to set rates on a “scientific basis.”
Before the end of his administra-
tion, Woodrow Wilson would be swept
into the current of the New National-
Wilson’s reforms ism, too. But initially he adhered to the
Woodrow Wilson campaigning from a decentralizing anti-trust traditions of
railroad car. his party. At the start of the 1912 cam-
 Woodrow Wilson’s Progressivism • 965

paign, Wilson conferred with Louis D. Brandeis, a progressive lawyer from

Boston who focused Wilson’s thought much as Croly had focused Roo-
sevelt’s. Brandeis’s design for Wilson’s New Freedom program differed from
Roosevelt’s New Nationalism in its insistence that the federal government
should restore competition in the economy rather than focus on regulating
huge monopolies. Whereas Roosevelt admired the power and efficiency of
law-abiding corporations, even if they were virtual monopolies, Brandeis
and Wilson were convinced that all huge industries needed to be broken up, not
regulated. Wilson’s approach to progressivism required a vigorous anti-trust
policy, lower tariffs to allow more foreign goods to compete in American mar-
kets, and dissolution of the concentration of financial power in Wall Street.
Unlike Roosevelt, Brandeis and Wilson saw the expansion of federal power as
only a temporary necessity, not a permanent condition. Government interven-
tion was needed to ensure that “fair play” occurred in the marketplace. Roo-
sevelt, who was convinced that both giant corporations and an expanding
federal government were permanent developments, dismissed the New Free-
dom as mere fantasy. For his part, Taft attacked his two progressive opponents
by reminding them that the federal government “cannot create good times. It
cannot make the rain to fall, the sun to shine or the crops to grow,” but too many
“meddlesome” regulations could deny the nation the prosperity it deserved.
On election day, the Republican schism between Taft and Roosevelt opened
the way for Woodrow Wilson to win handily in the Electoral College, garnering
435 votes to 88 for Roosevelt and 8 for Taft. But in popular votes, Wilson had
only 42 percent of the total. Roosevelt received 27 percent, and Taft 23 percent.
After learning of his election, Wilson told the chairman of the Democratic
party that “God ordained that I should be the next president of the United
States.” Perhaps. But had the Republican party not been split in two, Wilson
would have been trounced. His was the victory of a minority candidate over a
divided opposition. A majority of voters had endorsed progressivism, but only
a minority preferred Wilson’s program of reform, the New Freedom.
The election of 1912 was significant in several ways. First, it was a high-
water mark for progressivism, with all the candidates claiming to be progres-
sives of one sort or another. The election was also the first to feature party
primaries. The two leading candidates debated the basic issues of progres-
sivism in a campaign unique in its focus on vital alternatives and in its highly
philosophical tone. This was an election with real choices. The Socialist party,
the left wing of progressivism, polled over nine hundred thousand votes
for Eugene V. Debs, its highest proportion ever. Debs, the son of immigrant
shopkeepers, was a fabled union organizer who had run for president twice
before but had never garnered so many votes.
 966 • “MAKING THE WORLD OVER”: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA (CH. 23)

WA
7 NH 4
MT ND ME
4 VT 4 6
OR 5 MN
5 ID 12
4 SD WI MI NY MA 18
WY 5 13 15 45
3 RI 5
IA PA CT 7
NV NE 13
8 OH 38 NJ 14
3 UT IL IN 24 WV
CA 4 CO 29 15 DE 3
11 6 KS MO VA MD 8
8 12
(+2 Dem.) 10 18 KY 13
NC
AZ OK TN 12 12
NM AR SC
3 3 10
9
MS AL GA 9
10 12 14
TX
20 LA
10
FL
6

THE ELECTION OF 1912 Electoral Vote Popular Vote

Woodrow Wilson 435 6,300,000
(Democrat)
Theodore Roosevelt 88 4,100,000
(Progressive)
William H. Taft 8 3,500,000
(Republican)

Why was Taft so unpopular? How did the division between Roosevelt and Taft give
Wilson the victory? Why was Wilson’s victory in 1912 significant?

Second, the election gave Democrats effective national power for the first
time since the Civil War. For two years during the second administration of
Grover Cleveland, from 1893 to 1895, they had held the White House and
majorities in both houses of Congress, but they had fallen quickly out of
power during the severe economic depression of the 1890s. Now, under Wil-
son, they again held the presidency and were the majority in both the House
of Representatives and the Senate.
Third, the election of Wilson brought southerners back into the orbit of
national and international affairs in a significant way for the first time since
the Civil War. Five of Wilson’s ten cabinet members were born in the South,
three still resided there, and William Jennings Bryan, the secretary of state,
 Woodrow Wilson’s Progressivism • 967

was an idol of the southern masses. At the president’s right hand, and one of
the most influential members of the Wilson circle, at least until 1919, was
“Colonel” Edward M. House of Texas. Wilson described House as “my sec-
ond personality. He is my independent self.” House was responsible for get-
ting Wilson’s proposals through Congress. Southern Congressmen, by virtue
of their seniority, held the lion’s share of committee chairmanships. As a
result, much of the progressive legislation of the Wilson era would bear the
names of the southern Democrats who guided it through Congress.
Fourth and finally, the election of 1912 altered the character of the Republi-
can party. The defection of the Bull Moose Progressives had weakened the
party’s progressive wing. The leaders of the Republican party that would return
to power in the 1920s would be more conservative in tone and temperament.

WILSONIAN REFORM On March 4, 1913, a huge crowd surrounded

the Capitol in Washington, D.C., to witness Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration
as the first Democratic president since Grover Cleveland. The new presi-
dent’s eloquent speech championed the ideals of social justice that animated
many progressives. “We have been proud of our industrial achievements,” he
said, “but we have not hitherto stopped thoughtfully enough to count the
human cost . . . the fearful physical and spiritual cost to the men and women
and children upon whom the dead weight and burden of it all has fallen piti-
lessly the years through.” He promised specifically a lower tariff and a new
nationally regulated banking system.
If Roosevelt had been a strong president by force of personality, Wilson
became a strong president by force of conviction. He was an expert on man-
aging legislation through the Congress. The American president, he had
written in Congressional Government, “is . . . the political leader of the
nation, or has it in his choice to be. The nation as a whole has chosen him,
and is conscious that it has no other political spokesman. His is the only
national voice in affairs.” Wilson relished public support, but, like Roosevelt,
he also courted members of Congress through personal contacts, invitations
to the White House, and speeches in the Capitol. He was a remarkably savvy
legislative leader. During his first two years, Wilson pushed through more
new bills than any previous president.

T H E TA R I F F Wilson’s leadership faced its first big test on the issue of

tariff reform. He believed that corporations were misusing tariffs to sup-
press foreign competition and keep prices artificially high. He often claimed
that the “tariff made the trusts,” believing that tariffs had encouraged the
growth of industrial monopolies and degraded the political process by
968 • “MAKING THE WORLD OVER”: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA (CH. 23)

producing armies of paid lobbyists who invaded Congress each year. In

attacking high tariffs, Wilson sought to strike a blow for consumers and
honest government. He acted quickly and boldly, summoning Congress to a
special session (which lasted eighteen months—the longest in history) and
addressing the legislators in person—the first president to do so since John
Adams. Congress acted vigorously on tariff reductions; the new bill passed
the House easily. The crunch came in the Senate, the traditional graveyard of
tariff reform. Swarms of industry lobbyists got so thick in Washington, Wil-
son said, that “a brick couldn’t be thrown without hitting one of them.” The
president turned the tables with a public statement that focused the spot-
light on the “industrious and insidious” tariff lobby.
The Underwood-Simmons Tariff became law in 1913. It was the first time
the tariff had been lowered since the Civil War. To compensate for the
reduced tariff revenue, the bill created the first graduated income tax levied
under the newly ratified Sixteenth Amendment: 1 percent on income over
$3,000 ($4,000 for married couples) up to a top rate of 7 percent on annual
income of $500,000 or more.

T H E F E D E R A L R E S E R V E A C T Before the new tariff had cleared the

Senate, the administration proposed the first major banking and currency
reform since the Civil War. Ever since Andrew Jackson had killed the Second
Bank of the United States in the
1830s, the nation had been without
a central bank. Instead, the money
supply was administered in a
decentralized fashion by hundreds
of private banks. Such a decentral-
ized system fostered instability
and inefficiency. By 1913, virtually
everyone had agreed that the
banking system needed restruc-
turing. Wilson told Congress that
a federal banking system was
needed to ensure that “the banks
may be the instruments, not the
masters, of business and of indi-
vidual enterprise and initiative.”
“Reading the Death Warrant” The Federal Reserve Act of 1913
created a new national banking
Woodrow Wilson’s plan for banking and
currency reform spells the death of the system, with regional reserve banks
“money trust,” according to this cartoon. supervised by a central board of
 Woodrow Wilson’s Progressivism • 969

directors. There would be twelve Federal Reserve banks, each owned by

member banks in its district, which could issue Federal Reserve notes (cur-
rency) to member banks. All national banks became members; state banks
and trust companies could join if they wished. Each member bank had to
transfer 6 percent of its capital to the Federal Reserve bank and deposit a
portion of its reserves there. This arrangement made it possible to expand
both the money supply and bank credit in times of high business activity or
as the level of borrowing increased.
The new system corrected three great defects in the previous arrange-
ment: now bank reserves could be pooled, affording greater security; both
the nation’s currency supply and bank credit became more elastic to respond
to economic growth; and the concentration of the nation’s monetary
reserves in New York City was decreased. The new national banking system
represented a dramatic new step in active government intervention and con-
trol in one of the most sensitive segments of the economy. It was the most
significant domestic initiative of Wilson’s presidency.

A N T I - T R U S T L AW S While promoting banking and tariff reforms,

Wilson made trust-busting the central focus of the New Freedom. Giant
corporations had continued to grow despite the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and
the federal watchdog agency, the Bureau of Corporations. Wilson’s solution
to the problem was a revision of the Sherman Act to define more explicitly
what counted as restraint of trade. He decided to make a strong Federal
Trade Commission (FTC) the cornerstone of his anti-trust program. Cre-
ated in 1914, the five-member commission replaced Roosevelt’s Bureau
of Corporations and assumed new powers to define “unfair trade prac-
tices” and issue “cease-and-desist” orders when it found evidence of unfair
competition.
Henry D. Clayton, a Democrat from Alabama on the House Judiciary
Committee, drafted an anti-trust bill in 1914 that outlawed practices such as
price discrimination (charging different customers different prices for the
same goods); “tying” agreements, which limited the right of dealers to han-
dle the products of competing manufacturers; and corporations’ acquisition
of stock in competing corporations. In every case, however, conservative
forces in the Senate qualified these provisions by tacking on the weakening
phrase “where the effect may be to substantially lessen competition” or
words of similar effect. And conservative southern Democrats and northern
Republicans amended the Clayton Anti-Trust Act to allow for broad judicial
review of the FTC’s decisions, thus further weakening its freedom of action.
In accordance with the president’s recommendation, however, corporate
officials were made individually responsible for any violations.
970 • “MAKING THE WORLD OVER”: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA (CH. 23)

Agrarian activists in alliance with organized labor won a stipulation that

declared farm-labor organizations were not unlawful combinations in
restraint of trade. Injunctions in labor disputes, moreover, were not to be
handed down by federal courts unless “necessary to prevent irreparable
injury to property.” Though hailed by union leaders as labor’s Magna Carta,
these provisions were later neutralized by court decisions. Wilson himself
remarked that the act did little more than affirm the right of unions to exist
by forbidding their dissolution for acting in restraint of trade.
Administration of the anti-trust laws generally proved disappointing to
the more vehement progressives under Wilson. The president reassured
business leaders that his purposes were friendly. As his secretary of com-
merce put it later, Wilson hoped to “create in the Federal Trade Commission
a counselor and friend to the business world.” But its first chairman lacked
forcefulness, and under its next head, a Chicago industrialist, the FTC prac-
tically abandoned its function as watchdog of big business activities. The
Justice Department, meanwhile, offered help and advice to businessmen
interested in arranging matters so as to avoid anti-trust prosecutions. The
appointment of conservative men to the ICC and the Federal Reserve won
plaudits from the business world and profoundly disappointed progressives.

SOCIAL JUSTICE In November 1914, President Wilson announced that

progressivism had accomplished its major goals. He had fulfilled his promises
to lower the tariff, reorganize the banking system, and strengthen the anti-
trust laws. The New Freedom was now complete, he wrote late in 1914; the
future would be “a time of healing because [it would be] a time of just deal-
ing.” Wilson’s announcement that the New Freedom was finished bewildered
many progressives, especially those who had long advocated “social-justice”
legislation. Although Wilson endorsed states allowing women to vote, he
declined to support a federal suffrage amendment because his party platform
had not done so. He also withheld support from federal child-labor legisla-
tion because he regarded it as a state matter. He opposed a bill providing low-
interest loans to farmers on the grounds that it was “unwise and unjustifiable
to extend the credit of the government to a single class of the community.”
Herbert Croly, the editor of The New Republic, who had written The Promise
of the American Life and was widely regarded as the leading progressive theo-
rist, was dumbfounded by Wilson’s conservative turn. He wondered how Wil-
son could assert “that the fundamental wrongs of a modern society can be
easily and quickly righted as a consequence of [passing] a few laws.” Wilson’s
about-face, he concluded, “casts suspicion upon his own sincerity or upon his
grasp of the realities of modern social and industrial life.”
 Woodrow Wilson’s Progressivism • 971

P R O G R E S S I V I S M F O R W H I T E S O N LY African American leaders

were also perplexed and disappointed by Wilson’s resurgent conservatism.
Like many other progressives, Woodrow Wilson showed little interest in the
plight of African Americans. In fact, he shared many of the racist attitudes
prevalent at the time. Although Wilson denounced the Ku Klux Klan’s “reign
of terror,” he sympathized with its motives of restoring white rule in the
postwar South and relieving whites of what he called the “ignorant and hos-
tile” power of the black vote. As a student at Princeton, Wilson had detested
the enfranchisement of blacks, arguing that Americans of Anglo-Saxon ori-
gin would always resist domination by “an ignorant and inferior race.” In the
late nineteenth century, Professor Wilson had written that the suppression
of black political rights in the post–Civil War South reflected “the natural,
inevitable ascendancy of the whites.”
Later, as a politician, Wilson courted African American voters, but he
rarely consulted black leaders and repeatedly avoided opportunities to asso-
ciate with them in public or express support for African Americans. That he
refused to create a National Race Commission was a great disappointment
to the black community, as was Wilson’s appointment to his cabinet of

The privileged elite

President Wilson and the First Lady ride in a carriage.
972 • “MAKING THE WORLD OVER”: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA (CH. 23)

southerners who were uncompromising racists. Josephus Daniels, a North

Carolina newspaper editor who became Wilson’s secretary of the navy, wrote
that “the subjection of the negro, politically, and the separation of the negro,
socially, are paramount to all other considerations in the South.” Daniels, as
well as other cabinet members, set about racially segregating the employees
in their agencies. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, who had
changed his residency from Nebraska to Florida, thanked God that he was “a
member of the greatest of all the races, the Caucasian race.” As a three-time
presidential candidate, he had studiously ignored the “race problem.” Now,
as secretary of state, he supported efforts to segregate federal employees by
race—separate offices, dining facilities, restrooms, and water fountains.
In November 1914 a delegation of national black leaders visited Wilson in
the White House to complain about a self-proclaimed “progressive” president
adopting such a “regressive” racial policy. Wilson initially claimed ignorance of
the efforts to segregate federal offices, but he eventually argued that both races
benefited from the new segregation policies because they eliminated “the possi-
bility of friction.” William Trotter, a Harvard-educated African-American
newspaper editor who helped found the National Association for the Advance-
ment of Colored People (NAACP) and the Equal Rights League, scolded the
first-year president: “Have you a ‘new freedom’ for white Americans, and a new
slavery for ‘your Afro-American fellow citizens?’ God forbid.” A furious Wilson
then told the black visitors to leave. The segregationist policies of the adminis-
tration blatantly contradicted the “progressive” commitment of Bryan and
Wilson to social equality. Their progressivism was for whites only.

T H E WO M E N ’ S M O V E M E N T The suffrage movement had garnered

little support during Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency. He explained that he
personally supported voting rights for women but “I am not an enthusiastic
advocate of it because I do not regard it as a very important matter.” He
believed that women should continue to focus their energies on motherhood,
“which is more important than any man’s work.” By 1912, however, Roosevelt
had changed his mind. During the presidential campaign, he admitted that
“I am rather in favor of the suffrage, but very tepidly.” For his part, Woodrow
Wilson, despite having two daughters who were suffragists, insisted that the
issue of women’s voting rights should be left to the states. He also believed that
women should “supplement a man’s life” rather than seek equality in every
sphere. A Mississippi Democrat was more blunt in his opposition: “I would
rather die and go to hell,” he claimed, “than vote for woman’s suffrage.”
The lack of support from the progressive presidents led some leaders of the
suffrage movement to revise their tactics in the second decade of the new
 Woodrow Wilson’s Progressivism • 973

century. In 1910, Alice Paul, a Quaker social worker who had earned a doc-
toral degree in political science from the University of Pennsylvania, returned
from an apprenticeship with the militant suffragists of England, who had
developed effective forms of civil disobedience as a way of generating attention
and support. The courageously militant Paul became head of the National
American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). She instructed female
activists to picket state legislatures, target and “punish” politicians who
failed to endorse suffrage, chain themselves to public buildings, incite police
to arrest them, and undertake hunger strikes. In 1913, Paul organized five
thousand suffragists to march in protest at Woodrow Wilson’s presidential
inauguration. Four years later, Paul helped form the National Woman’s
Party. By 1917, she had decided that suffragists must do something even
more dramatic to force President Wilson to support their cause: picket the
White House. On January 11, 1917, Paul and her followers took up positions
around the White House. They took turns carrying their signs on the side-
walks all day, five days a week, for six months, whereupon the president
ordered their arrest. Some sixty suffragists were jailed. For her role, Alice
Paul was sentenced to seven months in prison. She then went on a hunger
strike, leading prison officials to force feed her through a tube inserted in her
nose. Under an avalanche of press coverage and public criticism, President
Wilson pardoned her and the other jailed activists.
The courageous proponents of women’s suffrage put forth several argu-
ments in favor of voting rights. Many assumed that the right to vote and hold
office was a matter of simple justice: women were just as capable as men in
exercising the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Others insisted that
women were morally superior to men and therefore would raise the quality of
the political process by their participation in it. They also would be less prone
to use warfare as a solution to international disputes and national differences.
Women voters, advocates argued, would also promote the welfare of society
rather than partisan or selfish gains. Allowing women to vote would create a
great engine for progressive social change. One activist explicitly linked
women’s suffrage with the social gospel, declaring that women embraced
Christ more readily than men; if they were elected to public office, they would
“far more effectively guard the morals of society and the sanitary conditions
of cities.”
Yet the women’s suffrage movement was not immune from the prevailing
social, ethnic, and racial prejudices of the day. Carrie Chapman Catt echoed
the fears of many middle- and upper-class women when she warned of the
danger that “lies in the votes possessed by the males in the slums of the cities,
and the ignorant foreign [immigrant] vote.” She added that the nation, with
974 • “MAKING THE WORLD OVER”: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA (CH. 23)

“ill-advised haste” had enfranchised “the foreigner, the Negro and the Indian”
but still balked at women voting. In the South, suffragists catered to genera-
tions of deeply embedded racism. One of them declared that giving white
women the vote “would insure immediate and durable white supremacy.”
Most of the suffrage organizations excluded African American women.
Whatever the motives, a grudging President Wilson finally endorsed what
journalists called the Susan B. Anthony Amendment in early 1918, explain-
ing to the Senate that he saw it as a reward for the role women had played in
supporting the war effort. After six months of delay, debate, and failed votes,
the Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment in the spring of 1919 and
sent it to the states for ratification. Tennessee’s legislature was the last of
thirty-six state assemblies to approve the amendment, and it did so in dramatic
fashion. The initial vote was deadlocked 48–48. Then a twenty-four-year-old
legislator named Harry Burn changed his vote to yes at the insistence of his
mother. The Nineteenth Amendment was ratified on August 18, 1920, mak-
ing the United States the twenty-second nation in the world to allow women’s
suffrage. It was the climactic achievement of the Progressive Era. Suddenly
9.5 million women were eligible to vote; in the 1920 presidential election
they would make up 40 percent of the electorate.

Alice Paul
Alice Paul’s strategies of civil disobedience became increasingly militant. Here she
sews a suffrage flag, which she often brandished at strikes and protests.
 Woodrow Wilson’s Progressivism • 975

M A RG A R E T S A N G E R A N D B I RT H C O N T RO L Perhaps the most

controversial women’s issue of the Progressive Era involved birth control. In
1916, the first birth-control clinic in the nation opened in Brooklyn, New
York. One of the staff members was a feisty woman named Margaret
Sanger, a nurse and midwife. Sanger had grown up with ten siblings, one of
whom she helped deliver when she was eight years old. While working in the
tenements of Manhattan, Sanger saw many poor, young mothers struggling
to provide for their growing families. She also witnessed the consequences
of unwanted pregnancies, tragic miscarriages, and amateur abortions. The
young women she encountered were desperate for information about how to
avoid pregnancy. Sanger insisted that women (“doomed people”) could never
“be on equal footing with men until they have complete control over their
reproductive functions.” So Sanger began to distribute birth-control infor-
mation to working-class women in 1912 and resolved to spend the rest of
her life helping women gain control of their bodies. Two years later, she
began publishing the Woman Rebel, a monthly feminist newspaper which
authorities declared obscene. In 1921, Sanger organized the American Birth
Control League, which later changed its name to Planned Parenthood. The
Birth Control League distributed birth-control information to doctors, social
workers, women’s clubs, and the scientific community, as well as to thousands
of women. Such efforts aroused intense opposition, but Sanger and others
persisted in their efforts to enable women to control whether they became
pregnant. Sanger was viewed as a hero by many progressive reformers. In the
1920s, however, she alienated supporters of birth control by endorsing what
was called eugenics: the effort to reduce the number of genetically “unfit”
people in society by sterilizing the mentally incompetent and other people
with certain unwanted hereditary conditions. Birth control, she stressed in a
chilling justification of eugenics, was “the most constructive and necessary
of the means to racial health.”

PROGRESSIVE RESURGENCE The need to weld a winning political

coalition in 1916 pushed Woodrow Wilson back onto the road of reform. Pro-
gressive Democrats were growing restless with his conservative stance, and
after war broke out in Europe in August 1914, further divisions arose over
defense preparedness and foreign policy issues. At the same time, the Repub-
licans were repairing their own rift, as the “Bull Moose” Progressive party
showed little staying power in the midterm elections and Theodore Roosevelt
showed little will to preserve it. Wilson could gain reelection only by court-
ing progressives of all parties. In 1916, the president scored points with them
when he nominated Louis D. Brandeis to the Supreme Court. Conservatives
waged a vigorous battle against Brandeis, but Senate progressives rallied to
976 • “MAKING THE WORLD OVER”: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA (CH. 23)

win confirmation of the social-justice champion, the first Jewish member of

the Court.
Meanwhile, Wilson announced a broad new program of farm and labor
reforms. The agricultural sector continued to suffer from a shortage of capi-
tal. To address the problem, Wilson supported a proposal to set up special
rural banks to provide long-term farm loans. The Federal Farm Loan Act
became law in 1916. Under the control of the Federal Farm Loan Board,
twelve Federal Land banks paralleled the regional Federal Reserve banks and
offered farmers loans of five to forty years’ duration at low interest rates.
Thus the dream of federal loans to farmers, long advocated by Populists,
finally came to fruition when Congress passed the Warehouse Act of 1916,
which enabled farmers who stored their harvest in designated warehouses to
receive federal receipts that could be used as collateral for short-term bank
loans. Farmers were also pleased by the passage of the Smith-Lever Act of
1914 and the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917. The first provided federal financing
for farm-demonstration agents who fanned out to educate farmers about
new equipment and new ideas related to agricultural efficiency. The second
measure extended agricultural and mechanical education to high schools.
Farmers with the newfangled automobiles had more than a passing interest
as well in the Federal Highways Act of 1916, which helped finance new high-
ways. The progressive resurgence of 1916 broke the logjam on workplace
reforms as well.

L A B O R L E G I S L AT I O N One of the longstanding goals of many pro-

gressive Democrats was a federal child labor law. When Congress passed the
Keating-Owen Act, Wilson expressed doubts about its constitutionality, but
he eventually signed the landmark legislation, which excluded from interstate
commerce any goods manufactured by children under the age of fourteen.
The Keating-Owen Act was later ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme
Court on the grounds that regulating child labor was outside the bounds of
regulating interstate commerce. Effective action against child labor abuses
had to await the New Deal of the 1930s.
Another important accomplishment was the eight-hour workday for rail-
road workers, a measure that the Supreme Court upheld. The Adamson Act
of 1916 resulted from a threatened strike of railroad unions demanding an
eight-hour workday and other concessions. Wilson, who objected to some of
the demands, nevertheless went before Congress to request action on the
hours limitation. The Adamson Act required an eight-hour workday, with
time and a half for overtime, and appointed a commission to study the prob-
lem of working conditions in the railroad industry.
 Limits of Progressivism • 977

LIMITS OF PROGRESSIVISM

During Wilson’s two terms as president, progressivism reached its

zenith. After two decades of political ferment (three if the Populist years are
counted), the great contribution of progressive politics was the firm establish-
ment and general acceptance of the public-service concept of government.
The Progressive Era was an optimistic age in which all sorts of reformers
assumed that no problem lay beyond solution. But like all great historic
movements, progressivism displayed elements of paradox and irony. Despite
all of the talk of greater democracy, progressivism had a blind spot when it
came to racial equality. The Progressive Era was the age of disenfranchise-
ment for southern blacks. The first two decades of the twentieth century also
witnessed a new round of anti-immigrant prejudice. The initiative and ref-
erendum, supposedly democratic reforms, proved subject to manipulation
by corporations and political machines that could mount well-financed
publicity campaigns. And much of the public policy of the time came to be
formulated by elites—technical experts and members of appointed boards—
rather than by representative segments of the population. There is a fine
irony in the fact that the drive to increase the political role of ordinary
people paralleled efforts to strengthen executive leadership and exalt gov-
ernment technical expertise. This “progressive” age of efficiency and bureau-
cracy, in business as well as government, brought into being a society in
which more and more of the decisions affecting people’s lives were made by
unelected bureaucrats.
Progressivism was largely a middle-class movement in which the destitute
poor and unorganized had little influence. The supreme irony was that a
movement so dedicated to the rhetoric of democracy should experience so
steady a decline in voter participation. In 1912, the year of Roosevelt’s Bull
Moose campaign, with four presidential candidates, voting dropped off by
between 6 and 7 percent. The new politics of issues and charismatic leaders
proved to be less effective in turning out voters than traditional party orga-
nizations and party bosses had been. And by 1916, the optimism of an age
that presumed social progress was already confronted by a vast slaughter. In
1914, Europe had stumbled into a horrific world war, and the United States
would soon be drawn into its destruction. The twentieth century, which
dawned with such bright hopes for social progress, held in store episodes of
unparalleled brutality and holocaust.
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Progressivism Progressives believed that industrialization and urbanization

were negatively affecting American life. They were middle-class idealists in both
political parties who sought reform and regulation in order to ensure social jus-
tice. Many progressives wished to curb the powers of local political machines
and establish honest and efficient government. They also called for an end to
child labor, laws promoting safety in the workplace, a ban on the sale of alco-
holic beverages, legislation curbing trusts, and women’s suffrage.
• Muckrakers Theodore Roosevelt named the journalists whose works exposed
social ills “muckrakers.” New, inexpensive popular magazines, such as McClure’s,
published articles about municipal corruption, horrendous conditions in meat-
packing plants and urban slums, and predatory business practices. By raising
public awareness of these issues, muckrakers contributed to major changes in
the workplace and in governance.
• Square Deal Program President Roosevelt used his executive position to pro-
mote his progressive Square Deal program, which included regulating trusts,
arbitrating the 1902 coal strike, regulating the railroads, and cleaning up the
meat and drug industries. President Taft continued to bust trusts and reform the
tariff, but Republican party bosses, reflecting their big business interests,
ensured that the tariff reductions were too few to satisfy the progressives in the
party. Roosevelt decided to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 1912
because of progressives’ disillusionment with Taft.
• Presidential Election of 1912 In 1912, after the Republicans renominated Taft,
Roosevelt’s supporters bolted the convention, formed the Progressive party,
and nominated Roosevelt. Although some Democratic progressives supported
Roosevelt, the split in the Republican party led to Woodrow Wilson’s success.
Having won a majority in both houses of Congress as well as the presidential
election, the Democrats effectively held national power for the first time since
the Civil War.
• Wilsonian Progressivism Although Woodrow Wilson was a progressive, his
approach was different from Roosevelt’s. His New Freedom program promised
less federal intervention in business and a return to such traditional Democratic
policies as a low tariff. Wilson began a rigorous anti-trust program and oversaw
the establishment of the Federal Reserve System. He opposed federal programs
promoting social justice and initially withheld support for federal regulation of
child labor and a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women’s suffrage.
A southerner, he believed blacks were inferior and supported segregation.
 CHRONOLOGY

1889
1902
1902
Hull-House, a settlement house, opens in Chicago
Theodore Roosevelt attempts to arbitrate the coal strike
Justice Department breaks up Northern Securities Company
1903 Congress passes the Elkins Act
1906 Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is published
1906 Congress passes the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and
Drug Act
1908 Supreme Court issues Muller v. Oregon decision
1909 William Taft is inaugurated president
1910 Congress passes the Mann-Elkins Act
1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire
1913 Congress passes the Federal Reserve Act
1914 Congress passes the Clayton Anti-Trust Act
1916 Louis Brandeis is nominated to fill a seat on the Supreme Court
1920 Nineteenth Amendment, guaranteeing women’s suffrage, is ratified

KEY TERMS & NAMES

social gospel p. 936 Gifford Pinchot p. 956 Election of 1912 p. 965

settlement houses p. 937 New Nationalism p. 960 Alice Paul p. 973

Jane Addams p. 937 Sixteenth Amendment p. 961 Carrie Chapman Catt

p. 973
muckrakers p. 942 “Bull Moose” progressive
party p. 962 Nineteenth Amendment
Taylorism p. 945 p. 974
Woodrow Wilson p. 962
social justice p. 947 Margaret Sanger p. 975
New Freedom p. 965
Florence Kelley p. 948

24
AMERICA AND
THE GREAT WAR

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• Why did Woodrow Wilson involve the United States in Mexico’s

revolutionary turmoil?
• Why did the United States enter the Great War in Europe?
• How did Wilson promote his peace plan?
• Why did the Senate refuse to ratify the Treaty of Versailles?
• What were the consequences of the war at home and abroad?

T hroughout the nineteenth century, the United States reaped

the benefits of its distance from the frequent wars that
plagued Europe. The Atlantic Ocean provided a welcome
buffer. During the early twentieth century, however, the nation’s comfort-
able isolation ended. Ever-expanding world trade entwined American inter-
ests with the fate of Europe. In addition, the development of steam-powered
ships and submarines meant that foreign navies could threaten American
security. At the same time, the election of Woodrow Wilson in 1912 brought
to the White House a self-righteous moralist determined to impose his stan-
dards for proper conduct on renegade nations. This combination of circum-
stances made the outbreak of the “Great War” in Europe in 1914 a profound
crisis for the United States, a crisis that would transform the nation’s role in
international affairs.

WILSON AND F O R E I G N A F FA I R S

Woodrow Wilson had no experience or expertise in international rela-

tions. The former college professor admitted before taking office that “it
would be an irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with
 Wilson and Foreign Affairs • 981

foreign affairs.” But events in Latin America and Europe were to make the
irony all too real. From the summer of 1914, when a catastrophic world war
erupted in Europe, foreign relations increasingly overshadowed all else,
including Wilson’s ambitious domestic program of progressive reforms.
Wilson began his presidency as a pacifist, but by the end of his second term
he had ordered more U.S. military interventions abroad than any president
before or since.

I D E A L I S T I C D I P LO M AC Y Although devoid of international experi-

ence, Wilson did not lack ideas or convictions about global issues. He saw
himself as a man of providential destiny who would help create a new world
order governed by morality and idealism rather than selfish national interests.
Both Wilson and Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan believed that
America had a religious duty to advance democracy and Christianity around
the world. As Wilson had declared a few years before becoming president,
“Every nation of the world needs to be drawn into the tutelage of America.”
Wilson and Bryan developed a diplomatic policy based on this pious idealism.
During 1913 and 1914, the pacifist Bryan negotiated some thirty “cooling-off ”
treaties, under which participating nations pledged not to go to war over any
disagreement for a period of twelve months pending mediation by an interna-
tional arbitration panel. The treaties were of little consequence, however. They
were soon forgotten in the revolutionary sweep of world events that would
make the twentieth century the bloodiest in recorded history.

I N T E RV E N T I O N I N M E X I C O Mexico, which had been in the throes

of revolutions for nearly three years, presented a thorny problem for
Woodrow Wilson soon after he took office early in 1913. In 1910, popular
resentment against the long-standing Mexican dictatorship had boiled over
into revolt. Revolutionary armies occupied Mexico City, and then the victori-
ous rebels began squabbling among themselves. The leader of the rebellion, a
progressive reformer named Francisco Madero, was himself overthrown by
his chief of staff, General Victoriano Huerta, who assumed power in 1913
and had Madero murdered.
President Wilson refused to recognize any government that used force to
gain power. Instead, he stationed U.S. warships off Veracruz, on the Gulf of
Mexico, to halt arms shipments to Huerta’s regime. “I am going to teach the
South American republics to elect good men,” Wilson vowed to a British
diplomat. On April 9, 1914, several American sailors gathering supplies in
Tampico, Mexico, strayed into a restricted area and were arrested. Mexican
officials quickly released them and apologized to the U.S. naval commander.
There the incident might have ended, but the pompous naval officer
982 • AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR (CH. 24)

demanded that the Mexicans salute the American flag. Wilson backed him
up by sending some six thousand U.S. marines and sailors ashore at Veracruz
on April 21, 1914. They occupied the city at a cost of nineteen American
lives; at least two hundred Mexicans were killed.
The use of U.S. military force in Mexico played out like many previous
American interventions in the Caribbean and Central America. The public
and the Congress readily endorsed the decision to send troops because
American honor was presumed to be at stake, but the complex realities of
U.S. troops fighting in a foreign country eventually led to prolonged involve-
ment and public disillusionment. Wilson assumed the Mexican people
would welcome the American troops as liberators. Instead, the U.S. occupa-
tion of Veracruz aroused the opposition of all factions against the “Yankee
imperialists.” The American troops finally left Veracruz in late 1914. A year
later, the United States and several Latin American governments recognized
a new government in Mexico.
Still the troubles south of the border continued. Bickering among various
Mexican factions erupted in chaotic civil war. The prolonged upheaval
spawned rival revolutionary armies, the largest of which was led by Francisco
Pancho Villa. Woodrow Wilson vowed to stay out of the turmoil. “The coun-
try is theirs,” he concluded. “The government is theirs. Their liberty, if they
can get it, is theirs, and so far as my influence goes while I am president,
nobody shall interfere with them.”
In 1916, the charismatic Villa and his men seized a train and murdered
sixteen American mining engineers in a deliberate attempt to trigger U.S.
intervention and to build up Villa as a popular opponent of the “gringos.”
That failing, he crossed the border on raids into Texas and New Mexico.
On March 9, he and his men went on a rampage in Columbus, New Mexico,
burned the town, and killed seventeen Americans, men and women. A furious
Woodrow Wilson abandoned his policy of “watchful waiting.” He sent Gen-
eral John J. Pershing across the Mexican border with a force of eleven thou-
sand U.S. soldiers. For nearly a year, Pershing’s troops chased Villa through
northern Mexico. They had no luck and were ordered home in 1917.

O T H E R P R O B L E M S I N L AT I N A M E R I C A In the Caribbean, Wilson

found it as hard to act on his democratic ideals as it was in Mexico. The “dol-
lar diplomacy” practiced by the Taft administration had encouraged U.S.
bankers to aid debt-plagued governments in Haiti, Guatemala, Honduras,
and Nicaragua. Despite Wilson’s public stand against using military force to
back up American investments, he kept U.S. marines in Nicaragua, where
they had been sent by President Taft in 1912 to prevent renewed civil war.
 An Uneasy Neutrality • 983

Pancho Villa
Villa (center) and his followers rebelled against the president of Mexico and
antagonized the United States with attacks against “gringos.”

Then, in 1915, he dispatched more marines to Haiti after that country expe-
rienced two chaotic revolutions. The U.S. troops stayed in Nicaragua until
1933 and in Haiti until 1934. Disorders in the Dominican Republic brought
U.S. Marines to that country in 1916; they remained until 1924. The
repeated use of military force only exacerbated the hatred many Latin Amer-
icans felt toward the United States, then and since. As the New York Times
charged, Wilson’s frequent interventions made Taft’s dollar diplomacy look
like “ten cent diplomacy.”

AN UNEASY NEUTRALITY

During the summer of 1914, problems in Latin America and the

Caribbean, as well as family tragedy, loomed larger in President Wilson’s
thinking than the gathering storm in Europe. During his first year as
president, his wife, Ellen, had contracted kidney disease, and she died on
August 6, 1914. President Wilson was devastated. “Oh, my God! What am I to
do?” he exclaimed. Yet six months later the president fell in love with Edith
Bolling Galt, a Washington widow, and in December 1915 they were married.
984 • AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR (CH. 24)

Ellen Wilson had died just as another tragedy was erupting overseas.
When the thunderbolt of war struck Europe in the summer of 1914, most
Americans saw it “as lightning out of a clear sky,” as one North Carolinian
wrote. Whatever the troubles in Mexico, whatever disorders and interven-
tions agitated other nations, it seemed unreal that Europe could descend into
an orgy of mutual destruction. At the beginning of the twentieth century,
Europe had been peaceful and prosperous. No one imagined the scale of a
new industrialized form of warfare; it would assume horrible proportions
and involve unprecedented ruthlessness. Between 1914 and 1921, the First
World War was directly responsible for the deaths of over 9 million combat-
ants and the horrible wounding of 15 million more; it would produce at least
3 million widows and 6 million orphans. The war’s sheer horror and destruc-
tiveness, its obscene butchery and ravaged landscapes, defied belief.
The First World War resulted from festering imperial rivalries and ethnic
conflicts in central Europe that set in motion a series of disastrous events
and decisions. The Austro-Hungarian Empire had grown determined to
suppress the aggressive expansionism of Serbia, a small, independent king-
dom. Germany was equally eager to sustain its dominant standing in central
Europe against a resurgent Russia and its ally France. War erupted when an
Austrian citizen of Serbian descent assassinated the Austrian ruler, Archduke
Franz Ferdinand, in the Bosnian town of Sarajevo. Austria-Hungary’s furi-
ous determination to punish Serbia for the murder led Russia to mobilize its
army in sympathy with its Slavic friends in Serbia. That in turn triggered
reactions by a complex system of European alliances: the Triple Alliance,
or Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy), and the Triple
Entente, or Allied Powers (France, Great Britain, and Russia). When Russia
refused to stop its army’s mobilization, Germany, which backed Austria-
Hungary, declared war on Russia on August 1, 1914, and on France two days
later. Germany then activated a long-planned invasion plan of France that
went through neutral Belgium, an action that brought Great Britain reluc-
tantly into the rapidly widening war on August 4. Japan, eager to seize Ger-
man colonies in the Pacific, declared war on August 23, and Turkey entered
on the side of the Central Powers in October. Although allied with the Cen-
tral Powers, Italy initially stayed out of the war and then struck a bargain
under which it joined the Allied Powers in 1915. The early weeks of the war
involved fast-moving assaults and enormous casualties. On one day, August 22,
1914, 27,000 French soldiers were killed. By 1915, almost twenty thousand
square miles in Belgium and France were in German hands.
The real surprise in 1914 was not the outbreak of war but the nature of
the war that unfolded. The First World War was unlike any previous conflict
 An Uneasy Neutrality • 985

in its scale, scope, and carnage. Machine guns, high-velocity rifles, aerial
bombing, poison gas delivered by wind and artillery shells, flame throwers,
land mines, long-range artillery, and armored tanks changed the nature of
warfare and produced horrific casualties and widespread destruction. Total
war among industrialized nations meant that everyone was considered a
combatant, including civilians. Each side tried to starve the other into sub-
mission by sealing off foreign trade, often by sinking commercial vessels and
passenger liners. Intentional destruction extended well beyond the battle-
fields. Occupied cities saw their cultural monuments—cathedrals, muse-
ums, historic buildings—systematically destroyed. In the first month of the
war, for example, German forces overran Louvain, Belgium, where they not
only murdered 248 civilians but also burned the city’s ancient library to the
ground. The brutal war on the “eastern front” in Russia was intended to be a
war of racial annihilation. Russia used the pretext of the war to expel
500,000 Jews and 743,000 Poles. Each nation engaged in the war talked regu-
larly about God, duty, sacrifice, patriotism, and honor, but the arbitrary hor-
rors and wastefulness of World War I involved dishonorable actions and
decisions that we have yet to understand but cannot forget.

Verdun
A landscape image from Verdun, taken immediately after the battle, shows how the
firepower ravaged the land.
986 • AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR (CH. 24)

What began as a war of quick movement in August 1914 bogged down after
1915 into a stalemated war of senseless attrition punctuated by massive battles
that contributed little except more obscene slaughter. During the devastating
Battle of Verdun, in northeast France, which lasted from February to Decem-
ber 1916, some 32 million artillery shells were fired—1,500 shells for every
square meter of the battlefield. Such unprecedented massed firepower ravaged
the landscape, shattering villages and turning farmland and forests into
cratered wasteland. The casualties were staggering. Some 162,000 French sol-
diers died at Verdun; German losses were 143,000. Charles de Gaulle, a young
French lieutenant who would become the nation’s prime minister, said the
conflict had become a “war of extermination.”
Trench warfare gave the First World War its lasting character. Most battles
were won not by skillful maneuvers or by superior generalship but by brute
force. The object of what came to be called “industrial war” was not so
much to gain ground but simply to decimate the other army in a prolonged
war of attrition until their manpower and resources were exhausted. The war
on the western front usually involved hundreds of thousands of men crawl-
ing out of their muddy dugouts and rat-infested, corpse-crammed trenches
after hours of being pummeled by enemy artillery bombardments (shrapnel

Trench warfare
American troops eat amidst the reek of death and threat of enemy fire in a front-
line trench in France.
 An Uneasy Neutrality • 987

from long-distance artillery caused 60 percent of the war’s casualties). They

then had to cross a blood-soaked “no-man’s-land,” stitched with barbed wire
and sown with mines, to engage in suicidal assaults on well-defended enemy
machine-gun emplacements. In one attack at Ypres in Belgium, the British
lost thirteen thousand men in only three hours of fighting, which gained
them only one hundred yards of meaningless acreage. Life in the war zone
was especially miserable. In addition to the dangers of enemy fire, soldiers
on both sides were forced to deal with flooded trenches and terrible diseases
such as trench fever and trench foot, which could lead to amputation. Lice
and rats were constant companions. The stench was unbearable. Soldiers on
both sides ate, slept, and fought among the dead and amid the reek of death.

I N I T I A L R E AC T I O N S As the trench war along the western front in Bel-

gium and France stalemated, casualties soared and pressure for American
intervention increased. Shock in the United States over the bloodbath in
Europe gave way to gratitude that a wide ocean stood between America and
the killing fields. “Our isolated position and freedom from entangling
alliances,” said the Literary Digest,
ensure that “we are in no peril of
being drawn into the European
quarrel.” President Wilson repeat-
edly urged Americans to remain
“neutral in thought as well as in
action.” That was more easily said
than done. More than a third of the
nation’s citizens were “hyphen-
ated Americans,” first- or second-
generation immigrants who
retained strong ties to their native
country. Among the 13 million
immigrants from the countries
at war living in the United States,
German Americans were by far the
largest group, numbering 8 mil-
lion. And the 4 million Irish Amer-
icans harbored a deep-rooted
The Samson-like “War” pulls down the
enmity toward England, which temple of “Civilization”
over the centuries had conquered Most Americans tended to support the
and subjugated the Irish. These Allied Powers, but everyone was shocked by
groups instinctively leaned toward the carnage of the Great War.
988 • AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR (CH. 24)

the Central Powers. But old-line Americans, largely of British origin, sup-
ported the Allied Powers. American leaders were pro-British from the outset
of the war. Robert Lansing, first counselor of the State Department; Walter
Hines Page, ambassador to London; and “Colonel” Edward House, Wilson’s
closest adviser—all saw in German militarism a potential danger to the
United States.

A STRAINED NEUTRALITY At first, the war in Europe brought a

slump in American exports and the threat of a depression, but by the spring
of 1915 the Allies’ demand for food and war supplies generated an incredible
economic boom for American businesses, bankers, and farmers. To finance
their purchases of American supplies, the Allies, especially Britain and
France, needed loans. Early in the war, Secretary of State William Jennings
Bryan, a strict pacifist, declared that loans to any warring nation were
“inconsistent with the true spirit of neutrality.” Yet Wilson quietly began
approving short-term loans to sustain trade with the desperate Allies. By the
fall of 1915, Wilson had removed all restrictions on loans. American
investors would eventually advance over $2 billion to the Allies before the
United States entered the war, and only $27 million to Germany.
The administration nevertheless clung to its official stance of neutrality
through two and a half years of warfare in Europe. Wilson tried valiantly to
uphold the “freedom of the seas,” which had guided U.S. policy since the
Napoleonic Wars of the early nineteenth century. On August 6, 1914, Secre-
tary of State Bryan called upon the warring nations (“belligerents”) to
respect the rights of neutral nations like the United States to continue its
commerce with them by shipping goods across the Atlantic. The Central
Powers promptly accepted, but the British refused because they would lose
some of their advantage in sea power. In November 1914 the British declared
the whole North Sea a war zone, sowed it with mines, and ordered neutral
ships to submit to searches. In March 1915, they announced that they would
seize ships carrying goods to Germany. American protests were ignored.

NEUTRAL RIGHTS AND SUBMARINES With the German fleet

bottled up by the British blockade, the German government proclaimed a war
zone around the British Isles. Enemy merchant ships in those waters would
be attacked by submarines, the Germans declared, and “it may not always be
possible to save crews and passengers.” As the chief advantage of U-boat
(Unterseeboot) warfare was in surprise, the German decision violated the
long-established procedure of stopping an enemy vessel and providing for
the safety of passengers and crew before sinking it. Since the British some-
 An Uneasy Neutrality • 989

0 250 500 Miles

NORWAY
St. Petersburg
0 250 500 Kilometers SWEDEN

EA
NORTH

IC S
SEA

LT
GREAT

BA
IRELAND DENMARK
BRITAIN
Memel
NETHERLANDS Danzig
(Gdansk)

London Berlin RUSSIA

Dover Strait GERMANY
BELGIUM
AT L A N T I C
Paris
OCEAN LUXEMBOURG
Vienna
SWITZERLAND AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
FRANCE
ROMANIA
PORTUGAL BLACK
SEA
ITALY SERBIA BULGARIA
SPAIN MONTE-
NEGRO
ALBANIA
TURKEY
M E (OTTOMAN
D
SPANISH I GREECE EMPIRE)
MOROCCO
T
E
NORTH AFRICA R
R
A
N
WORLD WAR I IN EUROPE, 1914 E A N
Central Powers (Triple Alliance) S E A
Allied Powers (Triple Entente)
Neutral countries

How did the European system of alliances spread conflict across all of Europe? How
was World War I different from previous wars? How did the war in Europe lead to
ethnic tensions in the United States?

times flew neutral flags as a ruse, neutral ships in this war zone would also be
in danger.
The United States pronounced the new German submarine policy “an
indefensible violation of neutral rights.” Wilson warned that Germany
would be held to “strict accountability” for any destruction of American
lives and property. Then, on May 7, 1915, a German submarine sank a huge
ocean liner moving slowly through the Irish Sea. Only as it tipped into the
waves was the German commander able to make out the name Lusitania on
990 • AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR (CH. 24)

The Lusitania
Americans were outraged when a German torpedo sank the Lusitania on
May 7, 1915.

the stern. Before the much-celebrated new British passenger liner had left
New York City, bound for England, the German embassy had published
warnings in American newspapers against travel to the war zone, but 128
Americans were nonetheless among the 1,198 persons lost.
Americans were outraged. The sinking of the Lusitania was an act of
piracy, Theodore Roosevelt declared. To quiet the uproar, Wilson urged
patience: “There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. There is
such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince oth-
ers by force that it is right.” Critics lambasted his lame response to the deaths
of 128 Americans. Roosevelt castigated Wilson’s “unmanly” stance, calling him
a “jackass” and threatening to “skin him alive if he doesn’t go to war” over the
Lusitania tragedy. Wilson acknowledged that he had misspoken. “I have a bad
habit of thinking out loud,” he confessed to a friend the day after his “too
proud to fight” speech. The meek language, he admitted, had “occurred to me
while I was speaking, and I letit out. I should have kept it in.” His previous
demand for “strict accountability” now forced him to make a stronger
response. On May 13, Secretary of State Bryan reluctantly signed a note
demanding that the Germans abandon unrestricted submarine warfare and
pay reparations for the sinking of the Lusitania. The Germans responded that
the ship was armed (which it was not) and secretly carried a cargo of rifles
and ammunition (which it did). A second note, on June 9, repeated American
 An Uneasy Neutrality • 991

demands in stronger terms. The

United States, Wilson asserted,
was “contending for nothing less
high and sacred than the rights
of humanity.” Bryan, unwilling to
risk war over the issue, resigned
in protest. He groused to Wilson
that Colonel House “has been
[acting as] secretary of state, not
I, and I have never had your full
confidence.” Edith Galt, not yet
Wilson’s wife, took great delight
in Bryan’s resignation. “Hurrah!
Old Bryan is out!” she told the
president. “I could shout and sing
that at last the world will know Stand by the president
just what he is.” Bryan’s successor, In this 1915 cartoon, Woodrow Wilson
Robert Lansing, signed the con- holds to the middle course between the
troversial “Lusitania Note” to the pacifism of Bryan (whose sign reads, “Let
Us Avoid Unnecessary Risks”) and the bel-
Germans. ligerence of Roosevelt (whose sign reads,
In response to the uproar over “Let Us Act without Unnecessary Delay”).
the sinking of the Lusitania, the
German government had secretly ordered U-boat captains to avoid sinking
any more passenger vessels. When, despite the order, two American lives
were lost in the sinking of the New York–bound British liner Arabic, the
Germans paid a cash penalty to the families of the deceased and offered a
public assurance on September 1, 1915: “Liners will not be sunk by our sub-
marines without warning and without safety of the lives of non-combatants,
provided that the liners do not try to escape or offer resistance.” With this
so-called Arabic Pledge, Wilson’s resolute stand seemed to have resulted in a
victory for his neutrality policy.
During early 1916, Wilson’s trusted adviser Colonel House visited London,
Paris, and Berlin in an effort to negotiate an end to the war but found neither
side ready to begin serious negotiations. On March 24, 1916, a U-boat torpe-
doed the French steamer Sussex, injuring two Americans. When President
Wilson threatened to break off relations, Germany renewed its pledge that
U-boats would not torpedo merchant and passenger ships. This Sussex
Pledge was far stronger than the earlier German promise after the Arabic
sinking the year before. The Sussex Pledge implied the virtual abandonment
of submarine warfare.
992 • AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR (CH. 24)

T H E D E B AT E O V E R P R E PA R E D N E S S The Lusitania incident and,

more generally, the quarrels over neutral commerce contributed to a growing
demand in the United States for a stronger army and navy. On December 1,
1914, champions of “preparedness” organized the National Security League
to promote their cause. After the Lusitania sinking, Wilson asked the War
and Navy Departments to develop plans for military expansion.
Pacifists, however, as well as many isolationists in the rural South and
West, were opposed to a defense buildup. The new Democratic leader in the
House spoke for many Americans when he declared his opposition to “the
big Navy and big Army program of the jingoes and war traffickers.” During
the fall of 1915, the administration’s plan to enlarge the army and create a
national reserve force of 400,000 ran into such stubborn opposition in Con-
gress that Wilson was forced to accept a compromise between advocates of an
expanded force under federal control and advocates of a traditional citizen
army. The National Defense Act of 1916 expanded the regular federal army
from 90,000 to 175,000 and permitted gradual enlargement to 223,000. It
also increased the National Guard to 440,000. Pacifist progressives heaped
scorn on Wilson for supporting the military buildup. Jane Addams, the
nation’s leading social reformer, and Carrie Chapman Catt, one of the most
prominent proponents of women’s suffrage, asserted that the president was
“selling out” to “militarism.” Former secretary of state Bryan complained in
early 1916 that Wilson wanted to “drag this nation into war.”
Opponents of the military buildup insisted that the financial burden
should rest upon the wealthy people they held responsible for promoting the
military expansion and profiting from trade with the Allies. The income tax
became their weapon. Supported by a groundswell of popular support, legis-
lators wrote into the Revenue Act of 1916 changes that doubled the basic
income tax rate from 1 to 2 percent, lifted the surtax to a maximum of 13 per-
cent (for a total of 15 percent) on income over $2 million, added an estate
tax, levied a 12.5 percent tax on munitions makers, and added a new tax on
excess corporate profits. The new taxes amounted to the most clear-cut vic-
tory for radical progressives in the entire Progressive Era, a victory further
consolidated and advanced after America entered the war. It was the cap-
stone to the progressive legislation that Wilson supported in preparation for
the upcoming presidential election.

THE ELECTION OF 1916 As the 1916 election approached, Republi-

cans hoped to regain their normal electoral majority, and Theodore Roosevelt
hoped to be their leader again. But he had committed the deadly political sin
of bolting his party in 1912. His eagerness for the United States to enter the
 An Uneasy Neutrality • 993

war also scared many voters. Needing a candidate who would draw Bull
Moose Progressives back into the fold, the Republican leaders turned to
Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes, who had a progressive record
as governor of New York from 1907 to 1910.
The Democrats, as expected, chose Woodrow Wilson again. Their plat-
form endorsed a program of social-welfare legislation and prudent military
preparedness in case the nation were drawn into the European war. The
party referred the idea of women’s suffrage to the states and pledged support
for a postwar league of nations to enforce peace. The Democrats’ most
popular issue, however, was an insistent pledge to keep the nation out of the
war in Europe. The peace theme, refined in the slogan “He kept us out of
war,” became the rallying cry of the Wilson campaign.
The candidates in the 1916 presidential election were remarkably similar.
Both Wilson and Hughes were the sons of preachers; both were attorneys
and former professors; both had been progressive governors; both were
known for their pristine integrity. Theodore Roosevelt highlighted the simi-
larities between them when he called the bearded Hughes a “whiskered Wil-
son.” Wilson, however, proved to be the better campaigner. In the end, his
twin pledges to keep America out of war and to expand his progressive social
agenda brought a narrow victory. The final vote showed a Democratic sweep

Peace with honor

Woodrow Wilson’s policies of neutrality proved popular in the 1916 campaign.
994 • AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR (CH. 24)

of the Far West and the South, enough for narrow victories in the Electoral
College, by 277 to 254, and in the popular vote, by 9 million to 8.5 million.
Despite the victory, the closeness of the election did not bode well for the
Democrats.

L A S T E F F O RT S F O R P E AC E Immediately after the election, Wilson

again offered to mediate an end to the war in Europe, but neither side was
willing to abandon its major war aims. Wilson then made one more appeal
for peace, in the hope that public opinion would force the hands of the
warring governments. Speaking before the Senate on January 22, 1917, he
asserted the right of the United States to propose a lasting peace settle-
ment, which would have to be a “peace without victory,” for only a “peace
among equals” could endure. Although Wilson did not know it, he was
already too late. Exactly two weeks before he spoke, impatient German
military leaders had decided to wage unrestricted submarine warfare on
Allied shipping. They took the calculated risk of arousing American anger
in the hope of scoring a quick knockout on the battlefields of Europe
before U.S. troops could join the war. On January 31, the new policy was
announced, effective the next day. All vessels would be sunk without warn-
ing. “Freedom of the seas,” said the Brooklyn Eagle, “will now be enjoyed
[only] by icebergs and fish.”
On February 3, 1917, Wilson told a joint session of Congress that the
United States had broken diplomatic relations with the German govern-
ment. Three weeks later he asked for authority to arm U.S. merchant ships
and “to employ any other instrumentalities or methods” necessary and “to
protect our ships and our people.” There was little quarrel with arming mer-
chant ships, but there was bitter opposition to Wilson’s vague reference to
“any other instrumentalities or methods.” A dozen die-hard noninterven-
tionists in Congress filibustered the measure until the legislative session
expired on March 4. A furious Wilson decided to outflank Congress. On
March 12, the State Department announced that a forgotten law of 1792
allowed the arming of merchant ships regardless of congressional inaction.
World events then took another unexpected turn—and another. On
February 25, Wilson learned that the British had intercepted an important
message from the German foreign minister, Arthur Zimmermann, to the
Mexican government. The note urged the Mexicans to invade the United
States. In exchange for their making war on America, Germany guaranteed
that Mexico would recover its “lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Ari-
zona.” On March 1, news of the Zimmermann telegram broke in the Ameri-
can press and infuriated the public. Then, later in March 1917, on the other
 America’s Entry into the War • 995

side of the world, a revolution overthrew Russia’s czarist government and

established the provisional government of a Russian republic. The fall of the
czarist autocracy gave Americans the illusion that all the major Allied pow-
ers were now fighting for constitutional democracy—an illusion that was
shattered in November 1917, when Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks, a
determined group of revolutionaries, seized power in war-weakened Russia
and established a Communist dictatorship. The bookish Lenin transformed
communism into an all-embracing ideology mercilessly imposed on an
entire society, eliminating civil liberties, religious life, and the free press, and
killing or imprisoning opposition leaders. Communism would become the
most significant new political movement of the twentieth century.

A M E R I C A’ S E N T R Y INTO THE WA R

In March 1917, German submarines sank five U.S. merchant vessels

in the North Atlantic. That was the last straw for a frustrated President
Wilson, who on April 2 asked Congress to recognize that imperial Germany
and the United States were at war. In his message to Congress, Wilson trans-
formed the war in Europe from being a conventional struggle for power
among historic European rivals to a righteous conflict between democratic
ideals and autocratic tyranny. America’s effort to maintain a principled
neutrality had become in Wilson’s mind an unprecedented “great crusade”
to end wars forever. He insisted that “the world must be made safe for
democracy,” or, more accurately, that victory by the democratic nations
would make the world safer. The war resolution passed the Senate by a vote
of 82 to 6 on April 4. The House concurred, 373 to 50, and Wilson signed
the measure on April 6, 1917.
How had matters come to this less than three years after Wilson’s procla-
mation of neutrality? The most prominent causes for America’s entrance
into the war were the effects of British propaganda in the United States and
America’s deep involvement in trade with the Allies, which some observers
credited to the intrigues of war profiteers and munitions makers. Some pro-
ponents of war thought an Allied defeat and German domination of Europe
would threaten U.S. security, especially if it meant the destruction of the
British navy. Such factors, however, would not have been decisive without
the issue of Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare on the Atlantic. Once
Wilson had taken a principled stand for the traditional rights of neutral
nations and noncombatants on the high seas, he was to some extent at the
mercy of ill-considered decisions by the German military leadership.
996 • AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR (CH. 24)

A M E R I C A’ S E A R LY R O L E War had been declared, but now it needed

to be fought. Despite Congress’s earlier military preparedness measures, the
army remained small and untested. The navy also was largely undeveloped.
Now the Wilson administration needed quickly to build and train an army
of millions and transport them across an Atlantic Ocean infested with
German submarines. The call to arms generated some unusual responses.
The old political warhorse William Jennings Bryan, who had resigned as sec-
retary of state over Wilson’s policies, now abandoned his pacifism and wired
President Wilson that he was willing to serve in the army. Another volunteer
was the sixty-year-old former president, Theodore Roosevelt, in ill health and
blind in one eye. He visited Wilson in the White House and offered to raise a
regiment of army volunteers, just as he had done with the Rough Riders in
1898. Though charmed by his longtime critic, Wilson refused Roosevelt’s offer
to fight again. Rebuffed but not fazed, Roosevelt kept trying to enlist and
resolved to run against Woodrow Wilson in 1920. In the meantime, Roosevelt’s
four sons joined the army. Two of
them would be badly wounded in
France, while a third, Quentin, a
pilot, was shot down and killed.
Their father died in 1919.
The formidable challenge of
mobilizing the entire nation for
war led to an unprecedented
expansion of federal government
authority. Woodrow Wilson’s
administration did not invite
Americans to support the war
effort; it ordered them to do so.
Power became increasingly cen-
tralized in Washington, as the
government conscripted millions
of men, directed the conversion
of industries and farms to wartime
needs, took over the railroads,
mediated labor disputes, and in
many other respects assumed con-
The thrill of American liberty
trol of national life. On June 26,
This Liberty Loan poster urges immigrants
to do their duty for their new country by
1917, just three months after the
buying government bonds to help pay for declaration of war, the first con-
the war. tingent of the American Expedi-
 America’s Entry into the War • 997

tionary Force, about 14,500 soldiers commanded by General John J. Persh-

ing, disembarked on the French coast.
When the United States entered the war, the combined strength of the
regular army and National Guard was only 379,000; at the end it would be
3.7 million. The need for such large numbers of troops forced Wilson to
implement a military draft. Under the Selective Service Act of 1917, all men
aged twenty-one to thirty (later, eighteen to forty-five) could be drafted for
military service. All told, about 2 million mostly under-trained American
troops crossed the Atlantic, and about 1.4 million saw at least some combat,
including 42,000 African Americans.

M O B I L I Z I N G A N AT I O N Complete economic mobilization on the

home front was necessary to conduct the war efficiently. The Army Appro-
priation Act of 1916 had created a Council of National Defense, which in
turn led to the creation of other wartime agencies. The Food Administra-
tion, headed by Herbert Hoover, a future president, sought to raise agricul-
tural production while reducing civilian consumption of foodstuffs. “Food
will win the war” was the slogan. Hoover directed a national conservation
campaign promoting “meatless Tuesdays,” “wheatless Wednesdays,” “porkless
Saturdays,” the planting of “victory gardens,” and the creative use of leftovers.
The War Industries Board (WIB), established in 1917, soon became the most
important of all the federal mobilization agencies. Bernard Baruch, a brilliant
financier who exercised a virtual dictatorship over the economy, headed the
WIB. Under Baruch, the purchasing bureaus of the United States and Allied
governments submitted their needs to the board, which set priorities and
issued production quotas to industries. The board could allocate raw materi-
als, order construction of new plants, and with the approval of the president, fix
prices. Despite such efforts, however, the unprecedented mobilization effort
was often chaotic. Anything that could go wrong did go wrong. Men were
drafted only to discover there were no uniforms, weapons, or housing for them.
Most of the artillery used by the American army in France had to be acquired
from the Allies.

A NEW LABOR FORCE The closing off of foreign immigration and

the movement of 4 million men from the workforce into the armed services
created an acute labor shortage across the wartime United States. To meet it,
women, African Americans, and other ethnic minorities were encouraged to
enter industries and take on jobs heretofore dominated by white men.
Northern businesses sent recruiting agents into the southern states to find
workers for their factories and mills. Over four hundred thousand southern
998 • AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR (CH. 24)

blacks (and a significant number of whites) began a Great Migration north-

ward during the war years, a mass movement that continued unabated
through the 1920s and changed the political and social dynamics of north-
ern cities. Recruiting agents and newspaper editors portrayed the North as
the “land of promise” for southern blacks suffering from their region’s
depressed agricultural economy and rising racial intimidation and violence.
The African American Chicago Defender exclaimed: “To die from the bite of
frost is far more glorious than at the hands of a mob.” By 1930 the number of
African Americans living in the North was triple that of 1910. Mexican
Americans followed the same migratory pattern in Texas and the Far West.
But the newcomers were not always welcomed. Many white workers in
northern cities resented the new arrivals, and racial tensions sparked clashes
across the country. In 1917 over forty African Americans and nine whites
were killed during a riot over employment in a defense plant in East St. Louis,
Illinois. Two years later the toll of a Chicago race riot was nearly as high,
with twenty-three African Americans and fifteen whites left dead. In these
and other incidents of racial violence, the pattern was the same: whites
angered by the influx of southern blacks into their communities would seize
upon an incident as an excuse to rampage through black neighborhoods,
killing, burning, and looting while white policemen looked the other way or
even encouraged the hooliganism.

Women aid the war effort

Women working at the Bloomfield International Fuse Company, New Jersey, 1918.
 America’s Entry into the War • 999

For many women, black and white, intervention in World War I also gen-
erated dramatic changes. Initially women supported the war effort in tradi-
tional ways. They helped organize fundraising drives, conserved foodstuffs
and war-related materials, supported the Red Cross, and joined the army
nurse corps. But as the scope of the war widened, both government and
industry recruited women to work on farms, loading docks, and railway
crews, as well as in the armaments industry, machine shops, steel and
lumber mills, and chemical plants. Many women leaders saw such opportuni-
ties as a breakthrough. “At last, after centuries of disabilities and discrimina-
tion,” said a speaker at a Women’s Trade Union League meeting in 1917,
“women are coming into the labor [force] and festival of life on equal terms
with men.”
In fact, however, war-generated changes in female employment were lim-
ited and brief. About 1 million women participated in “war work,” but most
of them were young and single and already working outside the home. Most
returned to their previous jobs once the war ended. In fact, male-dominated
unions encouraged women to revert to their stereotypical domestic roles
after the war ended. The Central Federated Union of New York insisted that
“the same patriotism which induced women to enter industry during the
war should induce them to vacate their positions after the war.” The antici-
pated gains of women in the workforce failed to materialize. In 1920, the
8.5 million working women made up a smaller percentage of the labor force
than had working women in 1910. Still, one lasting result of women’s contri-
butions to the war effort was Woodrow Wilson’s grudging decision to
endorse women’s suffrage. In the fall of 1918, he told the Senate that giving
women the vote was “vital to the winning of the war.”

WA R P R O PA G A N D A The war effort led the government to mobilize

more than economic life: the progressive gospel of efficiency suggested
mobilizing public opinion as well. On April 14, 1917, eight days after the
declaration of war, President Wilson established the Committee on Public
Information, composed of the secretaries of state, war, and the navy. Its
executive head, George Creel, a Denver newsman, sold Wilson on the idea
that the best approach to influencing public opinion was propaganda
instead of censorship. Creel organized a propaganda machine to explain the
Allies’ war aims to the people and, above all, to the enemy, where it might
help sap their morale. To generate support for the war effort, Creel gathered
a remarkable group of journalists, photographers, artists, entertainers, and
others useful to his purpose. A film division produced feature movies such
as The Beast of Berlin. Hardly any public group escaped a harangue by one of
1000 • AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR (CH. 24)

The Beast of Berlin

A scene from the movie The Beast of Berlin, which gave audiences a propagandistic
view of World War I.

the 75,000 “four-minute men” organized to give short speeches on liberty

bonds, the need to conserve food and fuel, and other timely topics.

By arousing public opinion to such a frenzy, the war

C I V I L L I B E RT I E S
effort spawned grotesque campaigns of “Americanism” and witch-hunting.
Popular prejudice equated anything German with disloyalty. Symphonies
refused to perform classical music written by Bach and Beethoven, schools
dropped German language classes, and patriots translated sauerkraut into
“liberty cabbage,” German measles into “liberty measles,” and dachshunds
into “liberty pups.” President Wilson had foreseen these consequences.
“Once lead this people into war,” he said, “and they’ll forget there ever was
such a thing as tolerance.” What Wilson did not say was that he would lead
the effort to suppress civil liberties during and after the war.
Under the Espionage and Sedition Acts, Congress suppressed criticism of
government leaders and war policies. The Espionage Act of 1917 imposed
penalties of up to $10,000 and twenty years in prison for anyone who gave
 America at War • 1001

aid to the enemy; who tried to incite insubordination, disloyalty, or refusal

of duty in the armed services; or who sought to interfere with the war effort.
President Wilson had also wanted the bill to allow the government to censor
newspapers, but Congress refused. The Sedition Act of 1918 extended the
penalties to those who did or said anything to obstruct the government
sale of war bonds or to advocate cutbacks in production, and—just in case
something had been overlooked—for saying, writing, or printing anything
“disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive” about the American form of gov-
ernment, the Constitution, or the army and navy.
The Espionage and Sedition Acts generated more than a thousand convic-
tions. Socialists and other radicals were the primary targets. Victor Berger,
a Socialist congressman from Milwaukee, received a twenty-year sentence
for editorials in the Milwaukee Leader that called the war a capitalist con-
spiracy. Eugene V. Debs, who had polled over 900,000 votes for president in
1912, repeatedly urged men to refuse to serve in the military, even though he
knew he could be prosecuted for such remarks under the Espionage Act. “I
would a thousand times rather be a free soul in jail than a sycophant and a
coward in the streets,” he told a Socialist gathering in 1918. He received his
wish. Debs was arrested and given a ten-year prison sentence for encourag-
ing draft resistance. In 1920, still in jail, he polled nearly 1 million votes for
president. Woodrow Wilson, the self-styled “progressive” president, never-
theless refused to pardon the progressive socialist Debs.
In two important decisions just after the war, the Supreme Court upheld
the Espionage and Sedition Acts. Schenck v. United States (1919) reaffirmed
the conviction of a man for circulating anti-draft leaflets among members
of the armed forces. In this case, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “Free
speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater, and causing
a panic.” The government was allowed to suppress speech where there was “a
clear and present danger.” In Abrams v. United States (1919), the Court upheld
the conviction of a man who circulated pamphlets opposing American inter-
vention in Russia to oust the Bolsheviks. Here, Holmes and Louis Brandeis dis-
sented from the majority view. The “surreptitious publishing of a silly leaflet by
an unknown man,” they argued, posed no danger to government policy.

AMERICA AT WA R

American troops played little more than a token role in the European
fighting until early 1918. Before that they were parceled out in quiet sectors
mainly for training purposes. All through 1917, the Allied armies remained
1002 • AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR (CH. 24)

The Meuse-Argonne offensive

U.S. soldiers fire an artillery gun in Argonne, France.

on the defensive, and late in the year their situation turned desperate. In
October the Italian lines collapsed and were overrun by Austrian forces.
With the help of troops from France, the Italians finally held their ground.
In November the Bolshevik Revolution overthrew the infant Russian repub-
lic, and the Communist leaders dropped out of the war. With the Central
Powers victorious over Russia, they were free to concentrate their forces on
the western front. The American war effort thus became a “race for the
defense of France.” The French premier Georges Clemenceau appealed to
the Americans to accelerate their mobilization. “A terrible blow is immi-
nent,” he predicted to a journalist. “Tell your Americans to come quickly.”

T H E W E S T E R N F R O N T On March 21, 1918, Clemenceau’s prediction

came true when the Germans began the first of several spring offensives in
France and Belgium to try to end the war before the Americans arrived in
force. By May 1918, there were 1 million fresh but untested and under-
trained U.S. troops in Europe, and for the first time they made a difference.
During the first week in June, a marine brigade blocked the Germans at Bel-
leau Wood, and army troops took Vaux and opposed the Germans at
Château-Thierry. Though these relatively modest actions had limited mili-
 America at War • 1003

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WORLD WAR I,
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THE WESTERN FRONT, 1918

Ri
ve

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Western front, March 1918
German offensive, spring 1918
Allied counteroffensive
0 50 Miles
Western front, November 1918
0 50 Kilometers SWITZERLAND

Why was the war on the western front a stalemate for most of World War I? What
was the effect of the arrival of the American troops? Why was the Second Battle of
the Marne the turning point of the war?

tary significance, their effect on Allied morale was significant. The British and
the French armies continued to bear the brunt of the fighting.
The turning point in France came on July 15, 1918, in the Second Battle
of the Marne. On both sides of the French town of Reims, the German
assault was repelled, and soon the British, French, and Americans began to
push the Germans back into Belgium. Then, on August 10, the U.S. First Army
attacked the Germans at St.-Mihiel, southeast of Verdun. There, on Sep-
tember 12, an army of more than 500,000 staged the first strictly American
1004 • AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR (CH. 24)

offensive of the war. Within three

days the outnumbered Germans
had pulled back. The climactic
American role in the fighting
occurred in the great Meuse-
Argonne offensive, begun on
September 26, 1918. American
divisions joined British and
French armies in a drive toward
Sedan and its railroad, which sup-
plied the entire German front. It
was the largest American action of
the war, involving 1.2 million U.S.
troops and resulting in 117,000
American casualties, including
26,000 dead. But along the entire
front from Sedan to Flanders, the
American casualties Germans were defeated and in
A Salvation Army worker writing a letter retreat. “America,” wrote German
home for a wounded soldier.
general Erich Ludendorff, “thus
became the decisive power in
the war.”

T H E B O L S H E V I K S When the war broke out in 1914, Russia was one

of the Allied Powers. Over the next three years the Russians suffered some
6.6 million casualties. By 1917, there were shortages of ammunition for the
Russian troops and food for the Russian people. The czarist government fell
into such disarray that it was forced to transfer power to a new provisional
republican government that itself succumbed, in November 1917, to a revo-
lution led by Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik party, who promised war-
weary Russians “peace, land, and bread.”
The Bolsheviks were a small but determined sect of ruthless ideologues,
convinced that they were in the irresistible vanguard of historical change as
described by Karl Marx in the mid-nineteenth century. They found them-
selves in the right place at the right time—a backward country devastated
by prolonged war, besieged by invading armies, and burdened by a mediocre
government. As Lenin observed, power was lying in the streets, waiting to
be picked up. Both Marx and Lenin believed that communism would be
an international movement. Once in control of the Russian government,
however, Lenin and the Bolsheviks unilaterally stopped fighting in World
 America at War • 1005

War I. Instead of launching an international revolution, Lenin withdrew

Russia from European affairs. With German troops deep in Russian terri-
tory and armies of “White” Russians (anti-Bolsheviks) organizing resistance
to their power, the Bolsheviks concluded a separate peace with Germany,
the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, on March 3, 1918. To prevent military supplies
from falling into German hands and encourage anti-Bolshevik forces in the
developing Russian Civil War, President Wilson sent American forces into
Russia’s Arctic ports. Troops were also sent to eastern Siberia, where they
remained until April 1920 in an effort to curb growing Japanese ambi-
tions there. The Allied intervention in Russia failed because the Bolsheviks
were able to consolidate their power. Russia took no further part in World War
I and did not participate in the peace settlement. The failed Allied intervention
largely served to generate among Soviets a long-lasting suspicion of the West.

T H E F O U RT E E N P O I N T S As the conflict in Europe was ending, nei-

ther the Allies nor the Central Powers, despite Wilson’s prodding, had
stated openly what they hoped to gain from the fighting. Wilson repeated
that the Americans had no selfish war aims: “We desire no conquest, no
dominion,” he stressed in his war message of 1917. “We are but one of the
champions of the rights of mankind.” The idealistic minister-president was
convinced that the European war was a reactionary event, the result of the
outdated rivalries between the social and political dynasties of the Old
World. But he was wrong. The First World War had become so horrific
because the forces of nationalism and democracy had been unleashed. It
was no longer simply a war between armies but a war between entire
nations determined to fight to the bitter end. Wilson believed that the
United States had a special mission to lead the world out of conflict and
chaos. People everywhere, he assumed, “are looking to us for direction and
leadership.” Unfortunately for Wilson’s idealistic purposes, after the Bolshe-
viks seized power in Russia in 1917, they published copies of secret treaties
in which the British and French had promised territorial gains in order to
win Italy, Romania, and Greece to their side. When an Interallied Confer-
ence in Paris late in 1917 failed to agree on a statement of war aims, Colonel
House advised Wilson to formulate his own plans to restructure postwar
Europe and remake the world in the American image.
During 1917 a group of American experts, called the Inquiry, began draft-
ing a peace plan. With advice from these experts, Wilson himself developed
what would come to be called the Fourteen Points, which he presented to a
joint session of Congress on January 8, 1918, “as the only possible program”
for peace. The first five points called for diplomacy to be conducted openly
1006 • AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR (CH. 24)

rather than hidden in secret treaties, the recognition of neutral nations to con-
tinue oceangoing commerce in time of war (“freedom of the seas”), removal
of international trade barriers, reduction of armaments, and an impartial
reconfiguration of the victors’ colonial empires based upon the desires of the
populations involved. Most of the remaining points dealt with territorial
claims: they called on the Central Powers to evacuate occupied lands and to
allow the various overlapping nationalities and ethnic groups to develop
their own new nation-states (the difficult concept of “self-determination”),
a crucial principle for Wilson. Point 13 called for the creation of an indepen-
dent nation for the Poles, a people long dominated by the Russians on the
east and the Germans on the west. Point 14, the capstone of Wilson’s post-
war scheme, called for the creation of a “league” of nations to protect global
peace. When the Fourteen Points were made public, African American lead-
ers asked the president to add a fifteenth point: an end to racial discrimina-
tion. Wilson did not respond.
The Fourteen Points embodied Wilson’s sincere ideals, but they also served
the purpose of psychological warfare. One of the reasons for issuing the Four-
teen Points was to keep Russia in the war by stating the principles by which
the peace would be arranged—
a vain hope, as it turned out.
Another was to reassure the citi-
zens of the Allied Powers that they
were involved in a noble cause. A
third was to drive a wedge between
the governments of the Central
Powers and their people by offer-
ing a reasonable peace.
On October 3, 1918, a new
German chancellor asked for an
end to the fighting on the basis
of the Fourteen Points. The Allies
accepted the Fourteen Points as a
basis of negotiations, but with two
significant reservations: the British
insisted on the right to discuss
limiting freedom of the seas, and
the French demanded reparations
Allied victory (payments by the vanquished to
Celebration of the armistice ending World the victors) from Germany and
War I, New York City, November 1918. Austria for war damages.
 The Fight for the Peace • 1007

Meanwhile, the German home front was being torn apart by a loss of
morale, culminating in a naval mutiny at Kiel. Germany’s allies dropped out of
the war: Bulgaria on September 29, 1918, Turkey on October 30, and Austria-
Hungary on November 3. On November 9 the kaiser abdicated, and a German
republic was proclaimed. Then, on November 11 at 5 A.M., an armistice was
signed. Six hours later, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh
month, and after 1,563 days of warfare, the guns fell silent. Under the
armistice agreement the Germans had to evacuate occupied territories, pull
their troops back behind the Rhine River, and surrender their naval fleet and
railroad equipment. The Germans were assured that Woodrow Wilson’s Four-
teen Points would be the basis for the peace conference.
During its nineteen months of participation in the Great War, the United
States saw 126,000 of its servicemen killed. Germany’s war dead totaled over
2 million, including civilians; France lost nearly 1.4 million combatants,
Great Britain lost 703,000 soldiers, and Russia lost 1.7 million. The new
Europe emerging from the carnage would be much different: much poorer,
more violent, more polarized, more cynical, less sure of itself, and less capa-
ble of decisive action. The United States, for good or ill, would be sucked
into the vacuum of power created by the destructiveness of the Great War.
For the moment, however, the news of peace led to wild celebrations
throughout the world. The madness had ended, and fear and grief gave way
to hope. “The nightmare is over,” wrote the African American activist W.E.B.
Du Bois. “The world awakes. The long, horrible years of dreadful night are
passed. Behold the sun!”

THE FIGHT FOR THE P E AC E

The gruesome combat and destruction had ended, but Europe’s post-
war future was a muddle. Woodrow Wilson had promised a “great crusade”
that would “make the world safe for democracy.” For a glorious moment, the
American president was humanity’s self-appointed prophet of peace. He felt
guided “by the hand of God.” His messianic vision of creating a universal
“community of power,” a peacekeeping “league of nations” to replace the old
war-breeding power politics of Europe promised a bright future for the
world. If the diplomats failed to follow his plans, he warned, “there will be
another world war” within a generation.

DOMESTIC UNREST Woodrow Wilson made several fateful decisions

at the war’s end that would come back to haunt him. First, he decided to
1008 • AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR (CH. 24)

attend the peace conference that convened in Paris on January 18, 1919.
Never before had an American president left the nation for such a prolonged
period. Wilson’s decision to spend months in Europe dramatized all the
more his crusading vision for a lasting peace. From one viewpoint, it was
shrewd, for his prestige and determination made a difference at the Paris
peace talks. But during his prolonged trip abroad (six months) he lost touch
with political developments at home. His progressive political coalition was
already unraveling under the pressures of wartime discontent. Western
farmers complained about the government’s control of wheat prices. Eastern
businessmen chafed at federal revenue policies designed, according to the
New York Sun, “to pay for the war out of taxes raised north of the Mason and
Dixon Line.” Leaders of labor unions, despite real gains in wages and work-
ing conditions during the war, were unhappy with inflation and the prob-
lems of reconversion to a peacetime economy.
Second, in the midterm elections of 1918, Wilson defied his advisers and
urged voters to elect a Democratic Congress to support his foreign policies.
Republicans, who for the most part had supported Wilson’s war measures,
now took affront. In elections held on November 5, a week before the
armistice, the Democrats lost control of both houses of Congress. With an
opposition majority in the new Congress, Wilson further weakened his stand-
ing by making a third mistake: he failed to appoint a prominent Republican to
the staff of peace commissioners. Former president Taft groused that Wilson’s
real intention in going to Paris was “to hog the whole show.”
When Wilson reached Paris in December 1918, he was greeted as a hero,
even a savior. The cheering millions in war-torn Europe saw in the American
idealist a prophet of peace and a spokesman for humanity who had promised
that the great crusade would be the “war to end wars.” Their heartfelt support
no doubt strengthened his hand at the conference, but Wilson had to deal
with some tough-minded statesmen who did not share his utopian zeal. They
would force him to abandon many of his principles and ideals.
The Paris Peace Conference lasted from January to June 1919 and
included delegates from all countries that had declared war or broken diplo-
matic relations with Germany. The conference was controlled by the Big
Four: the prime ministers of Britain, France, and Italy and the president of
the United States. Japan restricted its interests to Asia and the Pacific. French
premier Georges Clemenceau was a stern realist who had little patience with
Wilson’s utopianism. “God gave us the Ten Commandments and we broke
them,” Clemenceau sneered. “Wilson gave us the Fourteen Points—we shall
see.” The French insisted on harsh provisions in the peace treaty to weaken
Germany. So did the British prime minister David Lloyd George. Vittorio
 The Fight for the Peace • 1009

The Paris Peace Conference

Woodrow Wilson (second from left) with Georges Clemenceau of France (center)
and Arthur Balfour of Great Britain (second from right) during the Paris Peace
Conference in 1919.

Orlando, prime minister of Italy, focused his efforts on getting territories

from defeated Austria.

T H E L E A G U E O F N AT I O N S As the tense, complex negotiations began,

Woodrow Wilson made another controversial decision: he insisted that his
cherished League of Nations be the top priority in the treaty making. Whatever
compromises he might have to make regarding territorial boundaries and
financial claims, whatever mistakes might result, Wilson believed that a
league of nations committed to collective security would ensure interna-
tional stability. Wilson presided over the commission set up to draft its char-
ter. Article X of the charter, which Wilson called “the heart of the League,”
pledged member nations to impose military and economic sanctions against
aggressors. The use of armed force would be a last (and an improbable)
resort. The League, it was assumed, would exercise enormous moral influ-
ence, making military action unnecessary. Its structure would allow each
member an equal voice in the Assembly; the Big Five (Britain, France, Italy,
Japan, and the United States) and four other nations would make up the
1010 • AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR (CH. 24)

executive Council; the adminis-

trative staff, with headquarters in
Geneva, Switzerland, would make
up the Secretariat; and a Perma-
nent Court of International Jus-
tice (set up in 1921 and usually
called the World Court) could
“hear and determine any dispute
of an international character.”
On February 14, 1919, Wilson
presented the finished draft of
the League covenant to the Allies
and departed Paris for a visit
home. Already he faced opposi-
tion among Republicans. Wilson’s
proposed League of Nations,
Theodore Roosevelt grumbled,
“The League of Nations Argument would revive German militarism
in a Nutshell” and undermine American morale.
Jay N. “Ding” Darling’s summation of the “To substitute internationalism
League controversy. for nationalism,” the former pres-
ident argued, “means to do away
with patriotism.” Roosevelt’s close
friend and fellow Republican, Henry Cabot Lodge, the powerful chairman
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also scorned Wilson’s naive ide-
alism. He announced that the League’s structure was unacceptable because it
would allow an international organization to usurp the Senate’s constitutional
authority to declare war. Lodge’s statement bore the signatures of thirty-nine
Republican senators or senators-elect, more than enough to block ratification.

T E R R I T O R Y A N D R E PA R AT I O N S Back in Paris in the spring of 1919,

Wilson gave in to French demands for territorial concessions and reparations
payments by Germany that would keep it dangerously weak, impoverished,
and eager for revenge during the 1920s. Even after making major concessions,
Wilson clashed sharply with the French premier Clemenceau over how to treat
defeated Germany, but after the American president threatened to leave the
conference, they decided that the Rhineland region along the border between
France and Germany would be a “demilitarized” zone for fifteen years. France
could also exploit Germany’s Saar Valley coal mines for fifteen years, after
which the region’s residents would vote to determine their national allegiance.
 The Fight for the Peace • 1011

In other territorial matters, Wilson had to abandon his lofty principle of

national self-determination whereby every ethnic group would be allowed to
form its own nation. Wonderful in theory, it proved disastrous in reality. As
Robert Lansing, who succeeded William Jennings Bryan as Wilson’s secretary
of state, correctly predicted, trying to allow every ethnic group in Europe—
Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Serbs, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Hun-
garians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Italians, Turks, Armenians, and others—to
determine its own fate “will raise hopes which can never be realized.” In the
end, Wilson’s commitment to self-determination would be “discredited” as the
“dream of an idealist who failed to realize the danger until it was too late.” As a
result of the Great War, four long-standing multinational empires had disinte-
grated: the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, German, and Ottoman (Turkish).
Hundreds of millions of people had to be reorganized into new nations. There
was in fact no way to make Europe’s boundaries correspond to its tangled
ethnic groupings. The folk wanderings of centuries had left ethnically mixed
populations scattered throughout Central Europe. In some areas, moreover,
national self-determination yielded to other interests: the Polish Corridor, for
instance, gave newly independent Poland its much-needed outlet to the sea
through German territory. One part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire became
Czechoslovakia, which included the German-speaking Sudetenland, an area
favored with good natural defenses. Another part united with Serbia to create
the kingdom of Yugoslavia. Still other substantial parts of the former empire
passed to Poland (Galicia), Romania (Transylvania), and Italy (Trentino–Alto
Adige and Trieste). All in all, the new boundaries more nearly followed the
ethnic divisions of Europe than had the prewar lines.
The discussion of reparations triggered bitter exchanges at the conference.
The British and the French wanted Germany to pay for the entire financial
cost of the war, including the payment of veterans’ pensions. On this point,
Wilson made perhaps his most fateful concessions. He accepted a clause in
the treaty in which Germany confessed responsibility for the war and thus
took responsibility for its entire expense. The “war guilt” clause offended
Germans and made for persistent bitterness that Adolf Hitler would later
seize upon to launch his Nazi party movement. Wilson himself privately
admitted that if he were a German he would refuse to sign the treaty.
On May 7, 1919, the victorious powers presented the treaty to the German
delegates, who returned three weeks later with 443 pages of criticism. A few
changes were made, but when the Germans still refused to sign, the French
threatened to move their army across the Rhine River. Finally, on June 28,
1919, the Germans gave up and signed the treaty in the glittering Hall of
Mirrors at Versailles. When Adolph Hitler, a young German corporal, learned
1012 • AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR (CH. 24)

of the Versailles Treaty’s provisions imposed upon Germany, he seethed with

anger and vowed revenge. “It cannot be that two million Germans have
fallen in vain,” he screamed. “. . . we demand vengeance!”

W I L S O N ’ S L O S S AT H O M E On July 8, 1919, having been in Paris for

months, Woodrow Wilson returned home with the Versailles Treaty amid a
great clamor of popular support. A third of the state legislatures had already
endorsed the League of Nations, as had thirty-three of the nation’s forty-
eight governors. Two days later, on July 10, Wilson called upon the Senate to
accept “this great duty” and ratify the treaty that had been guided “by the
hand of God.” “The stage is set, the destiny disclosed,” he said. Wilson then
grew needlessly confrontational. He dismissed critics of his beloved League
of Nations as “blind and little provincial people.” The whole world, Wilson
claimed, was relying on the United States to sign the Versailles Treaty: “Dare
we reject it and break the heart of the world?”
Congressional leaders were ready to break the world’s heart. Senator Henry
Cabot Lodge, a staunch Republican with an intense dislike for Wilson,
sharpened his partisan knives. He denounced the Versailles Treaty’s foolish
“scheme of making mankind suddenly virtuous by a statute or a written con-
stitution.” Lodge and Wilson detested each other. Wilson, thought Lodge, was
too filled with prophetic certitude, too prone to promise more than he could
deliver when great principles entailed great sacrifices. Lodge was keenly aware
of the undercurrents already stirring up opposition to the treaty in Congress:
the resentment against the treaty felt by German American, Italian American,
and Irish American ethnic groups within the United States, the disappoint-
ment of liberals with Wilson’s compromises on reparations and territories,
the distractions of demobilization and the resulting domestic problems of
converting quickly to a peacetime economy, and the revival of isolationism.
Some Republicans claimed that Wilson’s preoccupation with his cherished
League of Nations revealed that he really wanted to be president of the world.
In the Senate, a group of “irreconcilables,” fourteen Republicans and two
Democrats, refused to support American membership in the League of Nations
on any terms. They were mainly western and midwestern progressives who
feared that such sweeping foreign commitments threatened domestic reforms.
The irreconcilables would be useful to Lodge’s purpose, but he belonged to a
larger group called the “reservationists,” men who insisted upon limiting Amer-
ican participation in the League. Lodge proposed a set of amendments that
addressed his reservations. The only way to get Senate approval of the treaty
was for Wilson to meet with Lodge and others and agree to revisions. Republi-
can senator James Watson of Indiana told Wilson he had no choice: “Mr. Presi-
 The Fight for the Peace • 1013

0 250 500 Miles FINLAND

NORWAY
0 250 500 Kilometers SWEDEN
NORTH

EA
ESTONIA

C S
SEA

TI
LATVIA

AL
IRELAND GREAT DENMARK

B
BRITAIN SCHLESWIG- DANZIG LITHUANIA
HOLSTEIN (Gdansk)
´
GER-
MANY
NETHERLANDS POLISH CORRIDOR RUSSIA
London Berlin
ATLANTIC GERMANY POLAND
BELGIUM
RHINELAND SILESIA
OCEAN CZ
Paris EC
LUX. SAAR H OS
LOVA KIA
ALSACE-
LORRAINE Vienna
FRANCE SWITZ. AUSTRIA HUNGARY

SOUTH ROMANIA
TYROL Fiume

PORTUGAL YUGOSLAVIA BLACK

SEA
SPAIN BULGARIA
ITALY
ALBANIA

M E D
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A
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EUROPE AFTER THE TREATY
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OF VERSAILLES, 1918 A
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1914 boundaries
S E A
New nations
N OR TH
Plebiscite areas
Occupied area A F R I C A

Why was self-determination difficult for states in Central Europe? How did territor-
ial concessions weaken Germany? Why might territorial changes like the creation of
the Polish Corridor or the concession of the Sudetenland to Czechoslovakia have
created problems that would surface in the future?

dent, you are licked. There is only one way you can take the United States
into the League of Nations.” The president lashed back: “Lodge reservations?
Never!” Wilson was temperamentally incapable of compromising with Lodge
and the Republicans. He especially opposed weakening Article X of the League
covenant, which provided for collective action against aggression. Wilson
would not retreat, nor would he compromise. He refused to negotiate with
Lodge. As the months passed, he eventually sought to make the debate over the
1014 • AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR (CH. 24)

Versailles Treaty a partisan question by promising that the coming 1920 presi-
dential election would become a “great solemn referendum” on the issue.
By September 1919, with momentum for ratification of the Versailles
Treaty slackening, Wilson decided to outflank his Senate opponents by tak-
ing the treaty issue directly to the people (although a Republican pointed
out that the people could not vote on the issue; the Senate would). His doc-
tor, family, and friends urged Wilson not to go because of his poor health
and chronic hypertension. But Wilson said, “I cannot turn back now. I can-
not put my personal safety, my health, in the balance against my duty. I must
go.” On the evening of September 2, 1919, Wilson set forth on a grueling
railroad tour through the Midwest to the West Coast. In all he traveled ten
thousand miles in twenty-two days, giving thirty-two major speeches. For a
while, Wilson seemed to be regaining public support, but after delivering a
speech on September 25, 1919, in Pueblo, Colorado, he experienced blinding
headaches and numbness that prompted his wife and doctor to urge the
president to return to Washington. He initially refused to go, arguing that
Lodge and other opponents “will say that I am a quitter . . . and the treaty
will be lost.” But those around him won the argument, and the train was
redirected to Washington, D.C. Then, on October 2, 1919, the president suf-
fered a severe stroke (cerebral hemorrhage) that almost killed him. The
episode left the president paralyzed on his left side and an invalid for the rest
of his life. Even more devastating was the effect of the stroke on his personal-
ity. Wilson after 1919 became emotionally unstable and even delusional (he
would die in 1924). For seventeen months his protective wife, Edith, along
with aides and trusted Cabinet members, kept him isolated from all but the
most essential business. Wilson’s disability intensified his stubbornness. In
the face of formidable opposition in the Senate to the League of Nations sec-
tion in the Versailles Treaty, he refused to compromise and was needlessly
confrontational. As he scoffed to an aide, “Let Lodge compromise.” The pres-
ident’s hardened arteries hardened his political judgment as well.
For his part, Senator Lodge pushed through the Senate fourteen changes in
the draft of the Versailles Treaty, most of them having to do with the League
of Nations. Wilson scoffed at the proposed changes, arguing that Lodge’s
revisions did not “provide for ratification but, rather, for the nullification
of the treaty.” As a result, Wilson’s supporters in the Senate found themselves
thrown into an unlikely combination with the irreconcilables, who opposed
the treaty under any circumstances. The Senate vote on Lodge’s revised treaty
was 39 for and 55 against. On the question of approving the original treaty
without reservations, irreconcilables and the so-called reservationists, led by
Lodge, combined to defeat ratification again, with 38 for and 53 against.
 Lurching from War to Peace • 1015

So Woodrow Wilson’s grand effort at global peacemaking had failed.

Because of his refusal to compromise on the details of the proposed League
of Nations, the Senate refused to ratify the entire Versailles Treaty. As a con-
sequence, Congress was forced to declare an official end to American
involvement in the First World War by a joint resolution on May 20, 1920,
which Wilson vetoed in a fit of vengefulness. It was not until July 2, 1921,
after the president had left office, that a joint congressional resolution offi-
cially ended the state of war with Germany and Austria-Hungary, almost
eighteen months since the fighting had stopped. Separate peace treaties with
Germany, Austria, and Hungary were ratified on October 18, 1921, but by
then Warren G. Harding was president of the United States.
The treaties ending the First World War did little to ensure postwar peace.
The Great War had destroyed old Europe, but peace did not bring stability.
Most Germans and Austrians felt that they were the victims of a harsh, vin-
dictive peace forced upon them by the victors. The new nations created at
Versailles out of the defeated empires—Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czecho-
slovakia, Finland, and Poland—were poor, unstable, insecure, and resentful
of their neighbors. There was no real stability in Europe after the war, just an
interlude born of exhaustion. The war wreaked havoc on trade relationships
and bankrupted national treasuries. Such festering vengefulness among the
vanquished would interact with widespread economic, social, and political
instability throughout Europe to help spawn fascism in Italy, Austria, and
Germany during the 1920s.

LU RC H I N G FROM WA R TO P E AC E

The Versailles Treaty, for all the time it spent in the Senate, was but one
issue clamoring for public attention in the turbulent period after the war. The
year 1919 began with ecstatic victory parades that soon gave way to widespread
labor unrest, race riots, domestic terror, and government tyranny. Demobiliza-
tion of the armed forces and war industries proceeded in haphazard fashion.
The end of the war brought the sudden cancellation of war-related contracts
that left workers and business leaders to cope with the chaotic conversion to a
peacetime economy on their own. Wilson’s leadership was missing. Preoccu-
pied by the war and the League, and then bedridden by the stroke, he became
grim and peevish. His administration stumbled through its last two years.

T H E S PA N I S H F L U Amid the confusion of postwar life, many Ameri-

cans confronted a virulent menace that produced far more casualties than the
1016 • AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR (CH. 24)

war itself. It became known as the Spanish flu (although its origins were
probably in a U.S. Army camp in Kansas), and its contagion spread around
the globe, transformed modern medicine, and altered the course of world
history. The pandemic erupted in the spring of 1918 and lasted a year, killing
as many as 100 million people worldwide, twice as many as died in the First
World War. In the United States alone it accounted for 675,000 deaths, nearly
seven times the number of American combat deaths in France. No disease in
human history had killed so many people. Mortuaries ran out of coffins;
morgues ran out of space. The chief of staff of the German army claimed that
the flu epidemic among his troops caused the failure of the 1918 spring offen-
sive, thereby hastening the end of the war. At the Paris Peace Conference, dur-
ing the most intense week of negotiations, Woodrow Wilson himself fell ill
with the flu and a prolonged high temperature. Observers said when he
returned to the bargaining table he was not the same man who had left it.
American soldiers returning from France brought the flu with them, and it
raced through the crowded army camps and naval bases. Some 43,000 service-
men died of influenza in 1918. By September the epidemic had spread to the
civilian population. In that month alone 10,000 Americans died from the dis-
ease. “Nobody seemed to know what the disease was, where it came from or
how to stop it,” observed the editors of Science magazine in 1919. In Philadel-
phia, 528 people were buried in a single day. Life-insurance companies nearly
went bankrupt, hospitals were besieged, and cemeteries ran out of burial space.
By the spring of 1919, the pandemic had finally run its course. It ended as
suddenly—and as inexplicably—as it had begun. Although another out-

Influenza epidemic
Office workers wearing gauze masks during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918.
 Lurching from War to Peace • 1017

break occurred in the winter of 1920, the population had grown more resis-
tant to its assaults. No plague, war, famine, or natural catastrophe in world
history killed so many people in such a short time.

THE ECONOMIC TRANSITION Disease was only one of many chal-

lenges confronting postwar America. Consumer prices continued to rise
after the war, and discontented workers, released from wartime constraints,
were more willing to go out on strike for their demands. In 1919, more than
4 million workers participated in 3,600 strikes against management. Most of
the workers sought nothing more than higher wages and shorter workweeks,
but their critics linked them with the worldwide Communist revolution
being fomented in the Soviet Union. Some workers in the East won their
demands early in the year, but after a general strike in Seattle, public opinion
began to turn against labor’s demands. Seattle’s mayor denounced the walk-
out of sixty thousand workers as evidence of Bolshevik influence. The strike
lasted only five days, but public alarm over the affair damaged the cause of
unions across the country.
An American Federation of Labor campaign to organize steelworkers suffered
from charges of radicalism against its leader, William Z. Foster, who had joined
the Socialists in 1900 and later emerged as a Communist. The focus on Foster’s
radicalism obscured the squalid conditions and long hours that had marked the
steel industry since the Homestead strike of 1892: the twelve-hour day, often
combined with a seven-day week, was common. On September 22, 1919, after
U.S. Steel refused to talk, some 340,000 workers walked out. When information
about working conditions became widely known, public opinion turned in
favor of the steelworkers, but too late: the strike had ended after four months.
Steelworkers remained unorganized until the 1930s.
The most celebrated postwar labor dispute was the Boston police strike.
Though less significant than the steel strike in the numbers involved, it inad-
vertently launched a presidential career. On September 9, 1919, most of
Boston’s police force went out on strike. Massachusetts governor Calvin
Coolidge was furious. He mobilized the National Guard to keep order, and
after four days the police strikers offered to return, but the commissioner
refused to take them back. When labor leader Samuel Gompers appealed for
their reinstatement, Coolidge responded in words that suddenly turned him
into a national figure: “There is no right to strike against the public safety by
anybody, anywhere, any time.”

R AC I A L F R I C T I O N The summer of 1919 also sparked a season of

deadly race riots across the nation. As more and more African Americans,
367,000 of whom were war veterans, moved to different parts of the nation,
1018 • AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR (CH. 24)

developed successful careers, and

asserted their rights in the face of
deeply embedded segregationist
practices, resentful whites began
to display an almost hysterical
racism. What the African Ameri-
can leader James Weldon Johnson
called the Red Summer (red here
signifying blood) began in July,
when a vengeful mob of whites
invaded the black section of
Longview, Texas, angry over
rumors of interracial dating. They
burned shops and houses and ran
several African Americans out of
town. A week later in Washington,
Domestic unrest D.C., often false or exaggerated
reports of black assaults on white
A victim of racial rioting in Chicago,
July 1919. women aroused white mobs, and
for four days gangs of white and
black rioters waged a race war in the streets until soldiers and driving
rains ended the fighting. These were but preliminaries to the Chicago riot of
late July, in which 38 people were killed and 537 injured. The climactic disor-
ders of the summer occurred in the rural area around Elaine, Arkansas, where
African American tenant farmers tried to organize a union. According to offi-
cial reports, 5 whites and 25 blacks died in the rioting, but the death toll may
have actually included more than 100 blacks. Altogether, twenty-five race
riots erupted in 1919, and there were eighty racial lynchings.

T H E R E D S C A R E Reactions to the wave of labor strikes and race riots

reflected the impact of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Some radicals
thought America’s domestic turbulence was the first scene in a drama of
world revolution. Many Americans decided that they might be right. After
all, a tiny faction in Russia, the Bolsheviks, had exploited confusion to
impose its totalitarian will over a huge nation. In 1919, left-wing members of
the Socialist party formed the Communist party (U.S.A.) and the short-lived
Communist Labor party. Wartime hysteria against all things German was
readily transformed into a postwar Red Scare against all Communists.
Fears of revolution in America were fueled by the actions of scattered mili-
tants. In April 1919, the post office intercepted nearly forty homemade mail
bombs addressed to prominent citizens. One slipped through and blew off the
 Lurching from War to Peace • 1019

hands of a Georgia senator’s maid. In June, another bomb destroyed the front
of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s house in Washington, D.C. The
explosion killed the terrorist and almost killed Palmer. Although the bomb-
ings were probably the work of a small group of Italian anarchists, the attorney
general and many other Americans concluded that a Communist “blaze of
revolution” was “sweeping over every American institution of law and order.”
Soon, federal government agencies organized witch hunts trying to ferret
out anarchists and Communists. In August 1919, Attorney General Palmer
appointed a twenty-four-year-old attorney named J. Edgar Hoover to lead a
new government division created to collect files on radicals. On November 7,
1919, while President Wilson lay incapacitated in the White House, federal
agents rounded up 450 alien “radicals,” most of whom were simply recent
Russian immigrants looking for work. All were deported to Russia without a
court hearing. On January 2, 1920, police raids in dozens of cities swept up
5,000 more suspects, many taken from their homes without arrest warrants.
What came to be called the First Red Scare (followed by a similar outbreak
of anti-communist hysteria during the 1950s) represented the largest
violation of civil liberties in American history.
Attorney General Palmer, eager to win the Democratic nomination for
president in 1920, continued to exaggerate the Red menace, but the panic
subsided within a few months. By the summer of 1920, the Red Scare had
begun to evaporate. Bombings in the United States tapered off; the wave of
strikes and race riots receded. By September 1920, when a bomb explosion
at the corner of Broad and Wall Streets in New York City killed thirty-
eight people, Americans were ready to take it for what it was: the work of a
crazed mind and not the start of a revolution. The Red Scare nonetheless left
a lasting mark on American life and bolstered the continuing crusade for
“100 percent Americanism” and restrictions on immigration.
Despite the extraordinary turbulence in the immediate aftermath of the
First World War, there was little doubt that the conflict had changed the tra-
jectory of modern history. Germany and Austria were devastated. The
Bolshevik Revolution caused Russia to abandon its western European allies
and drop out of the war. Thereafter, Soviet communism would be one of
the most powerful new forces shaping twentieth century. At the same time,
the United States had emerged from the war not simply a great power,
but the most powerful nation in the world. For the first time in its history,
the United States had decisively intervened in a major European war. And
now, in the war’s aftermath, the United States had emerged largely unscathed
physically, and American capitalists were eager to fill the vacuum created by
the wartime destruction of the European economies. What came to be called
the “American Century” was at hand—for better or worse.
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Wilson and Mexico Woodrow Wilson wanted to foster democratic govern-

ments in Latin America; he got the United States involved in Mexican politics
after Mexico experienced several military coups. The popular Francisco Pancho
Villa tried to gain power in Mexico by promoting an anti-American program,
even making raids across the border into New Mexico.
• Causes of WWI Europe had developed a system of alliances that divided the
continent in two. Democratic Britain and France, along with the Russian
Empire, had formed the Triple Entente. Central Powers were comprised of the
new German Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. The assassination of the heir
to the Austro-Hungarian throne by a Serbian nationalist triggered the world
war in August 1914.
• U.S. Enters WWI Most Americans supported the Triple Entente, or Allied Pow-
ers, at the outbreak of World War I. The Wilson administration declared the
nation neutral but allowed businesses to extend credit to the Allies to purchase
food and military supplies. Americans were outraged by the Germans’ use of
unlimited submarine warfare, especially after the 1915 sinking of the British
liner Lusitania. In 1917 unrestricted submarine activity and the revelation of the
Zimmermann telegram, in which the Germans sought to incite the Mexicans to
wage war against the United States, led the United States to enter the Great War.
• Wilson’s Peace Plan Wilson insisted that the United States wanted no selfish
gains from the war, only a new, democratic Europe to emerge from the old
empires. His famous Fourteen Points speech outlined his ideas for the establish-
ment of continent-wide democratic nation-states and a league of nations.
• Treaty of Versailles The United States did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles
because Wilson had alienated the Republican senators whose support he needed
for ratification. A coalition of “irreconcilables” formed in the Senate: midwest-
ern and western progressives who feared that involvement in a league of nations
would stifle domestic reforms and that ratification would necessitate involve-
ment in future wars. The irreconcilables were joined by “reservationists,” who
would accept the treaty with certain limitations on America’s involvement in the
League of Nations. Wilson’s illness and his refusal to compromise ensured fail-
ure of ratification.
• Consequences of WWI As a result of the war, four European empires were dis-
mantled, replaced by smaller nation-states. The reparations imposed on Ger-
many and the “war guilt” clause laid the foundations for German bitterness. The
presence of a Communist regime in the old Russian Empire had major conse-
quences in America.
 CHRONOLOGY

1914
1914
1915
United States intervenes in Mexico
World War I begins in Europe
British liner Lusitania, with Americans aboard, is
torpedoed without warning by a German submarine
1916 Congress passes the National Defense Act
March 1917 Zimmermann telegram reveals that Germany is
attempting to incite Mexico to enter the war against the
United States
April 1917 United States enters the Great War
January 1918 Woodrow Wilson delivers his Fourteen Points speech
November 11, 1918 Representatives of warring nations sign armistice
1919 Supreme Court issues Schenck v. United States decision
May 1919 Treaty of Versailles is presented to the Germans
1919 Race riots break out in Chicago
1919 U.S. attorney general launches Red Scare
July 1921 Joint resolution of Congress officially ends the war
among the United States, Germany, and Austria-Hungary

KEY TERMS & NAMES

Francisco Pancho Villa Food Administration p. 997 League of Nations p. 1009
p. 982
Committee on Public Henry Cabot Lodge p. 1010
John J. Pershing p. 982 Information p. 999
reparations p. 1010
dollar diplomacy p. 982 George Creel p. 999 Spanish flu p. 1016
industrial war p. 986 Bolsheviks p. 1004 A. Mitchell Palmer p. 1019
Unterseeboot p. 988 Fourteen Points p. 1005 First Red Scare p. 1019

25
THE MODERN TEMPER

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• What accounted for the nativism of the 1920s?

• What was meant by the Jazz Age?
• How did the new social trends of the 1920s challenge traditional
attitudes?
• What was modernism, and how did it influence American culture?

A ll historical eras exhibit contradictions, but the 1920s were a

decade of especially sharp extremes. The ten years between
1919 and the onset the Great Depression at the end of 1929
encompassed a period of unprecedented economic prosperity and cultural
experimentation as well as political conservatism and religious fundamen-
talism. Having experienced the constraints of wartime, many Americans
feverishly pursued personal pleasures. The new and unusual clashed openly
with the conventional and the commonplace. Modernists and traditionalists
waged cultural warfare with one another, one group looking to the future for
inspiration and the other looking to the past for guidance. Terrorist attacks
increased, as did labor and racial violence. In 1920, a horse-drawn wagon
laden with dynamite exploded at the corner of Wall and Broad streets in
New York City, killing thirty-eight people and wounding hundreds. That the
bombers were never found fueled public concern that the United States was
on the brink of chaos and revolution. Benton MacKaye, a leading environ-
mentalist, said that America during the 1920s was the most “volcanic of any
area on earth.” The nation was roiling with change and conflict, and he pre-
dicted a period of “deep domestic strife.”
 The Modern Temper • 1023

The scope and pace of societal changes were bewildering. At long last,
women were allowed to vote; meanwhile, beer and liquor were outlawed.
Innovations such as national radio networks, talking motion pictures, mass
ownership of automobiles, the emergence of national chain stores, the soar-
ing popularity of spectator sports, and the rise of mass marketing and adver-
tising transformed America into the world’s leading consumer society. The
culture of mass consumption fueled the explosive growth of middle-class
urban life. The 1920 census revealed that for the first time more Americans
lived in cities than in rural areas. The popularity of the consumer culture
also assaulted traditional virtues such as frugality, prudence, and religiosity.
In the political arena reactionaries and rebels battled for control of a post-
war society riven by conflict. The brutal fight between Woodrow Wilson
and the Republican-led Senate over the Versailles Treaty, coupled with the
administration’s savage crackdown on dissenters and socialists, had weak-
ened an already fragmented and disillusioned progressivism. As the tireless
reformer Amos Pinchot bitterly observed, President Wilson had “put his
enemies in office and his friends in jail.” By 1920, many alienated progres-
sives had grown skeptical of any politician claiming to be a reformer or an
idealist. The prominent social reformer Jane Addams sighed that the 1920s
were “a period of political and social sag.”
At the same time, the postwar wave of strikes, bombings, anti-Communist
hysteria, and race riots symbolized a frightening new era of turmoil that
led many people to cling to old ideas and ways of life. Traditionalists, many
of them from rural areas, were especially disturbed by urban political radi-
calism and carefree urbane ways of life. Those who believed in the “old-time
religion” were dismayed by the inroads of secular materialism. It was just
such a reversion to traditional values that led voters to elect Republican
Warren G. Harding president in 1920. He promised to return America to
“normalcy.”
Mainstream Americans were also shocked by the new “modernist” forms
of artistic expression and sexual liberation. Mabel Dodge, a leading promoter
of modern art and literature, said that the generation of young literary and
artistic rebels emerging during the war years and after were determined to
overthrow “the old order of things.” Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in This
Side of Paradise (1920) that the younger generation of Americans, the “sad
young men” who had fought in Europe to “make the world safe for democ-
racy” had “grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man
shaken.” Cynicism had displaced idealism for those alienated by the horrible
war and the failed peace. As Fitzgerald asserted, “There’s only one lesson to
be learned from life anyway. . . . That there’s no lesson to be learned from
1024 • THE MODERN TEMPER (CH. 25)

life.” Fitzgerald and other self-conscious modernists were labeled a “lost gen-
eration” in the sense that many of them had lost faith in many of the values
and institutions of Western civilization and were frantically looking for new
gods. As Frederic Henry, a character in Ernest Hemingway’s novel A Farewell
to Arms (1929) declares, “Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or
hallow were obscene” in the context of the colossal casualties caused by the
war. Many of the modernists celebrated emotion over reason, change and
“newness” over stability and tradition, youthful liberation and excesses over
maturity, responsibility, and sobriety.
In sum, postwar life in America and Europe was fraught with turbulent
changes, contradictory impulses, superficial frivolity, and seething tensions.
As the French painter Paul Gauguin acknowledged, the upheavals of cultural
modernism and the aftermath of the war produced “an epoch of confusion,”
a riotous clash of irreverent new ideas and enthusiasms with traditional
manners and morals.

T H E R E AC T I O NA RY T W E N T I E S

Many traditionalists were aghast at the social turmoil of 1919. They

located the germs of dangerous radicalism in the multiethnic cities teeming
with immigrants and foreign ideas such as socialism, communism, and
anarchism. The reactionary conservatism of the 1920s fed on the growing
popularity of nativism, Anglo-Saxon racism, and militant Protestantism.

N AT I V I S M The Red Scare of 1919 helped generate a surge of anti-

immigrant hysteria called nativism. The foreign connections of so many
political radicals convinced many people that the troublemakers in the post-
war era were foreign-born. The flow of immigrants, slowed by the war, rose
again at its end. From June 1920 to June 1921, more than eight hundred
thousand people emigrated to the United States, 65 percent of them from
southern and eastern Europe. Many more were on the way. In the early 1920s
over half of the white men and a third of the white women working in indus-
try were immigrants, most of them from central or eastern Europe. That
socialism and anarchism were popular in those regions made immigrant
workers especially suspect in the eyes of many Americans concerned about
the “foreign invasion.”

S A C C O A N D VA N Z E T T IThe most celebrated criminal case of the

1920s seemed to prove the connection between immigrants and radicalism.
 The Reactionary Twenties • 1025

Sacco and Vanzetti

The trial and conviction of these working-class Italian immigrants
became a public spectacle due in part to a growing mood of nativism.

It involved two working-class Italian immigrants who described themselves

as revolutionary anarchists: shoemaker Nicola Sacco and fish peddler Bar-
tolomeo Vanzetti. On May 5, 1920, they were arrested outside Boston, Mass-
achusetts, for stealing $16,000 from a shoe factory and killing the paymaster
and a guard. Both were armed when arrested, both lied to police about their
activities, and both were identified by eyewitnesses. But the stolen money
was never found. The Sacco and Vanzetti case occurred at the height of Ital-
ian immigration to the United States and against the backdrop of numerous
terror attacks by anarchists. It was amid such a charged atmosphere that the
criminal case became a huge public spectacle. The judge who presided over
the 1921 trial was openly prejudicial, referring to the defendants as “anar-
chist bastards.” Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted and ordered executed, but
appeals of the verdict lasted seven years. People then and since claimed that
Sacco and Vanzetti were sentenced for their political ideas and ethnic origin
rather than for any crime they had committed. But despite public demonstra-
tions around the world on behalf of the two men, the evidence convicting
them was compelling; after seven years of legal wrangling, political battles,
and international protests, they were executed on August 23, 1927. After
1026 • THE MODERN TEMPER (CH. 25)

thanking the warden for his kindness, Vanzetti said, “I wish to forgive some
people for what they are now doing to me.”

I M M I G R AT I O N RESTRICTION Concerns about foreign radicals

invading the United States generated new efforts to restrict immigration. An
alarmed Congress passed the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921, which
restricted European arrivals each year to 3 percent of the total number of each
nationality represented in the 1910 census. The Immigration Act of 1924
reduced the number to 2 percent based on the 1890 census, which included
fewer of the “new” immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. This law
set a permanent limitation, which became effective in 1929, of slightly over
150,000 new arrivals per year based on the “national origins” of the U.S.
population as of 1920. The purpose of the new quotas was clear: to tilt the
balance in favor of immigrants from northern and western Europe, who
were assigned about 85 percent of the total. The law completely excluded
people from east Asia—a gratuitous insult to the Japanese, who were already
kept out of the United States by their Gentlemen’s Agreement with Theodore
Roosevelt.
On the other hand, the Immigration Act of 1924 left the gate open to new
arrivals from countries in the Western Hemisphere, so that an ironic conse-
quence of the new law was a substantial increase in the Hispanic Catholic
population of the United States. Legal arrivals from Mexico peaked at 89,000
in 1924. Lower figures after that date reflect the Mexican government’s
policies of clamping down on the outflow. Waves of illegal immigrants
continued to flow across the border, however, in response to southwestern
agriculture’s demand for “stoop” labor. People of Latin American descent
(chiefly Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans) became the fastest-growing
ethnic minority in the country.

T H E K L A N During the postwar years nativist prejudice against “foreign-

ers” took on a new form: a revived, nationwide Ku Klux Klan modeled on the
white vigilante group founded to oppose Reconstruction in the post–Civil
War South. The new Klan was devoted to “100 percent Americanism” and
restricted its membership to militant white Protestants born in the United
States. It was determined to protect its warped notion of the American way
of life not only from African Americans but also from Roman Catholics,
Jews, and immigrants. The United States was no melting pot, the twentieth-
century Klan’s founder, William J. Simmons, warned: “It is a garbage can! . . .
When the hordes of aliens walk to the ballot box and their votes outnumber
yours, then that alien horde has got you by the throat.” Simmons, a habitual
 The Reactionary Twenties • 1027

joiner and promoter of fraternal

orders, had gathered a hooded
group of bigots near Atlanta
on Thanksgiving night 1915.
There, “bathed in the sacred glow
of the fiery cross, the invisible
empire was called from its slum-
ber of half a century to take up a
new task.”
The revived Klan’s appeal to
bigotry extended well beyond
the states of the former Confed-
eracy: it thrived in small towns
and cities in the North and espe-
cially in the Midwest, with major
strongholds in Oregon and on
Long Island, New York. In 1924,
there were 35,000 Klansmen
in Detroit, 55,000 in Chicago, Klan rally
200,000 in Ohio, and 240,000 in In 1925 the Ku Klux Klan staged a huge
Indiana. In Oregon, Indiana, parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in
Washington, D.C.
Colorado, Texas, and Arkansas,
Klan-endorsed candidates won
the governorships. Texas elected a Klansman as its U.S. Senator. The robes,
the flaming crosses, the eerie processionals, the kneeling recruits, the occult
liturgies—all tapped a deep urge toward mystery and brought drama into
the dreary routine of a thousand communities. The Klan was a vicious reac-
tion to shifting moral standards and social status, the declining influence of
churches, and the broad-mindedness of city dwellers and college students.
As a prominent southern journalist observed, the new Klan attracted
“respectable” members of communities. The South “swarmed with little
businessmen . . . the rural clergy belonged to it [the Klan] or had traffic with
it en masse.” The Klan was “anti-Negro, anti-alien, anti-red, anti-Catholic,
anti-Jew, anti-Darwin, anti-Modern, anti-Liberal, Fundamentalist, vastly
Moral, militantly Protestant.” Although the Klan raised lots of money and
elected Klan-backed politicians, it rarely succeeded in its goal of coercing
African Americans and immigrants to leave their communities. In the mid-
1920s the Klan’s peak membership may have been as high as 4 million, but
its influence evaporated after passage of the punitive 1924 immigration law.
The Klan also suffered from recurrent factional quarrels and schisms, and its
1028 • THE MODERN TEMPER (CH. 25)

flagrant acts of violence tarnished its moral pretensions. A controversial

1925 court case eroded the appeal of the Klan when a Klan leader in Indiana
was convicted of raping and murdering a twenty-one-year-old Sunday
school teacher. By 1930, Klan membership had dwindled to 100,000, mostly
southerners. Yet the deep strain of bigotry and intolerance underlying the
Klan lived on, fed by primal fears and hatreds that have yet to disappear.

F U N D A M E N TA L I S M While the Klan saw a threat mainly in the “alien

menace,” many adherents of the old-time religion saw secular threats emerg-
ing in many churches: new “liberal” ideas held that the Bible should be
studied in the light of modern scholarship (the “higher criticism”) or that it
could be reconciled with biological theories of evolution. Such “modern”
notions surfaced in schools and even pulpits. In resisting the inroads of sec-
ularism, orthodox Christians embraced a militant new fundamentalism,
which was distinguished less by a faith that many others shared than by a
posture of hostility toward any other belief.
Among rural fundamentalist leaders only former secretary of state and
three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan had the following,
prestige, and eloquence to make the movement a popular crusade. The aging
Bryan continued to espouse a colorful blend of progressive populism and
religious fundamentalism. In 1921, he promoted state laws to prohibit the
teaching of evolution in the public schools. He denounced the evolutionary
theory of Charles Darwin with the same zeal he had once used in opposing
Republican William McKinley. “Evolution,” he said, “by denying the need or
possibility of spiritual regeneration, discourages all reforms, for reform is
always based upon the regeneration of the individual.” Anti-evolution bills
emerged in legislatures, but the only victories came in the South—and there
were few of those. Some officials took direct action without legislation. Gov-
ernor Miriam “Ma” Ferguson of Texas outlawed textbooks upholding Dar-
winism. “I am a Christian mother,” she declared, “and I am not going to let
that kind of rot go into Texas schoolbooks.”

DA RW I N I S M O N T R I A L The climax came in Tennessee, where in

1925 the state legislature passed a bill outlawing the teaching of evolution in
public schools and colleges. The governor signed the bill with the hope that
it would never be applied. He was wrong. In the tiny foothills town of Day-
ton, in eastern Tennessee, citizens eager to benefit from a burst of publicity
persuaded a twenty-four-year-old high-school science teacher and part-time
football coach, John T. Scopes, to accept an offer from the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) to defend a test case. They succeeded beyond their
 The Reactionary Twenties • 1029

wildest hopes: the publicity was worldwide and enduring—but not all
flattering.
Before the opening of the twelve-day “monkey trial” on July 10, 1925, the
streets of Dayton swarmed with publicity hounds, curiosity seekers, evange-
lists, atheists, hot-dog and soda-pop hucksters, hundreds of reporters, and
national radio coverage. The carnival-like atmosphere was infectious. Main
Street merchants festooned their shop windows with pictures of apes and
monkeys lampooning Darwinian evolution. The sheriff ’s motorcycle carried
a sign reading “Monkeyville Police.” The nation’s most prominent journalist,
the savagely witty H. L. Mencken of Baltimore, said in his first story about
the “trial of the century” that he had been greatly surprised by the town of
Dayton: “I expected to find a squalid southern village, with darkies snoozing
on the houseblocks [porch], pigs rooting under the houses and the inhabi-
tants full of hookworm and malaria. What I found was a country town full
of charm and even beauty.”
The two stars of the show were both showmen who loved a big payday:
William Jennings Bryan, who had offered his services to the prosecution,
and Chicagoan Clarence Darrow, the nation’s most famous trial lawyer. Dar-
row, who had supported Bryan’s 1896 presidential candidacy, was a fierce
defender of the rights of the working class and organized labor, leading one
journalist to call him the “attorney for the damned.” When Darrow learned
that Bryan would be aiding the state attorneys, he volunteered his services—
for free—to the ACLU attorneys defending John T. Scopes. Darrow had spent
much of his career attacking religious intolerance. Bryan, however, was not
intimidated by Darrow’s arrival in Dayton. “Darrow is an atheist,” he charged,
while “I’m an upholder of Christianity. That’s the difference between us.”
Bryan told the media that the trial was not about Scopes but about a state’s
right to determine what was taught in the public schools. He also raised
the stakes when he announced that the “contest between evolution and
Christianity is a duel to the death.” Darrow countered: “Scopes is not on trial.
Civilization is on trial. Nothing will satisfy us but broad victory.” Darrow was
determined to prove “that America is founded on liberty and not on narrow,
mean, intolerable and brainless prejudice of soulless religio-maniacs.”
Ironies abounded as the “trial of the century” opened in Dayton. Both
Bryan and Darrow had spent their careers promoting the interests of work-
ing people and worked together on many common causes. They also shared
a desire to make the trial of John T. Scopes an exercise in public education—
but from two very different perspectives. When the judge ruled out Darrow’s
effort to call scientists to testify about biblical accuracy, the defense on July 20
called Bryan as an “expert” witness on biblical interpretation (Mencken
1030 • THE MODERN TEMPER (CH. 25)

Courtroom scene during the Scopes trial

The media, food vendors, and others flocked to Dayton, Tennessee, for the case
against John T. Scopes, the teacher who taught evolution.

described him as a “fundamentalist pope”). Darrow treated Bryan as a hos-

tile witness, barraging him with sharp questions about inconsistencies and
fables in the Bible. In a heated exchange with Darrow, Bryan repeatedly
trapped himself in literal-minded interpretations (Jonah was swallowed by a
whale, Joshua made the sun stand still, the earth was created in six days, etc.)
and revealed his ignorance of biblical history and scholarship. Bryan gradu-
ally conceded that he had never thought through the possibility that many of
the Bible’s stories conflicted with common sense and basic scientific truths.
At one point, the agnostic Darrow, who had spent much of his career ridi-
culing religious fundamentalists, declared that Bryan was “not competent.”
Bryan lashed back, charging that Darrow was putting “revealed religion” on
trial. “I am here to defend it.” He claimed that Darrow was insulting Chris-
tians. Darrow, his thumbs clasping his colorful suspenders, shot back: “You
insult every man of science and learning in the world because he does not
believe in your fool religion.” It was a bitter scene. At one point, Darrow and
Bryan, their patience exhausted in the broiling summer heat, lunged at each
 The Reactionary Twenties • 1031

other, shaking their fists, prompting the judge to adjourn court. Darrow
claimed victory. His goal was to “show the country what an ignoramus Bryan
was, and I succeeded.”
The next day, as the trial ended, the judge ruled that the only issue before
the jury was whether Scopes had taught evolution, and no one had denied
that he had. He was found guilty, but the Tennessee Supreme Court, while
upholding the state’s anti-evolution statute, overruled the $100 fine on a
technicality. H. L. Mencken’s newspaper, the Baltimore Evening Sun, imme-
diately offered to pay the fine for Scopes. The chief prosecutor accepted the
higher court’s advice against “prolonging the life of this bizarre case” and
dropped the issue. Both sides were justified in claiming victory. With more
accuracy than he intended, Bryan described the trial as a “duel to the death.”
Five days after it closed, he died of a heart condition aggravated by heat and
fatigue. During the next two years, Mississippi, Texas, and other mostly
southern states followed the lead of Tennessee in passing laws barring the
teaching of evolution. The Scopes trial did not end the uncivil war between
evolutionists and fundamentalists. It continues to this day.

P R O H I B I T I O N William Jennings Bryan died knowing that one of his

other crusades had succeeded: alcoholic beverages had been outlawed. The
movement to prohibit beer, wine, and liquor offered another example of reform-
ing zeal channeled into a drive for moral righteousness and social conformity.
Around 1900, the leading temperance organizations, the Women’s Christian
Temperance Union (WCTU) and the Anti-Saloon League, had launched a
campaign for a national prohibition law. By the 1910s, the Anti-Saloon League
had become one of the most effective pressure groups in history, mobilizing
Protestant churches behind its single-minded battle to elect “dry” candidates
to local, state, and national offices. Those advocating the prohibition of
alcoholic beverages often displayed blatant ethnic and social prejudices. The
head of the Anti-Saloon League, for example, castigated German Americans
because they “eat like gluttons and drink like swine.” For many anti-alcohol
crusaders, the primary goal of eliminating alcoholic beverages seemed to be
policing the behavior of the poor, the foreign-born, and the working class.
One prohibitionist referred to Italian immigrants as “Dagos, who drink exces-
sively [and] live in a state of filth.”
At its Jubilee Convention in 1913, the league endorsed a prohibition
amendment to the Constitution. The 1916 elections finally produced enough
members in both houses of Congress to pass legislation outlawing alcoholic
beverages. Soon the wartime spirit of sacrifice, the need to use grain for food
rather than for booze, and wartime hostility to German American brewers
1032 • THE MODERN TEMPER (CH. 25)

transformed the cause of prohibition into a virtual test of patriotism. On

December 18, 1917, the wartime Congress sent to the states the Eighteenth
Amendment, which on January 16, 1920, one year after ratification, banned
the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors. The popu-
lar evangelist Billy Sunday, who described himself as a “temperance Republi-
can down to my toes,” told the ten thousand people gathered at his tabernacle
to celebrate the outlawing of strong drink that the age of righteousness was
at hand: “Men will walk upright now; women will smile and the children will
laugh.”
Prohibition was the most ambitious social reform ever attempted in the
United States. But it proved to be a colossal failure. The new amendment did
not suddenly persuade people to stop drinking. Instead, it motivated mil-
lions of people to use ingenious—and illegal—ways to satisfy their thirst for
alcohol. The Volstead Act (1919), which outlined the actual rules and regula-
tions triggered by the Eighteenth Amendment, had so many loopholes that it
virtually guaranteed failure. Individuals and organizations were allowed to
keep and drink any liquor owned on January 16, 1919. Not surprisingly,
people stocked up before then. The Yale Club in Manhattan, for example,
stored enough liquor to subsist for the fourteen years that Prohibition was
enforced. Farmers were still allowed to “preserve” their fruits through the
process of fermenting them, which resulted in barns stockpiled with “hard
cider” and homemade wine. So-called medicinal liquor was also still allowed,
which meant that physicians (and even veterinarians) grew tired writing
numerous prescriptions for “medicinal” brands such as Old Grand-Dad and
Jim Beam whiskies.
An even greater weakness of the new Prohibition law was that Congress
never supplied adequate funding to enforce it. In 1920 there were only 1,520
Prohibition agents spread across the United States. Given the perennial pub-
lic thirst for booze, the spotty support for Prohibition among local officials,
and the profits to be made in making illegal booze, called bootlegging,
it would have taken armies of enforcement agents to police the nation. Nor
did the Republican presidents during the 1920s embrace the “fanaticism”
over temperance. Warren G. Harding, who regularly consumed bootleg
liquor in the White House, said he was “unable to see this as a great moral
issue.” In working-class and ethnic-rich Detroit the bootleg liquor industry
during the Prohibition era was second in size only to the auto industry. New
York City’s police commissioner estimated that there were 32,000 illegal bars
(“speakeasies”) in the city during Prohibition. In Washington, D.C., the
largest bootlegger reported that “a majority of both houses” of Congress
were regular customers of his products. As the popular humorist Will Rogers
 The Reactionary Twenties • 1033

Prohibition
A 1926 police raid on a speakeasy, where illegal “bootleg” liquor was sold.

quipped, “Prohibition is better than no liquor at all.” What Congress did not
count on was the staggering amount of liquor tax revenue that the federal
treasury lost by outlawing alcohol.
It would be too much to say that Prohibition gave rise to organized crime,
but it supplied criminals with a source of enormous new income while the
automobile and the submachine gun provided criminals greater mobility
and firepower. Organized crime leaders showed remarkable gifts for exploit-
ing loopholes in the law when they did not simply bribe policemen and
politicians. Well-organized crime syndicates behaved like giant corpora-
tions; they controlled the entire stream of liquor’s production, pricing, and
distribution. The result: Prohibition witnessed a fourteen-year-orgy of
criminal activity unparalleled in history.
The most celebrated Prohibition-era gangster was “Scarface” Al Capone.
Born in 1899 and raised in New York City, where he was connected to two
murders before he reached the age of twenty, he left for Chicago in 1920.
There he thuggishly seized control of the huge illegal liquor business in the
city. In 1927 his Chicago-based bootlegging, prostitution, and gambling
empire brought him an income of $60 million, which he flaunted with
expensive suits and silk pajamas, a custom-upholstered bulletproof Cadillac,
a platoon of bodyguards, and lavish support for city charities. Capone
insisted that he was merely providing the public with the goods and services
it demanded: “They say I violate the prohibition law. Who doesn’t?” He
1034 • THE MODERN TEMPER (CH. 25)

neglected to say that he had also bludgeoned to death several police lieu-
tenants and ordered the execution of dozens of rival criminals. Dedicated
law-enforcement officials led by Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Eliot
Ness began to smash his bootlegging operations in 1929, but they were
unable to pin anything on Capone until a Treasury agent infiltrated his gang
and uncovered evidence that nailed him for federal tax evasion. Tried in
1931, Capone was sentenced to eleven years in prison.

T H E “ JA Z Z AG E ” DURING THE “ R OA R I N G
TWENTIES”

In many ways, the reactionary temper of the 1920s and the repressive
movements it spawned arose as reactions to a much publicized social and
intellectual revolution that threatened to rip America from its old moorings.
As described by various labels given to the times, most of them exaggera-
tions, it was an era of excess, the Jazz Age, and the Roaring Twenties. During
those years a cosmopolitan urban America confronted a provincial, rural
America, and cultural conflict reached new levels of tension. F. Scott Fitzger-
ald dubbed the postwar era the Jazz Age in 1922 not because he himself liked
jazz music but because his circle of daring young people in the cities was,
like a jazz musician, intoxicated with nervous energy. Unlike so many Amer-
icans of his age and wealth, Fitzgerald celebrated the era’s spontaneity and
sensual vitality.

T H E N E W WO M A N A N D T H E N E W M O R A L I T Y Much of the
shock to old-timers during the Jazz Age came from the revolution in man-
ners and morals, evidenced first among young people, and especially on
college campuses. In This Side of Paradise (1920), a novel of student life at
Princeton University, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote of “the great current American
phenomenon, the ‘petting party.’ ” Prudish mothers, he said, had no “idea
how casually their daughters were accustomed to be kissed.” From such nov-
els and from scores of magazine articles, the heartland learned about the wild
parties, bathtub gin, promiscuity, speakeasies, “shimmy dancers,” and new
uses to which automobiles were put on secluded lovers’ lanes.
Sex came to be discussed with a new frankness during the 1920s. Much of
the talk derived from a spreading awareness of Dr. Sigmund Freud, the
Viennese father of psychoanalysis. When in 1909 Freud visited Clark Uni-
versity in Massachusetts, he was surprised to find himself so well known
“even in prudish America.” By the 1920s, his ideas had begun to percolate
 The “Jazz Age” during the “Roaring Twenties” • 1035

among the public, and books and magazines discussed libido, inhibitions,
Oedipus complexes, and repression. Some of the decade’s most popular
magazines were those that focused on romance and sex: True Confessions,
Telling Tales, and True Story. Their story titles revealed their themes: “The
Primitive Lover” (“She wanted a caveman husband”), “Indolent Kisses,” and
“Innocents Astray.” Likewise, the most popular female movie stars—Madge
Bellamy, Clara Bow, and Joan Crawford—projected an image of sensual free-
dom, energy, and independence. Advertisements for new movies reinforced
the self-indulgent images of the Jazz Age: “brilliant men, beautiful jazz babies,
champagne baths, midnight revels, petting parties in the purple dawn, all end-
ing in one terrific climax that makes you gasp.” Traditionalists were shocked
at the behavior of rebellious young women. “One hears it said,” lamented a
Baptist magazine, “that the girls are actually tempting the boys more than the
boys do the girls, by their dress and conversation.”
Fashion also reflected the rebellion against prudishness and a loosening
of inhibitions. The emancipated “new woman” in the 1920s was suppos-
edly “independent, bright-eyed, alert, and alive,” a young woman eager
to gain new freedoms. This “new woman” eagerly discarded the constrain-
ing fashions of the nineteenth
century—pinched-in corsets,
confining petticoats, and floor-
length dresses. In 1919 women’s
skirts were typically six inches
above the ground; by 1927 they
were at the knee, and the “flap-
per” was providing a shocking
model of the new feminism. The
name derived from the way fash-
ionable young women allowed
their unbuckled galoshes to
“flap” around their ankles. Flap-
per fashion featured bobbed
hair, minimal undergarments,
gauzy fabrics, and sheer stock-
ings. Cigarettes, booze, makeup,
and jazz dancing were necessary
accessories.
F. Scott Fitzgerald said the The “new woman” of the 1920s
ideal flapper was “lovely and Two flappers dance atop the Hotel Sherman
expensive and about nineteen.” in Chicago, 1926.
1036 • THE MODERN TEMPER (CH. 25)

Conservative moralists saw the flappers as just another sign of a degenerating

society. A Catholic priest in Brooklyn lamented that the feminism emerging
in the 1920s had provoked a “pandemonium of powder, a riot of rouge, and
a moral anarchy of dress.” Others saw in the “new women” an expression of
American individualism. “By sheer force of violence,” explained the New
York Times in 1929, the flapper has “established the feminine right to equal
representation in such hitherto masculine fields of endeavor as smoking and
drinking, swearing, petting, and upsetting the community peace.” For the
most part, the college-educated “flappers” were indifferent to the legacy of
progressive social reform or women’s rights. Their priorities were courtship,
marriage, and consumerism. Older social reformers regretted the changed
priorities. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a prominent writer and feminist,
lamented in 1923 the “lowering in the standards in sex relations” among
young Americans. Their cavalier use of birth control devices struck her as
“selfish and fruitless indulgence.” The emphasis on premarital sex, she said,
illustrated the “lamentable behavior of our times.” Jane Addams agreed, not-
ing that the younger generation of Americans seemed self-absorbed. They
lacked “reforming energy.”
Most women in the 1920s were not flappers, however. Although many
women were recruited during the war to take jobs vacated by men serving in
the military, most of them were forced to give up those jobs once the war
ended. True, more middle-class women attended college in the 1920s than
ever before, but a higher percentage of them married after graduation than
had been the case in the nineteenth century. Only 4 percent of working
women in the 1920s were salaried professionals; the vast majority worked
for wages. A student at all-female Smith College expressed frustration at
the prevailing view that college-educated women were still expected to pur-
sue marriage and motherhood: “We cannot believe that it is fixed in the
nature of things that a woman must choose between a home and her work,
when a man may have both. There must be a way out, and it is the problem
of our generation to find the way.”
Some women moved into new vocations created by the burgeoning con-
sumer culture (two thirds of purchases each year were made by women shop-
pers) such as accounting assistants and department store clerks. The sales of
cosmetics and the number of beauty shops soared from five thousand in 1920
to forty thousand in 1930, thereby creating new jobs for hair stylists, mani-
curists, and cosmeticians. But the majority of women remained anchored in
the domestic sphere, either as full-time wives and mothers or as household
servants. African American and Mexican American women faced the great-
est challenges. As a New York City newspaper observed, they were forced to
 The “Jazz Age” during the “Roaring Twenties” • 1037

do “work which white women will not do.” Women of color usually worked
as maids, laundresses, and seamstresses or on farms.
In addition to sexism, racism also continued to limit the freedom of
women during the twenties. For example, in 1919, an interracial couple from
Ayer, Massachusetts, Mabel Puffer, a wealthy college graduate, and Arthur
Hazzard, a handyman and leader within the local black community, decided
to get married in Concord, New Hampshire. They checked into separate
rooms in a hotel, then met in the lobby and walked three blocks to the court-
house to apply for a marriage license, only to be told that there was a five-day
waiting period. So they waited and made preparations for the wedding. The
mayor of Concord agreed to perform the service, and Hazzard’s siblings and
mother made plans to attend. Others were not as supportive, however. News
of the interracial couple strolling the streets of Concord reached the Boston
newspapers. The first story’s headline, in the Boston Traveller, read: “Will
Marry Negro in ‘Perfect Union’: Rich Ayer Society Woman Determined to
Wed Servant Although Hometown is Aflame with Protest.” The news had
outraged many residents of Ayer. The next day, the Boston Evening Globe ran
the now-provocative story on its front page. The headline was sensational:
“Hope to Prevent White Woman Wedding Negro: Two Friends of Mabel E.
Puffer Have Gone to Concord, N.H.” Puffer’s friends and relatives rushed to
Concord and began exerting pressure on her and the townspeople. Sud-
denly, the mayor reversed himself and announced he could not perform the
wedding, claiming he was called out of town on important business. The
betrothed couple, after being turned down several times, finally found a
minister willing to marry them. The night before the wedding was to occur,
however, the Ayer police chief arrived, arrested Hazzard on charge of “entice-
ment,” and took Puffer into custody because she had been deemed “insane”
for having decided to marry a working-class African American. In reporting
the dramatic story, the Concord newspaper concluded that the community
“gazed after their departing dust with no regrets.” The nation that Woodrow
Wilson had led into World War I to “make the world safe for democracy”
remained a very unsafe place for those crossing the color line.

THE “NEW NEGRO” The most significant development in African

American life during the early twentieth century was the Great Migration
northward from the South. The movement of blacks to the North began in
1915–1916, when rapidly expanding war industries and restrictions on
immigration together created a labor shortage; legal restrictions on immi-
gration continued the movement in the 1920s. Altogether between 1910 and
1920 the Southeast lost some 323,000 African Americans, or 5 percent of the
1038 • THE MODERN TEMPER (CH. 25)

native black population, and by 1930 it had lost another 615,000, or 8 percent
of the native black population in 1920. With the migration, a slow but steady
growth in black political influence in northern cities set in. African Ameri-
cans were freer to speak and act in a northern setting; they also gained politi-
cal leverage by settling in large cities in states with many electoral votes.
Along with political activity came a bristling spirit of protest, a spirit that
received cultural expression in what came to be called the Harlem Renais-
sance, the nation’s first self-conscious black literary and artistic movement.
The Harlem Renaissance grew out of the fast-growing African-American
community in New York City. In 1890, one in seventy people in Manhattan
was African American; by 1930 it was one in nine. The “great, dark city” of
Harlem, in poet Langston Hughes’s phrase, contained more blacks per
square mile than any other community in the nation. The dense concentra-
tion of urban blacks generated a sense of common identity, growing power,
and cultural self-expression. Writer James Weldon Johnson described a
“Black Manhattan” emerging in Harlem during the 1920s. Harlem, he wrote,
was a “typically Negro” community of 175,000 in that it featured “move-
ment, color, gaiety, singing, dancing, boisterous laughter, and loud talk.”

“A Negro Family Just Arrived in Chicago from the Rural South,” 1922
Between 1910 and 1930 almost 1 million African Americans left the South.
 The “Jazz Age” during the “Roaring Twenties” • 1039

The Harlem Renaissance was the self-conscious effort in the New York
black community to cultivate racial equality by promoting African Ameri-
can cultural achievements. In 1924, blacks organized a banquet in Harlem to
introduce the white-dominated publishing industry to African American
writers. Howard University professor Alain Locke, a Harvard graduate and
the nation’s first black Rhodes Scholar, was the event’s emcee, and he became
the leader of the New Negro movement, an effort to promote racial equality
by celebrating the cultural contributions of African Americans. In 1925, at
Locke’s behest, Survey Graphic magazine devoted its March issue (“Harlem:
Mecca of the New Negro”) to showcasing promising young black writers. In
this sense, the writers of the Harlem Renaissance intentionally differentiated
themselves from the alienated white writers making up what was called the
“lost generation.” They were the “found generation.” James Weldon Johnson
predicted that Harlem would become the “intellectual, cultural, and finan-
cial center for Negroes of the United States, and will exert a vital influence
upon all Negro peoples.” Johnson noted that “a people that has produced
great art and literature has never been looked upon as inferior.”
The writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance audaciously cele-
brated themselves, their black heritage, and their contemporary contribu-
tions to American culture, including jazz and the blues. As the poet Langston
Hughes wrote, “I am a Negro—and beautiful. . . . The night is beautiful. So
the faces of my people.” His African American friends were “black like that
old mule, / Black, and don’t give a damn!” Perhaps the greatest single literary
creation of the time was Jean Toomer’s novel Cane (1923), which pictured
the lives both of simple rural folk in Georgia’s black belt and the sophisti-
cated African American middle class in Washington, D.C. Other writers
making up the Harlem Renaissance included Zora Neale Hurston, Countee
Cullen, Nella Larsen, and Claude McKay. The Harlem group also promoted
a racially integrated society. James Weldon Johnson coined the term
“Aframerican” to combine “African American.” He did so in order to empha-
size that blacks were no longer divided by their heritage; they were Ameri-
cans who happened to have an African ancestry. Blacks were not interlopers
or “foundlings,” in Locke’s term, but “conscious collaborators” in the cre-
ation of American society and culture.
Alain Locke spoke for other leaders of the Harlem Renaissance by urging
his literary and artistic friends to celebrate their African heritage and draw
upon African art for their inspiration. Others disagreed. Langston Hughes
stressed that he was an “American Negro.” He “loved the surface of Africa
and the rhythms of Africa—but I was not Africa. I was Chicago and Kansas
City and Broadway and Harlem.” The black sculptor Augusta Savage agreed.
She explained that African Americans for three centuries had shared the
1040 • THE MODERN TEMPER (CH. 25)

Into Bondage
This painting by Aaron Douglas exemplifies how black
artists in the Harlem Renaissance used their African
roots and collective history as artistic inspiration.

“same cultural background, the same system, the same standard of beauty as
white Americans. . . . It is impossible to go back to primitive [African] art for
our models.”

T H E B I R T H O F J A Z Z F. Scott Fitzgerald fastened upon the “Jazz Age”

as a label for the broad spirit of rebellion and spontaneity he saw welling up
among young Americans during the 1920s. The new jazz music had first
emerged in New Orleans as an ingenious synthesis of black rural folk tradi-
tions and urban dance entertainment. During the 1920s it spread to Kansas
City, Memphis, the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, and Chicago’s
South Side. African American Louis Armstrong, an inspired trumpeter, was
the Pied Piper of jazz. Born in a New Orleans shack in 1900, he grew up
drenched in jazz music. In 1922, Armstrong moved to Chicago with King
Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band. Thereafter, he delighted audiences with his pas-
sionate performances. “The guys never heard anything like it,” recalled the
black composer and bandleader Duke Ellington. The syncopated rhythms of
jazz were immensely popular among rebellious young adults—both black
and white—and helped create carefree new dances such as the Charleston
 The “Jazz Age” during the “Roaring Twenties” • 1041

and the Black Bottom, whose sexual gyrations shocked guardians of morality.
Through the vehicle of jazz, African American performers not only shaped
American culture during the twenties but also European taste as well. The
controversial European modernist painters Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso
were infatuated with the improvisational inventiveness of jazz music.

G A RV EY I S M The spirit of jazz and the “New Negro” also found expres-
sion in what came to be called Negro nationalism, which exalted blackness,
black cultural expression, and black separatism. The leading spokesman for
such views was the flamboyant Marcus Garvey. In 1916, Garvey brought to
the all-black Harlem neighborhood in New York City the headquarters of
the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which he had
started in his native Jamaica two years before. Garvey had grown convinced
that racial oppression and exploitation were prevalent in most societies
around the world. Traditional efforts to use civil rights legislation and court
rulings to end such oppression were not working. Garvey insisted that blacks

Frankie “Half Pint” Jackson and his band at the Sunset Cafe, Chicago, in the
1920s
Jazz emerged in the 1920s as an especially American expression of the modernist
spirit. African American artists bent musical conventions to give fuller rein to
improvisation and sensuality.
1042 • THE MODERN TEMPER (CH. 25)

had nothing in common with whites—and that was a good thing. He there-
fore called for the cultivation of black racial pride and promoted racial
separation rather than integration. He was the first major black leader to
champion what later came to be called “black power.” In passionate speeches
and in his newspaper, the Negro World, Garvey exhorted African Americans
to liberate themselves from the surrounding white culture. He saw every
white person as a “potential Klansman” and therefore endorsed the “social
and political separation of all peoples to the extent that they promote their
own ideals and civilization.”
The UNIA grew rapidly amid the racial tensions of the postwar years. Gar-
vey quickly enlisted half a million members in the UNIA and claimed as many
as 6 million served by 800 offices by 1923. It became the largest black political
organization in the twentieth century. In 1920, Garvey hosted in New York
City UNIA’s first international convention. Thousands of delegates from forty-
eight states and more than twenty nations attended. In his keynote address to
25,000 delegates Garvey proclaimed that the long-suffering black peoples of the
world would “suffer no longer. We shall now organize the 400,000,000 Negroes
around the world into a vast organization to plant the banner of freedom on
the great continent of Africa.” In 1920, Garvey declared that the only lasting
hope for blacks living in the United
States was to flee America and build
their own republic in Africa.
Garvey’s simple message of black
nationalism and racial solidarity
appealed to many struggling African
Americans living in slums in northern
cities. Garvey and his aides created
their own black version of Christian-
ity, organized their own fraternal
lodges and community cultural cen-
ters, started their own black businesses,
and published their own newspaper.
Such a separatist message appalled
other black leaders, however. W.E.B.
Du Bois, for example, labeled Garvey
“the most dangerous enemy of the
Negro race. . . . He is either a lunatic or
Marcus Garvey
a traitor.” An African American news-
Garvey was the founder of the Universal
Negro Improvement Association and a
paper pledged to help “drive Garvey and
leading spokesman for “Negro nation- Garveyism in all its sinister viciousness
alism” in the 1920s. from the American soil.”
 The “Jazz Age” during the “Roaring Twenties” • 1043

Garvey’s black-only crusade came to a screeching halt in May 1923 when

he and several associates were put on trial for fraud related to the sale of
stock in one of his struggling for-profit enterprises, the Black Star Line, a
steamship corporation intended to transport American blacks to Africa. The
jury acquitted everyone but Garvey. The judge sentenced him to the maxi-
mum five-year prison term. In 1927 President Calvin Coolidge pardoned
Garvey on the condition that he be deported to Jamaica. One of the largest
crowds in Jamaican history greeted him upon his return to his native coun-
try. Garvey died in obscurity in 1940, but the memory of his movement kept
alive an undercurrent of racial nationalism that would reemerge in the 1960s
under the slogan “black power.”
A more lasting force for racial equality was the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1910 by white
progressives and black activists. Black participants in the NAACP came
mainly from the Niagara Movement, a group associated with W.E.B. Du Bois
that had met each year since 1905 at places associated with the anti-slavery
movement (Niagara Falls; Oberlin, Ohio; Boston; Harpers Ferry) and issued
defiant statements against discrimination. Within a few years, the NAACP
had become a broad-based national organization. The NAACP embraced
the progressive idea that the solution
to social problems begins with educa- The Crisis
tion, by informing the people of social This national journal of the NAACP
ills. Du Bois became the new organiza- carried the subtitle “A Record of the
tion’s director of publicity and Darker Races.”
research and editor of its journal, Cri-
sis, from 1910 to 1934. The NAACP’s
main strategy focused on legal action
to bring the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments back to life. One early
victory came with Guinn v. United
States (1915), in which the Supreme
Court struck down Oklahoma’s
grandfather clause, used to deprive
African Americans of the vote. In
Buchanan v. Worley (1917) the Court
invalidated a residential segregation
ordinance in Louisville, Kentucky.
In 1919, the NAACP launched a
national campaign against lynching,
then a still-common form of vigilante
racism. An anti-lynching bill to make
1044 • THE MODERN TEMPER (CH. 25)

mob murder a federal offense passed the House in 1922 but lost to a fili-
buster by southerners in the Senate. NAACP field secretary James Weldon
Johnson believed the continued agitation on the issue did more than the
bill’s passage would have to reduce lynchings, which decreased to a third of
what they had been in the previous decade. But even one lynching was too
many for a so-called progressive society.

M A S S C U LT U R E

After 1920, changes in the economy, science, and social thought were
more dramatic than those generated by Prohibition, the Klan, and funda-
mentalism. The large, growing middle class of Americans who had formed
an important segment of the progressive political coalition were now
absorbed instead into the prosperous “New Era” created by advances in
communications, transportation, business organization, and the spread of
mass consumerism.

T H E G R O W I N G C O N S U M E R C U LT U R E Economic and social life

was transformed during the 1920s. The nation’s total wealth almost doubled
between 1920 and 1930, while workers enjoyed a 26 percent increase in income,
the sharpest increase in history to that point. More people than ever before had
the money and time to indulge their consumer fancies, and a growing advertis-
ing industry fueled the appetites of the rapidly expanding middle and upper
middle class. By the mid-1920s advertising had become a huge enterprise using
sophisticated psychological research with powerful social significance. Old-
time values of thrift and saving gave way to a new ethic of consumption that
made spending a virtue. The innovation of installment buying enabled people
to buy more by extending their payments over months rather than paying in cash.
A newspaper editorial insisted that the American’s “first importance to his
country is no longer that of citizen but that of consumer. Consumption is a
new necessity in response to dramatic increases in productivity.”
Consumer-goods industries fueled much of the economic boom from 1922
to 1929. Perhaps no decade in American history witnessed such dramatic
changes in everyday life. In 1920 only 35 percent of homes had electricity; by
1930 the number was 68 percent. At the same time, the number of homes with
indoor plumbing doubled. Similar increases occurred in the number of
households with washing machines and automobiles. Moderately priced crea-
ture comforts, including items such as flush toilets, handheld cameras, wrist-
watches, cigarette lighters, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, and linoleum
 Mass Culture • 1045

floors, became more widely available.

Inventions in communications and
transportation, such as motion pictures,
radio, telephones, airplanes, and auto-
mobiles, fueled the transformation in
everyday life.
In 1896, a New York audience viewed
the first moving-picture show. By 1908,
there were nearly ten thousand movie
theaters scattered across the nation; by
1924, there were twenty thousand the-
aters showing seven hundred new films
a year. Hollywood, California, became
the international center of movie pro-
duction, grinding out cowboy Westerns
Motion pictures
and the timeless comedies of Mack Sen-
nett’s Keystone Company, where a raft of A dispirited Charlie Chaplin in a
still image from his classic 1921 film
slapstick comedians, most notably The Kid.
Charlie Chaplin, perfected their art,
transforming it into a form of social
criticism. By the mid-1930s, every city and most small towns had movie theaters,
and movies became the nation’s chief form of mass entertainment. Movie atten-
dance during the 1920s averaged 80 million people a week. Americans spent ten
times as much on movies as they did on tickets to baseball and football games.
Radio broadcasting had an even more spectacular growth. Except for
experimental broadcasts, radio served only for basic communication until
1920. In that year, station WWJ in Detroit began transmitting news bulletins
from the Detroit Daily News, and KDKA in Pittsburgh, owned by the
Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, began broadcasting
regularly scheduled programs. The first radio commercial aired in New York
in 1922. By the end of that year, there were 508 stations and some 3 million
receivers in use. In 1926, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), a sub-
sidiary of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), began linking stations
into a national network; the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) entered
the field the next year. In 1927, a Federal Radio Commission was established
to regulate the industry; in 1934 it became the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC), with authority over other forms of communication as
well. Calvin Coolidge was the first president to address the nation by radio,
and he did so monthly, paving the way for Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s influ-
ential “fireside chats.”
1046 • THE MODERN TEMPER (CH. 25)

The rise of radio

The radio brought this farm family together and connected them to the outside
world. By the end of the 1930s, millions would tune in to newscasts, soap operas,
sports events, and church services.

A I R P L A N E S , AU T O M O B I L E S , A N D T H E E C O N O M YAdvances
in transportation were equally significant. Wilbur and Orville Wright, owners
of a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, built and flew the first airplane over the
beach at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903. But the use of planes advanced
slowly until the outbreak of war in 1914, after which the Europeans rapidly
developed the airplane as a military weapon. When the United States entered
the war, it had no combat planes—American pilots flew British or French
planes. An American aircraft industry developed during the war but
foundered in the postwar demobilization. Under the Kelly Act of 1925, how-
ever, the federal government began to subsidize the industry through airmail
contracts. The Air Commerce Act of 1926 provided federal funds to aid in
the advancement of air transportation and navigation; among the projects it
supported was the construction of airports.
The infant aviation industry received a huge psychological boost in 1927
when twenty-six-year-old Charles A. Lindbergh Jr., a St. Louis–based mail
pilot, made the first solo transatlantic flight, traveling from New York to
 Mass Culture • 1047

Paris in thirty-three and a half hours. The heroic deed, which won him
$25,000 and a Congressional Medal of Honor, was truly dramatic. The night
before he took off, he could not sleep, so he was already exhausted when
he began the grueling flight. He flew through severe storms as well as a dense
fog for part of the way that forced him to descend to within ten feet of the
ocean’s surface before sighting the Irish coast and regaining his bearings.
When he landed in France, there were one hundred thousand people greet-
ing him with thunderous cheers. The New York City parade celebrating
Lindbergh’s accomplishment surpassed even the celebration of the armistice
ending World War I. Flappers developed a new dance step in Lindbergh’s
honor, called the Lindy Hop.
Five years later, New York honored another pioneering aviator—Amelia
Earhart, who in 1932 became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic
Ocean. Born in Kansas in 1897, she made her first solo flight in 1921 and began
working as a stunt pilot at air shows across the country. Earhart’s popularity
soared after her transatlantic solo flight. The fifteen-hour feat led Congress to
award her the Distinguished Flying Cross, and she was named Outstanding
American Woman of the Year in 1932. In 1937 Earhart and a navigator left
Miami, Florida, heading east on a round-the-world flight. The voyage went
smoothly until they attempted the most difficult leg: from New Guinea to a
tiny Pacific island 2,556 miles away. The plane disappeared, and despite exten-
sive searches, no trace of it or the aviators was ever found. It remains the most
intriguing mystery in aviation history. The accomplishments of Lindbergh and
Earhart helped catapult the aviation industry to prominence. By 1930, there
were forty-three airline companies in operation in the United States.
Nonetheless, by far the most significant economic and social development
of the early twentieth century was the automobile. The first motorcar had
been manufactured for sale in 1895, but the founding of the Ford Motor
Company in 1903 revolutionized the infant industry. Henry Ford vowed “to
democratize the automobile. When I’m through everybody will be able to
afford one, and about everyone will have one.” Ford’s reliable Model T (the
celebrated Tin Lizzie) came out in 1908 at a price of $850 (in 1924 it would
sell for $290). The Model T changed little from year to year, and it came in
only one color: black.
In 1916, the total number of cars manufactured passed 1 million; by 1920
more than 8 million were registered, and in 1929 there were more than
23 million. The automobile revolution gave rise to a gigantic market for oil prod-
ucts just as the Spindletop gusher (drilled in 1901 in Texas) heralded the opening
of vast southwestern oil fields. It quickened the movement for good roads,
financed in large part from a gasoline tax; speeded transportation; encouraged
suburban sprawl; and sparked real estate booms in California and Florida.
1048 • THE MODERN TEMPER (CH. 25)

Ford Motor Company’s Highland Park plant, 1913

Gravity slides and chain conveyors contributed to the mass production of automobiles.

The automobile industry also became the leading example of modern

mass-production techniques and efficiency. Ford’s Highland Park plant
outside Detroit was designed to increase output dramatically by creating a
moving assembly line with conveyors pulling the parts along feeder lines and
the chassis down an assembly line rather than making each car in place. Each
worker performed a particular task, such as installing a fender or a wheel.
The moving assembly line could produce a new car in ninety-three minutes.
Such efficiency enabled Ford to lower the price of his cars, thereby increas-
ing the number of people who could afford to buy them.
Just as the railroad helped transform the pace and scale of American life
in the second half of the nineteenth century, the mass production of automo-
biles changed social life during the twentieth century. Cars enabled people to
live farther away from their workplaces, thus fostering the suburban revolu-
tion. They also helped fuel the economic boom of the 1920s. Producing cars
created tens of thousands of new jobs and provided “backward linkages”
throughout the economy by generating a huge demand for steel, rubber,
leather, oil, and gasoline. The burgeoning car culture spurred road construc-
tion, dotting the landscape with gasoline stations, traffic lights, billboards,
and motor hotels (“motels”). By 1929, the federal government was construct-
ing ten thousand miles of paved national highways each year.

S P E C TAT O R S P O R T S The widespread ownership of automobiles as

well as rising incomes changed the way people spent their leisure time. People
living in cities could drive into the countryside or visit friends and relatives
 Mass Culture • 1049

in neighboring towns. On weekends, they went to the ballparks, stadiums, or

boxing rinks to see prizefights and baseball or football games. During the
1920s, the mania for spectator sports emerged as a primary form of mass
entertainment—and big business. Baseball became the national pastime in
the 1920s. Having been created in the 1870s in rural areas, by the 1920s base-
ball had gone urban. With larger-than-life heroes such as New York Yankee
stars George Herman “Babe” Ruth Jr. and Henry Louis “Lou” Gehrig, profes-
sional baseball teams attracted intense loyalties and huge crowds. In 1920,
more than a million spectators attended Ruth’s games with the New York
Yankees. Two years later, the Yankees built a new stadium, called the “house
that Ruth built.” The Yankees dominated baseball, winning world champi-
onships in 1923, 1927, and 1928. More than 20 million people attended pro-
fessional baseball games in 1927, the year that Ruth, the “Sultan of Swat,” set
a record by hitting sixty home runs in a season. Because baseball remained a
segregated sport in the 1920s, “Negro Leagues”—amateur, semi-professional,
and professional—were organized to provide opportunities for African
Americans to play in and watch athletic contests.
Football, especially at the college level, also attracted huge crowds. Unlike
baseball, football tended to attract more affluent spectators. It, too, benefited
from outsized heroes such as Harold Edward “Red” Grange, the phenomenal
running back for the University of Illinois. Grange, not Babe Ruth, was the
first athlete to appear on the cover of Time magazine. Nicknamed the “Gal-
loping Ghost,” he was a phenomenal athlete. In a game against the University
of Michigan, he scored a touchdown the first four times he carried the ball.
After the victorious game, celebrating students carried Grange on their
shoulders for two miles across the campus. When Grange signed a contract
with the Chicago Bears in 1926, he single-handedly made professional foot-
ball competitive with baseball as a spectator sport.
What Ruth and Grange were to their sports, William Harrison “Jack”
Dempsey was to boxing. In 1919, he won the world heavyweight title from Jess
Willard, a giant of a man weighing three hundred pounds and standing six and
a half feet tall. Dempsey knocked him down seven times in the first round. By
the fourth round, Willard, his face bruised and bloodied, threw in the towel.
Dempsey thereafter became a dominant force in boxing, a national celebrity,
and a wealthy man. Like Babe Ruth, the brawling Dempsey was especially pop-
ular with working-class men, for he too had been born poor, raised rough, and
worked with his hands for wages. In 1927 when James Joseph “Gene” Tunney
defeated Dempsey, over one hundred thousand people attended the dramatic
fight, including a thousand reporters, ten state governors, and countless Hol-
lywood celebrities. Some 60 million people listened to the fight over the radio.
During the 1920s, spectator sports became a primary form of entertainment.
1050 • THE MODERN TEMPER (CH. 25)

T H E M O D E R N I S T R E VO LT

The dramatic changes in society and the economy during the 1920s
were accompanied by continuing transformations in science and the arts
that spurred the onset of a “modernist” sensibility. Rebellious modernists
came to believe that the twentieth century marked a watershed in human
development. Notions of reality and human nature were called into question
by sophisticated scientific discoveries and radical new forms of artistic
expression. As the prominent English writer and feminist Virginia Woolf
declared, “On or about December 1910, human character changed. I am not
saying that one went out, as one might into a garden, and there saw that a
rose had flowered, or that a hen had laid an egg. The change was not sudden
and definite like that. But a change there was, nevertheless; and, since one
must be arbitrary, let us date it about the year 1910.”

SCIENCE AND SOCIAL THOUGHT Physicists during the early

twentieth century altered the image of the cosmos in bewildering ways.
Since the eighteenth century, conventional wisdom had held that the uni-
verse was governed by laws that the scientific method could ultimately
uncover. This rational world of order and certainty disintegrated at the
beginning of the new century when Albert Einstein, a young German physi-
cist with an irreverent attitude toward established truths, announced his
theory of relativity, which maintained that space, time, and mass were not
absolutes but instead were relative to the location and motion of the
observer. Sir Isaac Newton’s eighteenth-century laws of mechanics, accord-
ing to Einstein’s relativity theories, worked well enough at relatively slow
speeds, but the more nearly one approached the velocity of light (about
186,000 miles per second), the more all measuring devices would change
accordingly, so that yardsticks would become shorter, clocks and heartbeats
would slow down, even the aging process would ebb.
The farther one reached out into the universe and the farther one reached
inside the minute world of the atom, the more certainty dissolved. The dis-
covery of radioactivity in the 1890s showed that atoms were not irreducible
units of matter and that some of them emitted particles of energy. This
meant, Einstein noted, that mass and energy were not separate phenomena
but interchangeable. By 1921, when Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize, his
abstract concept of relativity had become internationally recognized—and
popularized. Hundreds of books about relativity had been published. His
theories also had consequences that Einstein had not foreseen. Younger
physicists built upon Einstein’s concepts to further transform notions of
reality and the universe.
 The Modernist Revolt • 1051

Albert Einstein
Widely regarded as one of the most influential scientists of the twentieth century,
Einstein was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1921.

The pace of theoretical physics quickened as the twentieth century

unfolded. The German physicist Max Planck suggested that electromagnetic
emissions of energy, whether as electricity or light, come in little bundles
that he called quanta. Einstein said much the same when he suggested that
light was made up of particles, later called photons. The development of
quantum theory suggested that atoms were far more complex than once
believed and, as stated in 1927 in the “uncertainty principle” of the preco-
cious twenty-five-year-old German physicist Werner Heisenberg, ultimately
indescribable. One could never know both the position and the velocity of
an electron, Heisenberg concluded, because the very process of observation
would inevitably affect the behavior of the particle, altering its position or its
velocity. The presence of the observer, in other words, changes what is being
observed. Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle,” which earned him a Nobel
Prize, had profound philosophical and cultural implications. It posed a
direct challenge to conventional notions of objectivity by declaring that
observation is necessarily subjective—and therefore biased and imprecise.
Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle” constituted the most revolutionary sci-
entific theory in 150 years, for it meant that there is no such thing as absolute
1052 • THE MODERN TEMPER (CH. 25)

truth; human knowledge has inherent limits (and biases). “The physicist thus
finds himself in a world from which the bottom has dropped clean out,” a Har-
vard mathematician wrote in 1929. The scientist had to “give up his most cher-
ished convictions and faith. The world is not a world of reason. . . . ”

M O D E R N I S T A R T A N D L I T E R AT U R E The cluster of scientific ideas

associated with Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein helped to inspire a
“modernist” revolution in the arts in Europe and America. Modernism is a
slippery term, hard to grasp and even harder to define. At once a rebellious
mood and a sensational movement, full of contradictions, modernism was
an anarchical cultural revolt against conventional tastes in art, literature,
drama, music, dance, and architecture. With astonishing energy and panache,
modernism during the decades clustering around the turn of the twentieth
century emphasized the freedom of individual writers and artists to be inno-
vative and even scandalous in the face of traditional notions of beauty and
good taste. As the American poet Ezra Pound exclaimed, “Make it New!”
Modernism trumpeted an unsettling premise: reality was no longer what it
had seemed. The modernist world was one in which, as Karl Marx said, “all
that is solid melts into air.”
Until the twentieth century, most writers and artists took for granted an
accessible “real” world that could be readily observed and accurately repre-
sented. On the contrary, the young generation of self-willed modernists
viewed reality as a subjective realm, something to be created as much in their
minds as copied from life, something to be imagined and expressed rather
than simply observed and reproduced. They thus found the subconscious
regions of the psyche more interesting and more potent than the traditional
focus on reason, common sense, and logic. The American artist Marsden
Hartley reported from Paris in 1912 that his reading of Sigmund Freud and
the “new psychologists” had prompted him to abandon his emphasis on paint-
ing objects from “real life” in favor of expressing on canvas his “intuitive
abstractions.” He noted that he was now painting “very exceptional things of a
most abstract psychic nature.” The painter Georgia O’Keeffe agreed that express-
ing subjectivity was one of the pillars of cultural modernism. Like Hartley, she
abandoned the “realistic” emphasis on representing scenes from life; instead, she
concentrated on images “I see in my head” with a “woman’s feeling.”
The modernists were at times deliberately obscure and difficult to access,
but their youthful energies as well as their interest in the ugly and crude
elements of life helped transform the dynamics of twentieth-century culture
and the very meaning of beauty in art. The culture wars of the early twentieth
century were almost as violent as the combat during the First World War.
Rebels felt an urgent need to attack the guardians of tradition and “good taste.”
 The Modernist Revolt • 1053

The horrors of World War I accelerated the insurgency of modernism in the

arts by delivering a shattering blow to the widespread belief that Western civi-
lization was progressing. The editors of Presbyterian magazine announced in
1919 that “every field of thought and action has been disturbed” by the terri-
ble war and its aftermath. The war’s colossal carnage disillusioned many
young intellectuals and spurred a new “modernist” sensibility among some
of the most talented artists and writers, many of whom had already been
shorn of conventional religious belief.
Modernism appeared first in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century
and had become a pervasive international force by 1920. It arose out of a
widespread recognition that Western civilization had entered an era of
bewildering change and disorienting upheavals. New technologies, new
modes of transportation and communication, and new scientific discoveries
such as quantum mechanics, relativity theory, and Freudian psychology
combined to rupture traditional perceptions of reality, liberate new ways of
understanding human behavior and consciousness, and generate new forms
of artistic expression. “One must never forget,” declared Gertrude Stein, the
experimentalist poet, “that the reality of the twentieth century is not the
reality of the nineteenth century, not at all.” Modern artists were preoccu-
pied with exploring the nature of consciousness and with experimenting
with new artistic forms. The result was a bewildering array of avant-garde
intellectual and artistic move-
ments: impressionism, futurism,
Dadaism, surrealism. Mod-
ernists ferociously violated con-
ventional expectations. Their writ-
ings and paintings were often
ambiguous and even opaque,
even impenetrable. Clarity was
less important than authentic-
ity. Modernists also showed little
interest in political life or social
reform. As F. Scott Fitzgerald
explained, he and the other Jazz
Age rebels “had no interest in
politics at all.” Many of them
turned their backs on main-
stream American life (the bour- The Fitzgeralds celebrate Christmas
geoisie), dominated as it was by F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, lived
political conservatism, money- in and wrote about the “greatest, gaudiest
getting, and consumerism. spree in history.”
1054 • THE MODERN TEMPER (CH. 25)

T H E A R M O RY S H OW The modernist impulse in America appeared

first in major artistic bohemias in Chicago and New York City, especially in
the area of lower Manhattan known as Greenwich Village. In 1913 European
modernism made its formal debut in the United States at the Armory Show,
a much-discussed international art exhibition that opened in a National
Guard armory in New York City and later went on to Chicago, Philadelphia,
and Boston. The exhibit shocked most Americans with its display of the lat-
est works by rebellious artists: postimpressionists, expressionists, primitives,
and cubists. Pablo Picasso’s work made its American debut at the Armory
Show. The New York Times warned visitors who shared the “old belief in
reality” that they would enter “a stark region of abstractions” at the Armory
Show that would be “hideous to our unaccustomed eyes.” The artists on
display were “in love with science but not with objective reality,” leading
them to produce baffling paintings that were “revolting in their inhuman-
ity.” The riotous energies and courageous experiments on display at the
Armory Show generated shock, indignation, and ridicule, but the exhibi-
tion was a huge success. Over 250,000 people paid to view the traveling
exhibit, which dominated newspaper headlines for weeks. Mabel Dodge,
the wealthy patron of radical art, announced that the Armory Show was
the most important event in American life since the Revolutionary War.
Nearly “every thinking person nowadays is in revolt against something,” she
claimed.
A chance encounter between the acclaimed poets Robert Frost and Wal-
lace Stevens illustrated the changing cultural landscape in the early twenti-
eth century. Stevens said that the “trouble with your poems, Frost, is that
they have subjects and they make the visible world easy to see.” Stevens
insisted that the modern poet should “escape from facts” and become the
“priest of the invisible.” What was most “real” to Stevens was not “a collec-
tion of solid, static objects” but the intangible realm “within or beneath the
surface of reality.” Modernism, in other words, was less interested in pro-
moting social change or pleasing popular taste than it was in expressing the
subjective world of complex emotions and abstract concepts.

P O U N D , E L I O T, A N D S T E I N The chief American prophets of mod-

ern art and literature were neither in Chicago nor in New York but in England
and Europe: Idaho-born Ezra Pound and St. Louis-born T. S. Eliot in London
and Californian Gertrude Stein in Paris. Working separately and spreading
their influence together, they were all self-conscious revolutionaries deeply
concerned with creating strange, new, and often beautifully difficult forms of
 The Modernist Revolt • 1055

modernist expression. They found more inspiration and more receptive

audiences in Europe than in the United States. In a letter to his father seeking
assistance in promoting his first book of poems, Ezra Pound wrote what
could have served as a manifesto for his disruptive modernist approach to art:
“WHANG—Boom—Boom—cast delicacy to the winds.” Pound abhorred
respectability and “public stupidity.” As the foreign editor of the Chicago-based
Poetry magazine, he became the cultural impresario of modernism, the con-
duit through which many American poets achieved publication. In bitter
poems and earnest essays denouncing war and commercialism, Pound dis-
played an incessant, uncompromising urgency in his efforts to transform the
literary landscape. An English poet called him a “solitary volcano.” T. S. Eliot
claimed that Pound was single-handedly responsible for the modernist
movement in poetry. Pound recruited, edited, published, and reviewed the
best among the new generation of modernist writers, improving their writ-
ing, bolstering their courage, and propelling their careers. In his own poetry
he expressed the feeling of many that the war had wasted a whole generation
of young men who died in defense of a “botched civilization.”
Pound conquered literary London in the years before and during World
War I. One of the young American writers he took under his wing was
T. S. Eliot, who had recently graduated from Harvard. Within a few years,
the younger Eliot had greatly surpassed Pound both as a poet and a critic to
become the leading American modernist. Eliot declared that traditional
poetry “was stagnant to a degree difficult for any young poet to imagine.”
Eliot’s epic 433-line poem The Waste Land (1922), which Pound edited, has
become a monument of modernism. It expressed a deep sense of postwar
disillusionment and melancholy that had a powerful effect on other disillu-
sioned writers during the decade. As a poet and critic writing for the Crite-
rion, which he founded in 1922, Eliot became the arbiter of modernist taste
in Anglo-American literature.
Gertrude Stein was the self-appointed champion of the American mod-
ernists who, like her, chose to live in Paris rather than London or the United
States. In 1903, she, along with her brother, Leo, an art collector, moved to
Paris, where she lived the rest of her life. Long regarded as no more than
the literary eccentric who wrote, “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose,” Stein was
in fact one of the chief promoters of the triumphant subjectivity undergird-
ing modernist expression. She sought to capture in words the equivalent
of abstract painting. Even more important, she hosted a cultural salon in
Paris that became a regular gathering place for American and European
modernists.
1056 • THE MODERN TEMPER (CH. 25)

THE “ LO S T GENERA-
TION” It was Gertrude Stein
who in Paris in 1921 told young
Ernest Hemingway that he and
his friends who had served in the
war “are a lost generation.” When
Hemingway objected, she held
her ground. “You are [lost]. You
have no respect for anything. You
drink yourselves to death.” When
Hemingway published his first
novel, The Sun Also Rises (1926),
he used the phrase “lost genera-
tion” as the book’s epigraph,
drawing inspiration from both
Gertrude Stein Stein and Pound. The bleak but
Pablo Picasso’s 1906 portrait of the writer. captivating novel centers on Jake
Barnes, a young American jour-
nalist castrated by a war injury. His despairing impotence leads him and his
unhappy friends to wander the cafes and nightclubs of postwar Europe,
acknowledging that they were all wounded and sterile in their own way: they
had lost their innocence, their illusions, and their motivation. In Hemingway’s
next novel, A Farewell to Arms (1929), he adopted a similar focus, depicting
the desperate search of the “lost generation” for “real” life punctuated by the
doomed, war-tainted love affairs of young Americans. These novels feature
the frenetic, hard-drinking lifestyle and the cult of robust masculinity that
Hemingway himself epitomized. Hundreds of writers tried to imitate Heming-
way’s distinctively terse, tough but sensitive style of writing, but few had his
exceptional gift, which lay less in what he had to say than in the way he said it.
The earliest chronicler of the “lost generation,” F. Scott Fitzgerald, blazed
up brilliantly and then quickly flickered out like all the tinseled, sad young
characters who people his novels. Famous at age twenty-four, having pub-
lished the spectacularly successful novel This Side of Paradise in 1920,
Fitzgerald, along with his wife, Zelda, lived in and wrote about the “greatest,
gaudiest spree in history.” Fitzgerald’s stories during the 1920s were
painfully autobiographical. They centered on self-indulgent people during
the Jazz Age—glamorous, brassy, and cynical young men and women who
oscillate between parties and romances with carefree ease. What gave depth
to the best of Fitzgerald’s work was what a character in The Great Gatsby
(1925), Fitzgerald’s finest novel, called “a sense of the fundamental decen-
 The Modernist Revolt • 1057

cies” amid all the surface gaiety—and almost always a sense of impending
doom in a world that had “lost” its meaning amid the revelations of modern
science and the horrors of world war.
Societies do not readily surrender old values and attitudes for new. The great
majority of Americans did not identify with the alienation and rebelliousness
associated with Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and others claiming to represent the
“lost generation.” Most Americans—including most writers and artists—did
not share their sense of rebellious despair or their disdain for the “booboisie”
dominating middle-class life. Instead, most Americans were attracted to more
traditional values and conventional forms of expression. They celebrated
America’s widespread prosperity and traditional pieties. Far more people read
the uplifting poetry of Carl Sandburg than the despairing verse of T. S. Eliot.
The best-selling novelist of the 1920s was not Ernest Hemingway or F. Scott
Fitzgerald; it was Zane Grey, a former Ohio dentist who wrote dozens of popu-
lar western novels featuring violence and heroism on the frontier. “We turn to
him,” said one literary critic, “not for insight into human nature and human
problems, nor for refinements of art, but simply for crude epic stories.”
The sharp contrast between the fiction of Zane Grey and Ernest
Hemingway—and their readers—showed yet again how conflicted and contra-
dictory cultural life had become during the 1920s. For all of the attention given
to modernism and cultural radicalism, then and since, the prevailing tone of
life between the end of World War I and the onset of the Great Depression was
not disillusionment or despair but optimism. During the 1920s, what one
writer called the “ballyhoo years,” political conservatism, economic growth,
mass consumerism, and an often zany frivolity were the prevailing forces shap-
ing the national mood—and anchoring a contradictory “epoch of confusion.”
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Nativism With the end of the Great War, race riots and the fear of communism
ushered in a wave of virulent nativism. With many “old stock” Americans fear-
ing that many immigrants were socialists, Communists, or anarchists, Congress
passed laws to restrict immigration. The revived Ku Klux Klan was devoted to
“100 percent Americanism” and regarded Catholics, Jews, immigrants, and
African Americans as threats to America.
• Jazz Age The carefree fads and attitudes of the 1920s, perhaps best represented
by the frantic rhythms of jazz music and the fast-paced, sexy movies from Holly-
wood, led F. Scott Fitzgerald to dub the decade the Jazz Age. The hemlines of
women’s dresses rose, and sex was openly discussed. The Harlem Renaissance
gave voice to black literature and music, and African Americans in northern cities
felt freer to speak out against racial injustice and express pride in their race.
• Reactionary Mood Many white Americans felt that their religion and way of
life were under attack by modern trends. They feared that women’s newly earned
right to vote might destabilize the family and that scientific scholarship would
undermine biblical truth. These modern and traditional forces openly clashed at
the Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925, where the right to teach evolution
in public schools was tested in court.
• Modernism The carnage of the Great War shattered Americans’ belief in the
progress of Western civilization. In the movement known as modernism, young
artists and intellectuals reflected this disillusionment. For modernists, the world
could no longer be easily observed through reason, common sense, and logic;
instead, reality was something to be created and expressed through new artistic
and literary forms, like abstract painting, atonal music, free verse in poetry, and
stream-of-conscious narrative and interior monologues in stories and novels.
 CHRONOLOGY

1903
1903
1905
Wright Brothers fly the first airplane
Ford Motor Company is founded
First movie house opens
1910 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is
founded
1916 Marcus Garvey brings to New York the Universal Negro Improvement
Association
1920 Prohibition begins
1920 F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise is published
1921 Albert Einstein receives the Nobel Prize in physics
1921 Congress passes the Emergency Immigration Act
1922 T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is published
First radio commercial is aired
1924 Congress passes the Immigration Act
1925 Scopes “monkey trial” tests the teaching of evolution in Tennessee
public schools
1927 Charles Lindbergh Jr. makes first solo transatlantic flight

KEY TERMS & NAMES

nativism p. 1024 Roaring Twenties p. 1034 Marcus Garvey p. 1041

Nicola Sacco and Sigmund Freud p. 1034 Model T Ford p. 1047

Bartolomeo Vanzetti
p. 1025 Great Migration p. 1037 modernism p. 1052

Ku Klux Klan p. 1026 Harlem Renaissance

p. 1038
fundamentalism p. 1028
New Negro p. 1039
“Scarface” Al Capone
p. 1033 “Jazz Age” p. 1040

26
REPUBLICAN
RESURGENCE
AND DECLINE

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• To what extent were the policies of the 1920s a rejection of pro-

gressivism?
• What was the effect of isolationism and the peace movement on
American politics between the two world wars?
• Why were the 1920s an era of conservatism?
• What drove the growth of the American economy in the 1920s?
• What were the causes of the stock market crash and the Great
Depression?

B y 1920, the progressive political coalition that elected

Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 and reelected Woodrow
Wilson in 1916 had fragmented. It unraveled for several
reasons. For one thing, its leaders were no more. Roosevelt died in 1919 at
the age of sixty, just as he was beginning to campaign for the 1920 Republi-
can presidential nomination. Wilson, too, had envisioned an unprecedented
third term, but a stroke forced him to finish out his second term broken
physically and mentally. Many Americans preferred other candidates any-
way. Organized labor resented the Wilson administration’s crackdown on
striking workers in 1919–1920. Farmers in the Great Plains and the West
thought that wartime price controls on commodities had discriminated
against them. Liberal intellectuals became disillusioned with grassroots
democracy because of popular support for Prohibition, the Ku Klux Klan,
and religious fundamentalism. By 1920, the middle class had become preoc-
cupied with restoring a “new era” of prosperity based on mass production
 “Normalcy” • 1061

and mass consumption. Finally, the public turned away from Progressivism
in part because it had accomplished its major goals: the Eighteenth Amend-
ment (1919), which outlawed alcoholic beverages, and the Nineteenth
Amendment (1920), which allowed women nationwide to vote.
Progressivism did not disappear in the 1920s, however. Progressive Repub-
licans and Democrats dominated key leadership positions in Congress dur-
ing much of the decade even while conservative Republicans occupied the
White House. The progressive impulse for honest, efficient government and
regulation of business remained strong, especially at the state and local
levels, where efforts to improve public education, public health, and social-
welfare programs gained momentum during the decade. At the national
level, however, conservative Republicans returned to power.

“NORMALCY”

T H E E L E C T I O N O F 1 9 2 0 After World War I, most Americans had

grown weary of Woodrow Wilson’s crusading idealism. Wilson himself rec-
ognized the shifting public mood. “It is only once in a generation,” he
remarked, “that a people can be lifted above material things. That is why
conservative government is in the saddle two thirds of the time.”
In 1920, Republican party leaders eager to regain control of the White
House turned to a stunning mediocrity: the affable, dapper, silver-haired
Ohio senator Warren G. Harding. He set the conservative tone of his presi-
dential campaign when he told a Boston audience that it was time to end
Wilsonian progressivism: “America’s present need is not heroics, but healing;
not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation,
but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispas-
sionate.” In contrast to Wilson’s grandiose internationalism, Harding
promised to “safeguard America first . . . to exalt America first, to live for and
revere America first.”
Harding’s vanilla promise of a “return to normalcy” reflected both his
own conservative values and voters’ desire for stability and order. The son of
an Ohio farmer, he was neither a prophet nor a crusader. He described him-
self as “just a plain fellow” who was “old-fashioned and even reactionary in
matters of faith and morals.” But far from being an old-fashioned moralist
in his personal life, Harding drank bootleg liquor in the midst of Prohibi-
tion, smoked and chewed tobacco, relished weekly poker games, and had
numerous affairs and several children with women other than his austere
wife, whom he called “the Duchess.” The general public, however, remained
1062 • REPUBLICAN RESURGENCE AND DECLINE (CH. 26)

unaware of Harding’s escapades. Instead, voters saw him as a handsome,

charming, lovable politician. Harding acknowledged his limitations in
vision, leadership, and intellectual power, once admitting that “I cannot
hope to be one of the great presidents, but perhaps I may be remembered as
one of the best loved.”
The Democrats in 1920 hoped that Harding would not be president at all.
James Cox, a former newspaper publisher and former governor of Ohio,
won the presidential nomination of an increasingly fragmented Democratic
party on the forty-fourth ballot. For vice president the convention named
New Yorker Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who as assistant secretary of the
navy occupied the same position his Republican cousin Theodore Roosevelt
had once held.
The Democrats suffered from the breakup of the Wilsonian coalition and
the conservative postwar mood. In the words of the progressive journalist
William Allen White, Americans in 1920 were “tired of issues, sick at heart of
ideals, and weary of being noble.” The country voted overwhelmingly for
Harding’s promised “return to normalcy.” Harding polled 16 million votes to
9 million for Cox, who won no state outside the still solidly Democratic
South. The Republican domination in both houses of Congress increased. As
a disconsolate Wilson supporter said, “an age had ended.”

E A R LY A P P O I N T M E N T S A N D P O L I C Y Harding in office had

much in common with Ulysses S. Grant. His cabinet, like Grant’s, mixed
some of the “best minds” in the party, whom he had promised to seek out,
with a few of the worst. Charles Evans Hughes, like Grant’s Hamilton Fish,
became a distinguished secretary of state. Herbert Hoover in the Commerce
Department, Andrew W. Mellon in the Treasury Department, and Henry C.
Wallace in the Agriculture Department functioned efficiently and made pol-
icy on their own. Other cabinet members and administrative appointees,
however, were not so conscientious. The secretary of the interior landed in
prison, and the attorney general narrowly escaped serving time. Many lesser
offices went to members of the “Ohio gang,” a group of Harding’s drinking
buddies who met in a house on K Street near the White House to help the
president relieve the pressures of his high office.
Until he became president, Harding had loved politics. He was the party
hack par excellence, “bloviating” (a favorite verb of his, which means “speak-
ing with gaseous eloquence”) at public events, jollying it up in the clubhouse
and cloakroom, hobnobbing with the great and near great in Washington,
D.C. As president, however, Harding was simply in over his head, and self-
doubt overwhelmed him. “I don’t think I’m big enough for the Presidency,”
 “Normalcy” • 1063

The Ohio gang

President Warren Harding surrounded himself with a network of friends, often
appointing them to public office despite inferior credentials.

he confided to a friend. Harding much preferred to relax with the Ohio

gang, who shared his taste for whiskey, poker, and women.
Still, Harding and his friends had a political agenda. They set about disman-
tling or neutralizing many of the social and economic components of progres-
sivism. The president’s four Supreme Court appointments were all conserva-
tives, including Chief Justice William Howard Taft, the former president, who
announced that he had been “appointed to reverse a few decisions.” During the
1920s, the Taft court struck down a federal child-labor law and a minimum-
wage law for women, issued numerous injunctions against striking labor
unions, and passed rulings limiting the powers of federal regulatory agencies.
The Harding administration inherited a slumping economy burdened by
high wartime taxes and a national debt that had ballooned from $1 billion in
1914 to $24 billion in 1920. To address such challenges, the new president
established a pro-business tone reminiscent of the McKinley White House in
the 1890s. Harding vetoed a bill to provide war veterans with a cash bonus,
arguing that it would increase the federal budget deficit.
To deal with the postwar recession and generate economic growth, Secre-
tary of the Treasury Mellon reduced government spending and lowered
1064 • REPUBLICAN RESURGENCE AND DECLINE (CH. 26)

taxes. He persuaded Congress to pass the landmark Budget and Accounting

Act of 1921, which created a new Bureau of the Budget to streamline the
process of preparing an annual federal budget to be presented for approval
by the Congress. The bill also created a General Accounting Office to audit
spending by federal agencies. This act realized a long-held desire of progres-
sives to bring greater efficiency and nonpartisanship to the budget prepara-
tion process. Mellon also initiated a series of general tax reductions, insisting
that the reductions should go mainly to the rich, on the “trickle down” prin-
ciple that wealth in the hands of the few would spur economic growth
through increased capital investment.
In Congress, a group of western Republicans and southern Democrats
fought a dogged battle to preserve the “progressive” approach to income
taxes (a graduated scale of higher rates on higher income levels) built into
wartime taxes, but Mellon, in office through the 1920s, eventually won out.
At his behest, Congress in 1921 repealed the wartime excess-profits tax and
lowered the maximum rate on personal income from 65 to 50 percent. Sub-
sequent revenue acts lowered the maximum tax rate to 40 percent in 1924
and to 20 percent in 1926. The Revenue Act of 1926 extended further bene-
fits to high-income groups by lowering estate taxes and repealing the gift tax.
Unfortunately, much of the tax money released to the wealthy helped fuel
the speculative excess of the late 1920s as much as it fostered gainful enter-
prise. Mellon, however, did balance the federal budget for a time. Govern-
ment expenditures fell, as did the national debt. Mellon’s admirers tagged
him the greatest secretary of the Treasury since Alexander Hamilton in the
late eighteenth century.
In addition to tax cuts, Mellon—the third-richest man in the United States,
after John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford—favored the time-honored Repub-
lican policy of high tariffs on imported goods. The Fordney-McCumber Tariff
of 1922 increased rates on imports of chemical and metal products to help
prevent the revival of German corporations that had dominated those
industries before the First World War. To please commercial farmers, who
historically benefited little from tariffs, the new act further extended the
duties on agricultural imports.
Rounding out the Republican economic program of the 1920s was a more
lenient attitude toward government regulation of corporations. Neither
Harding nor his successor, Calvin Coolidge, could dissolve the regulatory
agencies created during the Progressive Era, but they named commissioners
who promoted regulation “friendly” to business interests. Harding appointed
conservatives to the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Reserve
Board, and the Federal Trade Commission. Progressive Republican senator
 Isolationism in Foreign Affairs • 1065

George W. Norris characterized the new appointments as “the nullification of

federal law by a process of boring from within.” Senator Henry Cabot Lodge
agreed, boasting that “we have torn up Wilsonism by the roots.”
In one area, however, Warren G. Harding proved to be more progressive
than Woodrow Wilson. He reversed the Wilson administration’s segrega-
tionist policy of excluding African Americans from federal government jobs.
He also spoke out against the vigilante racism that had flared up across the
country during and after the war. In his first speech to a joint session of Con-
gress in 1921, Harding insisted that the nation must deal with the festering
“race question.” The horrific racial incidents during and after World War I
were a stain on America’s democratic ideals. The new president, unlike his
Democratic predecessor, attacked the Ku Klux Klan for fomenting “hatred
and prejudice and violence,” and he urged Congress “to wipe the stain of
barbaric lynching from the banners of a free and orderly, representative
democracy.” The Senate, however, failed to pass the bill Harding promoted.

I S O L AT I O N I S M IN F O R E I G N A F FA I R S

In 1920, the Americans who elected Warren G. Harding were weary of

war and Woodrow Wilson’s crusading internationalism. They wanted their
new president to revive the tradition of isolationism, whereby the United
States had sought to remain aloof from the squabbles among European
nations. To that end, Harding said good riddance to Wilson’s desire for
America to play a leading role in the new League of Nations. As he said in his
1920 victory speech, “You just didn’t want a surrender of the United States.
That’s why you didn’t care for the League [of Nations], which is now
deceased.” The postwar spirit of isolation found other expressions as well:
the higher tariff rates on foreign imports, the Red Scare, and the restrictive
immigration laws with which the nation all but shut the door to newcomers.
Yet the desire to stay out of foreign wars did not mean that the United States
could ignore its own expanding global interests. American businesses now had
worldwide connections. The United States was the world’s chief banker. Amer-
ican investments and loans abroad put in circulation the dollars that enabled
foreigners to purchase U.S. exports. Moreover, America’s overseas possessions,
especially the Philippines, directly involved the country in world affairs.

WA R D E B T S A N D R E PA R AT I O N SProbably nothing did more to

heighten American isolationism from foreign affairs—or anti-American
feeling in Europe—than the complex issue of paying off huge war debts
1066 • REPUBLICAN RESURGENCE AND DECLINE (CH. 26)

during the 1920s. In 1917, when France and Great Britain ran out of money
to pay for military supplies during the First World War, the U.S. government
had advanced them massive loans, first for the war effort and then for post-
war reconstruction projects. Most Americans, including Andrew W. Mellon,
expected the war-related debts to be paid back, but Europeans had a differ-
ent perception. The European Allies had held off the German army at great
cost while the United States was raising an army in 1917. The British also
noted that after the American Revolution, the newly independent United
States had repudiated old debts to British investors; the French likewise
pointed out that they had never been repaid for helping the Americans win
the Revolution and gain their independence.
But the most difficult challenges in the 1920s were the practical problems
of repayment. To get U.S. dollars to use to pay their war-related debts, Euro-
pean nations had to sell their goods to the United States. However, soaring
American tariff rates during the 1920s made imported European goods
more expensive and the war-related debts incurred by Britain and France
harder to pay. The French and the British insisted that they could repay
their debts to the United States only as they unrealistically sought to collect
$33 billion in reparations from defeated Germany, whose economy was in a
shambles during the 1920s, ravaged by runaway inflation. Twice during the
1920s the financial strain on Germany brought the structure of interna-
tional payments to the verge of collapse, and both times the international
Reparations Commission called in private American bankers to work out
rescue plans. Loans provided by U.S. banks thus propped up the German
economy so that Germany could pay its reparations to Britain and France,
thereby enabling them to pay their debts to the United States.

AT T E M P T S AT D I S A R M A M E N T After the First World War, many

Americans decided that excessive armaments were responsible for causing
the terrible conflict. The best way to keep the peace, they argued, was to limit
the size of armies and navies. The United States had no intention of main-
taining a large army after 1920, but under the shipbuilding program begun
in 1916, it had constructed a powerful navy second only to that of Great
Britain. Neither the British nor the Americans wanted a naval armaments
race, but both were worried about the alarming growth of Japanese power.
To address the problem, President Harding in 1921 invited diplomats from
eight nations to a naval-armaments conference in Washington, D.C. U.S. sec-
retary of state Charles Evans Hughes welcomed the delegates by making a
blockbuster proposal. The only way out of an expensive armaments race, he
declared, “is to end it now” by eliminating scores of existing warships and pro-
 Isolationism in Foreign Affairs • 1067

The Washington Conference, 1921

The Big Five at the conference were (from left) Iyesato Tokugawa (Japan), Arthur
Balfour (Great Britain), Charles Evans Hughes (United States), Aristide Briand
(France), and Carlo Schanzer (Italy).

hibiting the construction of new battleships. It was one of the most dramatic
moments in diplomatic history. In less than fifteen minutes, one journalist
reported, Hughes had destroyed more warships “than all the admirals of the
world have sunk in a cycle of centuries.” His audacious proposal to end the
naval arms race was greeted by a “tornado of cheering” among the delegates.
Following Hughes’s lead, delegates from the United States, Britain, Japan,
France, and Italy signed the Five-Power Treaty (1922), which limited the size
of their navies. It was the first disarmament treaty in history. The five major
powers also agreed to refrain from further fortification of their Pacific pos-
sessions. In particular, the United States and Great Britain promised not to
build any new naval bases north of Singapore or west of Hawaii. The agree-
ment in effect partitioned the world: U.S. naval power became supreme in
the Western Hemisphere, Japanese power in the western Pacific, and British
power dominated from the North Sea to Singapore.
With these agreements in hand, President Harding could boast of what
seemed to be a brilliant diplomatic coup that relieved citizens of the need to
pay for an enlarged navy and warded off potential conflicts in the Pacific.
Yet the agreements were without obligation and without teeth. The naval-
disarmament treaty set limits only on “capital” ships (battleships and air-
craft carriers); the race to build cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and other
smaller craft continued. Expansionist Japan withdrew from the agreement
1068 • REPUBLICAN RESURGENCE AND DECLINE (CH. 26)

in 1934, and the Soviet Union and Germany had been excluded from the
conference. Thus, twelve years after the Washington Conference, the dream
of naval disarmament died.

T H E K E L L O G G - B R I A N D PA C T During and after the First World

War, many Americans embraced the fanciful ideal of simply abolishing war
with a stroke of a pen. In 1921, a wealthy Chicagoan founded the American
Committee for the Outlawry of War. “We can outlaw this war system just
as we outlawed slavery and the saloon,” said one of the more enthusiastic
converts.
The seductive notion of simply abolishing war culminated in the signing
of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. This unique treaty started with an initiative by the
French foreign minister Aristide Briand, who in 1927 proposed to Secretary
of State Frank B. Kellogg that the two countries agree never go to war against
each other. This innocent-seeming proposal was actually a clever ploy to draw
the United States into the French security system by the back door. In any
future war, for instance, such a pact would inhibit the United States from
seeking reprisals in response to any French intrusions on neutral rights. Kel-
logg was outraged to discover that Briand had urged leaders of the American
peace movement to put pressure on the government to sign the accord.
Kellogg then turned the tables on Briand. He countered with a plan to have
all nations sign the pact. Caught in a trap of his own making, the French for-
eign minister finally agreed. The Pact of Paris (its official name), signed on
August 27, 1928, declared that the signatories “renounce it [war] as an instru-
ment of national policy.” Eventually sixty-two nations signed the pact, but all
reserved the right of “self-defense” as an escape hatch. The U.S. Senate ratified
the agreement by a vote of 85 to 1. One senator who voted for “this worthless,
but perfectly harmless peace treaty” wrote a friend later that he feared it
would “confuse the minds of many good people who think that peace may be
secured by polite professions of neighborly and brotherly love.”

T H E WO R L D C O U R T The isolationist mood in the United States was

no better illustrated than in the repeated refusal by the Senate during the
1920s to approve American membership in the World Court, formally called
the Permanent Court of International Justice, at The Hague in the Nether-
lands. Created in 1921 by the League of Nations, the World Court, composed
of fifteen international judges, was intended to arbitrate disputes between
nations. Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover all asked the Senate dur-
ing the 1920s to approve American membership in the World Court, but the
 The Harding Scandals • 1069

legislative body refused, for the same reasons that the Senate had refused to
sign the Versailles Treaty: they did not want the United States to be bound in
any way by an international organization.

The isolationist
I M P R O V I N G R E L AT I O N S I N L AT I N A M E R I C A
attitude during the 1920s led the decade’s Republican presidents—Harding,
Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover—to soothe tensions with America’s
neighbors to the south, most of which harbored long-festering resentments
against “Yankee imperialism.” The Harding administration agreed in 1921 to
pay the republic of Colombia the $25 million it had demanded for America’s
rights to the Panama Canal. In 1924, American troops left the Dominican
Republic after eight years of intervention. U.S. Marines left Nicaragua in
1925 but returned a year later at the outbreak of disorder and civil war.
There, in 1927, the Coolidge administration brought both parties into an
agreement for U.S.-supervised elections, but one rebel leader, César Augusto
Sandino, held out, and the marines stayed until 1933.
The troubles in Nicaragua increased strains between the United States
and Mexico. Relations had already been soured by repeated Mexican threats
to expropriate American oil properties in Mexico. In 1928, however, the U.S.
ambassador negotiated an agreement protecting rights for American busi-
nesses acquired before 1917. Expropriation did in fact occur in 1938, but the
Mexican government agreed to reimburse American owners.

T H E H A R D I N G S C A N DA L S

Republican conservatives such

A D M I N I S T R AT I V E C O R R U P T I O N
as Henry Cabot Lodge, Andrew W. Mellon, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert
Hoover operated out of a philosophical conviction that was intended to ben-
efit the nation. Members of President Harding’s “Ohio Gang,” however, used
White House connections to line their own pockets. Early in 1923, for exam-
ple, Harding learned that the head of the Veterans Bureau was systematically
looting medical and hospital supplies. A few weeks later, the legal adviser to
the Veterans Bureau committed suicide. More questionable incidents occurred
in quick succession. Not long afterward a close friend of Attorney General
Harry M. Daugherty, who had set up an office in the Justice Department
from which he peddled influence for a fee, shot himself. Finally, the attorney
general himself was implicated in the fraudulent handling of German assets
seized after the war. When discovered, he refused to testify on the grounds
1070 • REPUBLICAN RESURGENCE AND DECLINE (CH. 26)

that he might incriminate himself. These were but the most visible among
the many scandals that touched the Justice Department, the Prohibition
Bureau, and other federal agencies under Harding.
One major scandal rose above all the others, however. Teapot Dome, like
the Watergate break-in fifty years later, became the catchphrase for the climate
of corruption surrounding the Harding administration. The Teapot Dome
was a government-owned oil field in Wyoming. It had been set aside as an oil
reserve for ensuring fuel for warships. Harding decided to move administra-
tive control of Teapot Dome from the Department of Navy to the Department
of Interior. Thereafter, his secretary of interior, Albert B. Fall, a former Repub-
lican senator from New Mexico, began signing sweetheart contracts with close
friends who were executives of petroleum companies that wanted access to the
oil field. It turned out that he had taken bribes of about $400,000 (which came
in “a little black bag”) from an oil tycoon. Fall was convicted of conspiracy and
bribery and sentenced to a year in prison, the first former cabinet official ever
to serve time as a result of misconduct in office.

“Juggernaut” of corruption
This 1924 cartoon alludes to the dimensions of the Teapot Dome scandal.
 The Harding Scandals • 1071

How much Harding himself knew of the scandals swirling about him is
unclear, but he knew enough to be troubled. “My God, this is a hell of a job!”
he confided to a journalist. “I have no trouble with my enemies; I can take
care of my enemies all right. But my damn friends, my God-damn friends. . . .
They’re the ones that keep me walking the floor nights!” In 1923, Harding
left on what would be his last journey, a speaking tour to the West Coast and
a trip to the Alaska Territory. In Seattle, he suffered an attack of food poison-
ing, recovered briefly, then died in a San Francisco hotel.
The nation was heartbroken. Not since the death of Abraham Lincoln had
there been such an outpouring of grief for a “beloved president,” for the
kindly, ordinary man who found it in his heart (as Woodrow Wilson had
not) to pardon Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist who had been jailed for oppos-
ing U.S. entry into World War I. As the funeral train carrying Harding’s body
crossed the continent to Washington, D.C., then back to Ohio, millions stood
by the tracks to honor their lost leader. Eventually, however, grief yielded to
scorn and contempt. For nearly a decade, the revelations of scandals within
the Harding administration were paraded before investigating committees
and then the courts. In 1927 an Ohio woman named Nan Britton published
a sensational book that claimed that she had had numerous trysts with
Harding in the White House and that he was the father of her daughter.
Harding’s love letters to another man’s wife also surfaced.
As a result of Harding’s amorous detours and corrupt associates, his fore-
shortened administration came to be viewed as one of the worst in history.
More recent assessments suggest, however, that the scandals obscured
accomplishments. Some historians credit Harding with leading the nation
out of the turmoil of the postwar years and creating the foundation for the
decade’s remarkable economic boom. These revisionists also stress that
Harding was a hardworking president who played a far more forceful role
than previously assumed in shaping his administration’s economic and for-
eign policies and in shepherding legislation through Congress. Harding also
promoted diversity and civil rights. He appointed Jews to key federal posi-
tions, and he became the first president to criticize racial segregation in a
speech before a white audience in the South. No previous president had pro-
moted women’s rights as forcefully as he did. But even Harding’s foremost
scholarly defender admits that he lacked good judgment and “probably
should never have been president.”

“SILENT C A L ” The news of Harding’s death found Vice President

Calvin Coolidge visiting his father in the isolated mountain village of Ply-
mouth, Vermont, his birthplace. There, at 2:47 A.M. on August 3, 1923, by the
1072 • REPUBLICAN RESURGENCE AND DECLINE (CH. 26)

Conservatives in the White House

Warren G. Harding (left) and Calvin Coolidge (right).

light of a kerosene lamp, Colonel John Coolidge administered the presiden-

tial oath of office to his son. The rustic simplicity of Plymouth, the very
name itself, evoked just the image of traditional roots and solid integrity
that the country would long for amid the coming disclosures of corruption
and carousing in the Harding administration.
Coolidge brought to the White House a clear conviction that the presi-
dency should revert to its Gilded Age stance of passive deference to Congress.
“Four fifths of our troubles,” Coolidge predicted, “would disappear if we
would sit down and keep still.” He abided by this rule, insisting on twelve
hours of sleep and an afternoon nap. The satirist H. L. Mencken asserted that
Coolidge “slept more than any other president, whether by day or by night.”

P R O - B U S I N E S S C O N S E R VAT I S M
Americans embraced the unflap-
pability and unstained integrity of Silent Cal. He was simple and direct, a
self-righteous man of strong principles, intense patriotism, pinched frugal-
ity, and few words. After being reelected president of the Massachusetts State
Senate, his four-sentence inaugural address was the shortest ever: “Conserve
the foundations of our institutions. Do your work with the spirit of a soldier
in the public service. Be loyal to the Commonwealth, and to yourselves. And
be brief—above all things, be brief.” President Coolidge, said a critic, “can be
 The Harding Scandals • 1073

silent in five languages.” Although a man of few words, he was not as bland or
as dry as critics claimed. He promoted his regressive conservatism with a ruth-
less consistency. Even more than Harding, Coolidge identified the nation’s
welfare with the success of big business. “The chief business of the American
people is business,” he preached. “The man who builds a factory builds a tem-
ple. The man who works there worships there.” Where Harding had sought to
balance the interests of labor, agriculture, and industry, Coolidge focused on
promoting industrial development. He strove to end federal regulation of
business and industry and reduce taxes as well as the national debt. The nation
had too many laws, Coolidge insisted, and “we would be better off if we did
not have any more.” His fiscal frugality and pro-business stance led the Wall
Street Journal to exult: “Never before, here or anywhere else, has a government
been so completely fused with business.”

THE ELECTION OF 1924 In filling out Harding’s unexpired term,

Calvin Coolidge distanced himself from the scandals of the administration
by putting in charge of the prosecutions two lawyers of undoubted integrity.
A man of honesty and ability, a good administrator who delegated well and
managed Republican factions adroitly, Coolidge quietly took control of the
party machinery and seized the initiative in the 1924 campaign for the presi-
dential nomination, which he won with only token opposition.
Meanwhile, the Democrats again fell victim to dissension, prompting the
humorist Will Rogers’s classic statement that “I am a member of no orga-
nized political party. I am a Democrat.” The Democratic party’s fractious-
ness illustrated the deep divisions between urban and rural America during
the 1920s. It took the Democrats 103 ballots to decide on a presidential can-
didate: John W. Davis, a corporate lawyer from West Virginia who could
nearly outdo Coolidge in his conservatism.
While the Democrats bickered, rural populists and urban progressives
again decided to desert both national parties. Meeting in Cleveland, Ohio,
on July 4, 1924, activists reorganized the old 1912 Progressive party and
nominated Robert M. “Fighting Bob” La Follette for president. The sixty-
nine-year-old Wisconsin progressive senator had voted against the 1917 war
resolution against Germany. Now, he won the support of the Socialist party
and the American Federation of Labor.
In the 1924 campaign, the voters preferred to “keep cool with Coolidge,”
who swept both the popular and the electoral votes by decisive majorities.
Davis took only the solidly Democratic South, and La Follette carried only
his native Wisconsin. The popular vote went 15.7 million for Coolidge,
8.4 million for Davis, and 4.8 million for La Follette—the largest popular
vote ever polled by a third-party candidate.
1074 • REPUBLICAN RESURGENCE AND DECLINE (CH. 26)

THE NEW ERA

Coolidge’s landslide victory represented the pinnacle of postwar con-

servatism. The Democratic party was in disarray, and the Republicans were
triumphant. Business executives interpreted the Republican victory in 1924
as a vindication of their leadership, and Coolidge saw the economy’s surging
prosperity as a confirmation of his support of big business. In fact, the pros-
perity and technological achievements of the time known as the New Era had
much to do with Coolidge’s victory over the Democrats and Progressives.

S TA B I L I Z I N G T H E E C O N O M Y During the 1920s, the drive for effi-

ciency, which had been a prominent feature of the progressive impulse,
powered the tandem wheels of mass production and consumption and
became a cardinal belief of Republican leaders. Herbert Hoover, who served
as secretary of commerce in the Harding and Coolidge cabinets, was himself
a remarkable success story. Born into an Iowa farm family in 1874, he had
lost both of his parents by age ten. As an orphan he was raised by Quaker
family members in Iowa and Oregon. The shy but industrious “loner”
majored in geology at Stanford University and became a world-renowned
mining engineer and multimillionaire before the age of forty.
President Woodrow Wilson called upon Hoover to head up the Food
Administration during World War I, and he served with Wilson among the
U.S. delegation at the Versailles peace conference. Hoover idolized Wilson and
supported American membership in the League of Nations. A young Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, then serving as assistant secretary of the navy, was dazzled
by Hoover, the man he would later defeat in the presidential election of 1932.
He was “certainly a wonder, and I wish we could make him President of the
United States.” But Hoover later declared himself a Republican who promoted
a progressive conservativism. In a book titled American Individualism (1922),
he prescribed an “ideal of service” that went beyond “rugged individualism” to
promote the greater good. He wanted government officials to encourage
business leaders to forego “cutthroat competition” by engaging in “voluntary
cooperation” through the formation of trade associations that would share
information and promote standardization and efficiency.
As secretary of commerce during the 1920s, Hoover transformed the tri-
fling Commerce Department into the government’s most dynamic agency.
He sought out new markets for business, promoted more efficient design,
production, and distribution, created a Bureau of Aviation, and the next year
established the Federal Radio Commission.
 The New Era • 1075

Hoover’s priority was the burgeoning trade-association movement.

Through trade associations, business leaders competing in a given industry
shared information on every aspect of the industry: sales, purchases, ship-
ments, production, and prices. That information allowed them to operate
more efficiently by more accurately predicting costs, setting prices, and
assessing markets while maintaining a more stable workforce and paying
steadier wages. Sometimes abuses crept in as associations engaged in price-
fixing and other monopolistic practices, but the Supreme Court in 1925 held
the practice of sharing information as such to be within the law.

T H E B U S I N E S S O F FA R M I N G During the 1920s, agriculture remained

the weakest sector in the economy. Briefly after the war, farmers’ hopes
soared on wings of prosperity. The wartime boom fed by sales abroad lasted
into 1920, and then commodity prices collapsed as European agricultural
production returned to prewar levels. Overproduction brought lower prices
for crops. Wheat prices went in eighteen months from $2.50 a bushel to less
than $1; cotton from 35¢ per pound to 13¢. Low crop prices persisted into
1923, especially in the wheat and corn belts, and after that improvement was
spotty. A bumper cotton crop in 1926 resulted only in a price collapse and an
early taste of depression in much of the South, where foreclosures and bank-
ruptcies spread.
Yet the most successful farms, like the most successful corporations, were
getting larger, more efficient, and more mechanized. By 1930, about 13 per-
cent of all farmers had tractors, and the proportion was even higher on the
western plains. Better plows, harvesters, combines, and other machines were
part of the mechanization process that accompanied improved crop yields,
fertilizers, and methods of animal breeding.
Most farmers in the 1920s were simply struggling to survive. And like their
predecessors, they sought political help for their plight. In 1924, Senator
Charles L. McNary of Oregon and Representative Gilbert N. Haugen of Iowa
introduced the first McNary-Haugen bill, which sought to secure “equality for
agriculture in the benefits of the protective tariff.” The proposed bill called for
surplus American crops to be sold on the world market in order to raise prices
in the home market. The goal was to achieve “parity”—that is, to raise domes-
tic farm prices to a point where they would have the same purchasing power
relative to other prices that they had enjoyed between 1909 and 1914, a time
viewed in retrospect as a golden age of American agriculture.
The McNary-Haugen bill passed both houses of Congress in 1927, only to
be vetoed by President Coolidge, who dismissed the bill as unsound. The
1076 • REPUBLICAN RESURGENCE AND DECLINE (CH. 26)

Farming technology
Mechanization became increasingly important in early twentieth-century agricul-
ture. Here, a silo leader, or grain pump, stands at the center of this Wisconsin farm.

process was repeated in 1928, when Coolidge criticized the measure’s price-
fixing as un-American and unconstitutional to boot. In a broader sense, how-
ever, McNary-Haugenism did not fail. The debates over the bill made the
“farm problem” a national policy issue and defined it as a problem of finding
foreign markets for crop surpluses. Moreover, the evolution of the McNary-
Haugen plan revived the idea of a political alliance between the rural South
and the West, a coalition that in the next decade became a dominant influ-
ence on national farm policy.

S E T BAC K S F O R U N I O N S Urban workers more than farmers shared

in the affluence of the 1920s. “A workman is far better paid in America than
anywhere else in the world,” a French visitor wrote in 1927, “and his stan-
dard of living is enormously higher.” Nonfarm workers gained about 20 per-
cent in real wages between 1921 and 1928 while farm income rose only
10 percent.
Organized labor, however, did no better than organized agriculture in the
1920s. Although President Harding had endorsed collective bargaining and
tried to reduce the twelve-hour workday and the six-day workweek so that
the working class “may have time for leisure and family life,” he ran into stiff
opposition in Congress. Overall, unions suffered a setback after the growth
 The New Era • 1077

years during the war. The Red Scare and strikes of 1919 created concerns that
unions practiced subversion, an idea that the enemies of unions promoted.
The brief postwar depression of 1921 further weakened the unions, and they
felt the severe impact of open-shop associations designed to prevent unions
that proliferated across the country after the war, led by chambers of com-
merce and other business groups. In 1921, business groups in Chicago desig-
nated the open shop the “American plan” of employment. Although the
open shop in theory implied only an employer’s right to hire anyone, in
practice it meant discrimination against unionists and a refusal to recognize
unions even in shops where most of the workers belonged to one.
To suppress unions, employers often required “yellow-dog” contracts,
which forced workers to agree to stay out of a union. Owners also used labor
spies, blacklists, intimidation, and coercion. Some employers tried to kill the
unions with kindness. They introduced programs of “industrial democracy”
guided by company unions or various schemes of “welfare capitalism,” such

The Gastonia strike

These female textile workers pit their strength against that of a National Guardsman
during a strike at the Loray Mill in Gastonia, North Carolina, in 1929.
1078 • REPUBLICAN RESURGENCE AND DECLINE (CH. 26)

as profit sharing, bonuses, pensions, health programs, recreational activities,

and the like. The benefits of such programs were often considerable.
Prosperity, propaganda, and active hostility combined to cause union
membership to drop from about 5 million in 1920 to 3.5 million in 1929.
Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federa-
tion of Labor (AFL), died in 1924; William Green of the United Mine Work-
ers (UMW), who took his place, embodied the conservative, even timid,
attitude of unions during the period. The outstanding exception to the anti-
union policies of the decade was the passage of the Railway Labor Act in
1926, which abolished the federal Railway Labor Board and substituted a
new Board of Mediation. The act also provided for the formation of railroad
unions “without interference, influence, or coercion,” a statement of policy
not extended to other workers until the 1930s.

P R E S I D E N T H O OV E R , THE ENGINEER

H O OV E R V E R S U S S M I T H On August 2, 1927, while on vacation in

the Black Hills of South Dakota, President Coolidge suddenly announced
that he would not “run for President in 1928.” His retirement message sur-
prised the nation and cleared the way for Herbert Hoover to win the Repub-
lican nomination in 1928. The Republican platform took credit for the
nation’s rampant prosperity, cost cutting, debt and tax reduction, and the
protective tariff (“as vital to American agriculture as it is to manufactur-
ing”). It rejected the McNary-Haugen farm program but promised to create
a federal farm board to manage crop surpluses more efficiently.
The Democratic nomination went to four-term New York Governor Alfred
E. Smith. The party’s farm plank pledged “economic equality of agriculture
with other industries.” Like the Republicans, the Democrats promised to
enforce the Volstead Act (1919), which had defined as “intoxicating” any drink
having has much as 0.5 percent alcohol, even though Al Smith was himself a
vocal opponent of Prohibition.
The two candidates’ sharply different images obscured the essential simi-
larities of their programs. Hoover was a child of a rural Quaker family, the
successful engineer and businessman, the architect of Republican prosperity,
while Smith was the prototype of those things that rural and small-town
America distrusted: the son of Irish immigrants, Roman Catholic, and anti-
Prohibition (in direct opposition to his party’s platform). Outside the large
cities those attributes were handicaps that Smith could scarcely surmount,
for all his affability and wit. Militant Protestants launched a furious assault
 President Hoover, the Engineer • 1079

Campaign sheet music

The sheet music for the Democratic nominee, Alfred E. Smith (left) and the Republi-
can nominee, Herbert Hoover (right) drew on popular tunes and motifs of the time.

on him, especially in the Democratic-controlled South. The Ku Klux Klan,

for example, mailed thousands of postcards proclaiming that the Catholic
New Yorker was the Antichrist.
In the election of 1928, more people voted than ever before. Hoover won
in the third consecutive Republican landslide, with 21 million popular votes
to Smith’s 15 million and an even more top-heavy electoral-vote majority of
444 to 87. Hoover even cracked the Democrats’ Solid South, leaving Smith
only six Deep South states plus Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The elec-
tion was above all a vindication of Republican prosperity, although Calvin
Coolidge was skeptical that his successor could sustain the good times. He
derisively called Hoover the Wonder Boy, and had quipped in 1928 that the
new president had “offered me unsolicited advice for six years, all of it bad.”
The shattering defeat of the Democrats concealed a major political realign-
ment in the making. Al Smith had nearly doubled the vote for John W. Davis,
the Democratic candidate of four years before. Smith’s urban image, though a
handicap in the hinterlands, swung big cities back into the Democratic column.
In the farm states of the West, there were signs that some disgruntled farmers
had switched over to the Democrats. A coalition of urban workers and unhappy
farmers was in the making, that would later rally behind Franklin D. Roosevelt.
1080 • REPUBLICAN RESURGENCE AND DECLINE (CH. 26)

H O OV E R I N C O N T RO L At the
end of 1928, President-elect Herbert
Hoover sought to demonstrate his
activist bent by touring ten Latin
American nations. Once in office a
few weeks later, he reversed Woodrow
Wilson’s policy of refusing to recog-
nize “bad” regimes in the Western
Hemisphere and reverted to the older
policy of recognizing governments
in power regardless of their actions. In
1930, he generated more goodwill in
Latin America by permitting publica-
tion of a memorandum drawn up
in 1928 by Undersecretary of State
Herbert Hoover
J. Reuben Clark. The Clark Memoran-
“I have no fears for the future of our
dum denied that the Monroe Doctrine
country,” Hoover told the nation at his
inauguration in 1929. justified U.S. military intervention in
Latin America. Although Hoover never
endorsed the memorandum, he never
intervened in the region. Before he left office, steps had been taken to with-
draw American forces from Nicaragua and Haiti.
The milestone year 1929 dawned with high hopes. The economy seemed
sound, per capita income was rising, and the chief architect of Republican
prosperity was about to enter the White House. “I have no fears for the
future of our country,” Hoover told the audience at his inauguration. “It is
bright with hope.” No nation, he declared, was more secure in its accom-
plishments. Although four years later, Hoover would be savaged for such
rosy pronouncements, at the time his upbeat pronouncements seemed justi-
fied. In 1929, more Americans were working than ever before, and they were
earning record levels of income.
Hoover’s programs to stabilize business growth carried over into his plans
for agriculture, the weakest sector of the economy. To treat the malady of
glutted commodities markets, he called Congress into special session and
convinced the legislators to approve the Agricultural Marketing Act of
1929. It created a Federal Farm Board to help support voluntary farm
“cooperatives”—an old idea first promoted by the Populists whereby farm-
ers joined together to reduce their expenses and also moderate the some-
times dramatic fluctuations in commodity prices. Alas, before the new
 President Hoover, the Engineer • 1081

programs had a chance to prove themselves, the farm sector was devastated
by the onset of the Great Depression.
Farmers gained even less from another prolonged Congressional debate
over raising tariffs on imports. What Hoover won after fourteen months of
struggle with lobbyists in Congress was in fact a disastrous hike in tariff duties
on imported manufactured items as well as farm goods. The Tariff of 1930,
authored by two leading Republican “protectionists,” Willis C. Hawley and
Reed Owen Smoot, was intended to help the farm sector by reducing imports
of farm products into the United States. But lobbyists in Washington, D.C.,
convinced Congress to raise duties on hundreds of imported items to an all-
time high. The result was a global disaster. Some 1,028 economists petitioned
Hoover to veto the short-sighted bill because its logic was flawed: by trying to
“protect” American farmers from foreign competition, the bill would actually
raise prices on most raw materials and consumer products. The new Hawley-
Smoot Tariff created an economic fiasco. It prompted other countries to
retaliate, often by shipping their goods away from the United States and by
putting tariffs on American goods coming into their ports, thereby making
it more difficult for American farms and businesses to ship their products
abroad. As a result, U.S. exports plummeted after the passage of the infamous
Hawley-Smoot Tariff.

THE ECONOMY OUT OF CONTROL The new tariff did nothing to

check a deepening economic crisis. After the postwar slump of 1921, the
naïve idea grew that the economy had entered a new era of perpetual growth.
Greed then propelled a growing contagion of get-rich-quick schemes. Such
speculative mania fueled the Florida real estate boom. Thousands of people
invested in Florida real estate, usually at long distance, eager for quick profits
in the nation’s fastest-growing state. In mid-1926, however, the Florida real
estate bubble burst.
For the losers it was a sobering lesson, but it proved to be but an audition
for the great bull market in stocks. Until 1927 stock values had gone up with
corporate profits, but then they began to soar on wings of pure speculation.
Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon’s tax reductions had given affluent
people more money to spend, much of which found its way to the stock mar-
ket. Instead of speculating in real estate, one could buy stock “on margin”—
that is, make a small down payment (the “margin”) and borrow the rest from
a broker, who held the stock as security in case the stock price plummeted. If
the stock declined, and the buyer failed to meet a “margin call” for more
1082 • REPUBLICAN RESURGENCE AND DECLINE (CH. 26)

funds, the broker could sell the stock to cover his loan. Brokers’ loans to stock
purchasers more than doubled from 1927 to 1929.
Stock market investors ignored warning signs. By 1927, residential construc-
tion and automobile sales were slowing and the rate of consumer spending had
also slowed. By mid-1929, production, employment, and other measures of
economic activity were declining. Still, the stock market rose. By 1929, the
stock market had become a fantasy world, driven more by hope and greed
than by actual business performance. The few financiers and brokers who
counseled caution were ignored. President Hoover also voiced concern about
the “orgy of mad speculation,” and he tried to discourage the irrational faith
in the stock markets, but to no avail. On October 22, a leading bank president
assured reporters that there was “nothing fundamentally wrong with the
stock market or with the underlying business and credit structure.”

T H E C R A S H A N D I T S C AU S E S The next day, stock values tumbled

and triggered a wild scramble by panicking people to unload stocks. On Tues-
day, October 29, the most devastating single day in the stock market’s history to
that point, widespread panic had set in. By the end of the month, stocks on the
New York Stock Exchange had fallen in value by an average of 37 percent. Busi-
ness and government leaders initially expressed confidence that the markets
would rebound. According to President Hoover, “the fundamental business of
the country” was sound. But the hysteria continued. The New York Times stock
average, which stood at 452 in September 1929, bottomed at 52 in July 1932.
The collapse of the stock market revealed that the much-trumpeted economic
prosperity of the 1920s had been built on weak foundations. By 1932, the
nation’s economy had experienced a broad collapse that brought prolonged,
record levels of unemployment and widespread human suffering. From 1929 to
1933, U.S. economic output (called gross domestic product or GDP) dropped
almost 27 percent. The unemployment rate by 1932 was 23 percent.
The stock market crash did not cause the Great Depression, but it did shake
public confidence in the nation’s financial system, and it revealed major struc-
tural flaws in the economy and in government policies. Too many businesses
had maintained high retail prices and taken large profits while holding down
wage increases. As a result, about a third of personal income went to only the top
5 percent of the population. By plowing most profits back into expansion rather
than wage increases, the business sector brought on a growing imbalance
between rising industrial productivity and declining consumer purchasing
power. As consumer spending declined because wage increases were not keeping
up with price increases, the rate of investment in new factories and businesses
 President Hoover, the Engineer • 1083

Stock market crash

Apprehensive crowds gather on the steps of the Subtreasury Building, opposite the
New York Stock Exchange, as news of a stock collapse spreads on October 29, 1929.

also plummeted. For a time the erosion of consumer purchasing power had
been concealed by an increase in installment buying, and the volume of foreign
loans and investments, which supported foreign demand for American goods,
had concealed the deflationary effects of the high tariffs. But the flow of Ameri-
can capital abroad began to dry up when the stock market began to look more
attractive. Swollen corporate profits, together with Treasury Secretary Mellon’s
business-friendly tax policies, enticed the rich into more frenzied stock market
speculation. When trouble came, the bloated corporate structure collapsed.
Government policies also contributed to the financial debacle. Mellon’s
tax reductions led to oversaving by the general public, which helped dimin-
ish the demand for consumer goods. Hostility toward labor unions impeded
efforts to ensure that wage levels kept pace with corporate profits. High tar-
iffs discouraged foreign trade. Lax enforcement of anti-trust laws also
encouraged high retail prices.
Another culprit was the gold standard, whereby nations pegged the value of
their paper currency to the size of their gold reserves so as to avoid hyperinfla-
tion. Gold had long been thought to be the foundation of a sound money supply.
When gold drained out of a nation, the amount of paper money shrunk; when
1084 • REPUBLICAN RESURGENCE AND DECLINE (CH. 26)

a nation accumulated gold, the money supply expanded. When economic out-
put, prices, and savings began dropping in 1929, policy makers—certain that
they had to keep their currencies tied to the gold supply at all costs—tightened
access to money at the very moment that economies needed an expand-
ing money supply to keep growing. The only way to restore economic stabil-
ity within the constraints of the gold standard was to let prices and wages
continue to fall, allowing the downturn, in Mellon’s words, to “purge the
rottenness out of the system.” Instead, the lack of innovative engagement
among government and financial leaders turned a recession into the world’s
worst depression as nations followed Mellon’s contractionist philosophy.
From 1929 to 1933, 40 percent of American banks disappeared, taking with
them the savings accounts of millions of people. Unlike today, nothing was
done by the Federal Reserve system to shore up the banking sector. As a
result, defaults and bankruptcies fed deflation. The nation’s money supply
shrank by a third, which in turn drove prices and production down. By 1936,
the horrible effects of such a deflationary spiral would lead more than two
dozen nations, including the United States, to abandon the gold standard,
thereby enabling the expansion of the money supply which in turn led to
economic growth.

THE HUMAN TOLL OF THE DEPRESSION The devastating col-

lapse of the economy caused immense social hardships. By 1933, 13 million
people were out of work. Millions more who kept their jobs saw their hours
and wages reduced. The contraction of the economy squeezed debtors, espe-
cially farmers and laborers who had made installment purchases or mort-
gages. By 1933, a thousand Americans per day were losing their homes to
foreclosure. The home construction industry went dormant. Factories shut
down, banks closed, farms went bankrupt, and millions of people found
themselves not only jobless but also homeless and penniless. Hungry people
lined up at soup kitchens; others rummaged through trash cans behind
restaurants. Many slept on park benches or in alleys. Others congregated in
makeshift shelters in vacant lots. Thousands of desperate men in search of
jobs rode the rails. These hobos, or tramps, as they were derisively called,
sneaked onto empty railway cars and rode from town to town, looking for
work. During the winter, homeless people wrapped themselves in newspa-
pers to keep warm, sarcastically referring to their coverings as Hoover blan-
kets. Some died from exposure. Others grew so weary of their grim fate that
they ended their lives. The suicide rate soared during the 1930s. Americans
had never before, and have never since, experienced social distress on such
a scale.
 President Hoover, the Engineer • 1085

H O O V E R ’ S E F F O R T S AT R E C O V E R Y Although the policies of gov-

ernment officials helped to bring on the economic collapse, few politicians
even acknowledged that there was an unprecedented crisis: all that was
needed, they claimed, was a slight correction of the market. Those who held
to the dogma of limited government thought the economy would cure itself.
Nothing should be done; the depression should be allowed to run its course
until the economy had purged itself of its excesses. The best policy, Treasury
Secretary Mellon advised, would be to “liquidate labor, liquidate stocks,
liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate.” Initially, this “liquidationist” phi-
losophy prevailed in government. Wages, stock prices, and property values
were allowed to keep falling on the assumption that eventually they would
reach a point where people would start buying again. But it did not work.
Falling wages and land values made it harder for farmers, businesses, and
households to pay their debts. As people defaulted on loans and mortgages
and more people lost jobs, wages and property values kept dropping, wors-
ening the slump. With so many people losing jobs and income, consumers
and businesses simply could not buy enough goods and services to get the
economy growing again.
President Hoover was less willing than Mellon to sit by and let events take
their course. He in fact did more than any president had ever done before in
such dire economic circumstances. Still, his own political philosophy, now
hardened into dogma, set firm limits on government action, and he was
unwilling to set that philosophy aside even to meet an unprecedented national
emergency. “You know,” Hoover told a journalist, “the only trouble with cap-
italism is capitalists; they’re too damn greedy.”
As the economy floundered, Hoover believed that the nation’s fundamen-
tal business structure was sound and that the people simply needed their
confidence restored. So he invited business, financial, and labor leaders to
the White House and urged them to keep their mills and shops open, main-
tain wage rates, and spread out the work to avoid layoffs—in short, to let the
first shock of depression fall on corporate profits rather than on wage earn-
ers. In return, union leaders, who had little choice, agreed to refrain from
demanding higher wages and going on strike. In speech after speech, Hoover
exhorted people to keep up hope and reassured business leaders that the
economy would rebound. To help steady the nation’s nerves, the president
intentionally described the economic downturn not as a “panic,” or as a “crisis,”
but as a “depression,” thinking that it was a less inflammatory word. By 1931
Hoover was calling the economic calamity “a great depression,” an unfortu-
nate choice of words that would come back to haunt him. In early May 1930,
he told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that he was “convinced we have
1086 • REPUBLICAN RESURGENCE AND DECLINE (CH. 26)

passed the worst and with continued effort we shall rapidly recover.” As it
happened, however, uplifting words were not enough.
So Hoover did more than enlist the support of the business community
and reassure the public. He accelerated the start of government construction
projects in order to provide jobs, but cutbacks by state and local governments
in their projects more than offset the new federal spending. At Hoover’s
demand, the Federal Reserve Board returned to an easier monetary policy,
and Congress passed a modest tax reduction to put more cash into people’s
pockets. The Federal Farm Board stepped up its loans and its purchases of
farm surpluses, only to face bumper crops in 1930 despite droughts in the
Midwest and Southwest.
Hoover’s efforts to address the burgeoning economic crisis were not
enough, however. Because he never understood or acknowledged the serious-
ness of the economic problems, he and his administration never did enough
to stop the Depression from worsening. Vice President Charles Curtis claimed
that “prosperity was “just around the corner.” Hoover shared the assumption
that the nation was simply experiencing a short-term shock, not a prolonged
malaise, so drastic action was not warranted. In June 1930, Hoover told a dele-
gation of bankers that the “depression is over.” But more and more people kept
losing their jobs, and disappointment in the president deepened. By the fall of
1930, more than 25,000 businesses had failed, there were five million people
unemployed, and many city governments were buckling under the strain of
lost revenue and growing human distress. Hoover dismissed the concerns of
“calamity mongers and weeping men.” He balked at giving uplifting speeches,
admitting that he was no Theodore Roosevelt.

GLOBAL CONCERNS

J A PA N I N VA D E S C H I N A At the same time that Herbert Hoover was

wrestling with the onset of an economic depression at home, he was also
confronting a growing crisis in Asia. In 1931–1932, some ten thousand
Japanese troops occupied Manchuria, a vast province in northeast China
blessed with valuable deposits of iron ore and coal. The Japanese renamed
Manchuria “The Republic of Manchukuo” and proclaimed its independence
from China. It was the first major step in the effort to control all of China.
The Japanese takeover of Manchuria challenged the will of the Western
democracies to enforce world peace, and they failed the test. Hoover’s secre-
tary of state, Henry L. Stimson, wanted to use the threat of force to deter the
 Global Concerns • 1087

Japan and China

Japan’s seizure of Manchuria in 1931 prompted this American condemnation.

Japanese advance in China but worried that the president “being a Quaker
and an engineer did not understand the psychology of combat. . . . ” In Janu-
ary 1932, Hoover and Stimson announced that the United States would not
recognize any territorial changes in China that violated previous treaties. In
revealing that the United States was unwilling to use even the threat of force
to stop Japanese aggression, the so-called Hoover-Stimson Doctrine fore-
shadowed the timid nature of American diplomacy during the 1930s and
revealed the hollowness of the Kellogg-Briand Treaty outlawing war. But
Hoover’s stance also reflected American public opinion. “The American
people don’t give a hoot in a rain barrel who controls North China,” said a
Philadelphia newspaper. When the League of Nations condemned Japanese
aggression in China, Japan simply withdrew from the League in 1933. An
uneasy peace settled upon east Asia for four years, during which time aggres-
sive Japanese military leaders increased their political sway in Tokyo.
1088 • REPUBLICAN RESURGENCE AND DECLINE (CH. 26)

STRESSES AND STRAINS One reason that Americans were so indif-

ferent about Japanese aggression in China is that the problems at home were
so severe—and getting worse. As always, a depressed economy hurt the party
in power, and the Democrats shrewdly exploited Hoover’s predicament. The
squalid shantytowns that sprouted across the country to house the destitute
and homeless became known as Hoovervilles; a Hoover flag was an empty
pocket turned inside out. In November 1930 the Democrats gained their
first national victory since 1916, winning a majority in the House and a near
majority in the Senate. Hoover refused to see the elections as a warning sig-
nal. Instead he grew more resistant to calls for dramatic measures.
In the first half of 1931, economic indicators rose, renewing hope for an
upswing. Then, as recovery beckoned, another shock occurred. In May 1931,
the failure of Austria’s largest bank triggered a financial panic in central
Europe. To ease concerns, President Hoover negotiated in June a one-year
moratorium on both payments of war reparations and war debts by the

Impact of the Depression

Two children set up shop in a Hooverville in Washington, D.C.
 Global Concerns • 1089

European nations. Hoover’s moratorium was perhaps the most decisive,

popular initiative of his presidency, but it did little to stop the collapsing
world economy. The global shortage of monetary exchange drove Europeans
to withdraw their gold from American banks and dump their American
securities (stocks and bonds). One European country after another aban-
doned the gold standard and devalued its currency. Even the Bank of Eng-
land went off the gold standard.
At the end of 1932, after Hoover’s debt moratorium ended, most European
countries defaulted on their war debts to the United States. In retaliation,
Congress passed the Johnson Debt Default Act of 1934, which prohibited
even private loans to any government that had defaulted on its debts to the
United States. Foreign withdrawals of money from U.S. banks helped spread
a sense of panic. Using conventional wisdom, the Federal Reserve system
sought to protect the value of the nation’s gold reserves by raising interest
rates. But what the American banks needed most was not tighter access to
money but easier money to ease the liquidity crisis: banks desperately
needed cash to meet the demands of panicky depositors who wanted to cash
in their checking and savings accounts. By the end of 1931, over six hundred
U.S. banks had gone bankrupt. Almost 25 percent of the workforce—15 mil-
lion people—were unemployed. The resulting societal misery was unprece-
dented. Some jobless, homeless people grew desperate. Men started forest
fires in hopes of being hired to put them out. Others committed petty crimes
in order to be arrested; at least jails provided them with food and shelter.

C O N G R E S S I O N A L I N I T I AT I V E S With a new Congress in session in

1932, demands for federal action impelled Hoover to stretch his individualis-
tic philosophy to its limits. He was now ready to use government resources to
shore up the financial institutions of the country. That year, the new Congress
set up the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) with $500 million
(and authority to borrow $2 billion more) for emergency loans to struggling
banks, life-insurance companies, and railroads. Under Charles G. Dawes,
Calvin Coolidge’s vice president, the RFC had authorized $1.2 billion in loans
within six months. It staved off several bankruptcies, but Hoover’s critics
called it favoritism to big businesses, the most damaging instance of which
was a $90 million loan to Dawes’s own Chicago bank, made soon after he left
the RFC in 1932. The RFC nonetheless remained a key federal agency through
the mid-1940s.
Further help to the financial structure came with the Glass-Steagall Act of
1932, which broadened the definition of commercial loans that the Federal
1090 • REPUBLICAN RESURGENCE AND DECLINE (CH. 26)

Reserve would support. The new arrangement also released about $750 mil-
lion in gold formerly used to back Federal Reserve notes, countering the
effect of foreign withdrawals and domestic hoarding of gold at the same
time that it enlarged the supply of credit. For homeowners, the Federal
Home Loan Bank Act of 1932 created with Hoover’s blessing a series of
discount banks for home mortgages. They provided to savings-and-loan
and other mortgage agencies a service much like the one that the Federal
Reserve system provided to commercial banks.
Hoover’s critics said all these “unprecedented” measures reflected a dubious
“trickle-down” theory. If government could help huge banks and railroads,
asked New York Democratic senator Robert F. Wagner, “is there any reason
why we should not likewise extend a helping hand to that forlorn American, in
every village and every city of the United States, who has been without wages
since 1929?” The contraction of the nation’s money supply devastated debtors
such as farmers and those who made purchases on the installment plan or
held balloon-style mortgages, whose monthly payments increased over time.
By 1932, members of Congress, mostly Democrats, were filling the hop-
pers with bills for federal measures to provide relief to the people hit hardest
by the economic collapse. At that point, Hoover might have pleaded “dire
necessity” and taken the leadership of the relief movement and salvaged his
political fortunes. Instead, he held back and only grudgingly edged toward
addressing the widespread human distress. On July 21, 1932, he signed the
Emergency Relief Act, which avoided a direct federal dole (cash payment) to
individuals but gave the RFC $300 million for relief loans to the states,
authorized loans of up to $1.5 billion for state and local public construction
projects, and appropriated $322 million for federal public works.

FA R M E R S A N D V E T E R A N S I N P R O T E S T Government expendi-
tures to provide relief for farmers had long since dried up. In mid-1931 the
federal government quit buying crop surpluses and helplessly watched
prices for commodities slide. Faced with the loss of everything, desperate
farmers defied the law. Angry mobs stopped foreclosures and threatened to
lynch the judges sanctioning them. In Nebraska, farmers burned corn to
keep warm. Iowans formed the militant Farmers’ Holiday Association,
which called a farmers’ strike.
The economic crisis spawned desperate talk of revolution. “Folks are rest-
less,” Mississippi governor Theodore Bilbo told reporters in 1931. “Commu-
nism is gaining a foothold. . . . In fact, I’m getting a little pink myself.” Across
the country the once-obscure Communist party began to draw crowds to its
 Global Concerns • 1091

rallies. Yet for all the sound and fury, few Americans embraced communism
during the 1930s. Party membership in the United States never rose much
above one hundred thousand.
Fears of organized revolt arose when unemployed veterans converged on
the nation’s capital in the spring of 1932. The “Bonus Expeditionary Force”
grew quickly to more than twenty thousand. Their purpose was to get
immediate payment of the cash bonus to nearly 4 million World War I veter-
ans that Congress had approved in 1924. The House passed a bonus bill, but
when the Senate voted it down, most of the veterans went home. The rest,
along with their wives and children, having no place to go, camped in vacant
federal buildings and in a shantytown at Anacostia Flats, within sight of
the Capitol.
Eager to disperse the homeless veterans, Hoover persuaded Congress to
pay for their tickets home. More left, but others stayed even after Congress
adjourned, hoping at least to meet with the president. Late in July, the
administration ordered the government buildings cleared. In the ensuing
melee, a policeman panicked, fired into the crowd, and killed two veterans.
The secretary of war then dispatched about seven hundred soldiers under
overeager General Douglas MacArthur, who was aided by junior officers
Dwight D. Eisenhower and George S. Patton. MacArthur, who dismissed the
veterans as “communists,” ordered his soldiers to use horses, tanks, tear gas,
and bayonets to rout the unarmed veterans and their families and burn their
makeshift camp. Dozens of protesters were injured in the melee, and an
eleven-week-old boy born at Anacostia died from exposure to tear gas.
Eisenhower, who had opposed the use of force, said it was “a pitiful scene.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt, then serving as governor of New York, concluded
after learning of the army’s action that General MacArthur was one of the
most dangerous men in America.
In response to outrage across the nation, MacArthur hysterically claimed
that the “mob” of military veterans and their families was about to seize con-
trol of the government. The administration insisted that the Bonus Army con-
sisted mainly of communists and criminals, but neither a grand jury nor the
Veterans Administration could find evidence to support the charge. One
observer wrote that the unemployed war veterans revealed “an atmosphere of
hopelessness, of utter despair, though not of desperation. . . . They have no
enthusiasm whatever and no stomach for fighting.”
Their disheartened mood, and the mood of the country, echoed that of
the beleaguered Hoover himself. He worked hard, seven days a week, but
the stress had sapped his health and morale. “I am so tired,” he said, “that
1092 • REPUBLICAN RESURGENCE AND DECLINE (CH. 26)

Anger and frustration

Unemployed military veterans, members of the Bonus Expeditionary Force, clash
with Washington, D.C., police at Anacostia Flats in July 1932.

every bone in my body aches.” Presidential news conferences became more

strained and less frequent. While traveling with a group of Cabinet officers,
Hoover asked the secretary of the Treasury for a nickel to phone a friend;
the secretary said, “Here are two nickels—call them both.” When aides urged
Hoover to seize the reins of leadership, he said “I have no Wilsonian quali-
ties.” The president’s deepening sense of futility became increasingly evi-
dent to the country. In a mood more despairing than rebellious, Americans
in 1932 eagerly anticipated what the next presidential campaign would
produce.

F RO M H O OV E R I S M TO THE NEW DEAL

THE ELECTION OF 1932 On June 14, 1932, while the ragtag Bonus
Army was still encamped in Washington, D.C., glum Republicans gathered
in Chicago to renominate Herbert Hoover. The delegates went through the
motions in a mood of defeat. By contrast, the Democrats converged on
 From Hooverism to the New Deal • 1093

Chicago later in June confident that they would nominate the next president.
The fifty-year-old New York governor Franklin D. Roosevelt was already the
front-runner, with most of the delegates lined up, and he went over the top
on the fourth ballot.
Born in 1882, the adored only child of wealthy parents, educated by
tutors at Hyde Park, his father’s Hudson River estate in New York, young
Roosevelt led a cosmopolitan life. His parents arranged for a private rail-
road car to deliver him to Groton, an elite Massachusetts boarding school.
He later attended Harvard College and Columbia University Law School.
While a law student, he married his distant cousin, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt,
a niece of his fifth cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, then president of the United
States.
In 1910, Franklin Roosevelt won a Democratic seat in the New York State
Senate. As a freshman legislator, he displayed the contradictory qualities that
would characterize his political career: he was an aristocrat with empathy
for common folk, a traditionalist with a penchant for experimentation, an
affable charmer with a buoyant smile and upturned chin who harbored
enormous self-confidence and optimism as well as profound convictions,
and a skilled political tactician with a shrewd sense of timing and a distinc-
tive willingness to listen to and learn from others.
Tall, handsome, and athletic, Roosevelt seemed destined for greatness. In
1912, he backed Woodrow Wilson for president, and for both of Wilson’s
terms he served as assistant secretary of the navy. Then, in 1920, largely on the
strength of his name, he became James Cox’s running mate on the Democra-
tic ticket. The following year, at age thirty-nine, his career was cut short by
the onset of polio that left him permanently disabled, unable to stand or walk
without braces. But the battle for recovery transformed the young aristocrat.
He became less arrogant, less superficial, more focused, and more interest-
ing. A friend recalled that Roosevelt emerged from his struggle with polio
“completely warm-hearted, with a new humility of spirit” that led him to
identify with the poor and the suffering. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes later
summed up his qualities this way: “a second-class intellect—but a first-class
temperament.”
For seven years, aided by his talented wife, Eleanor, Roosevelt strength-
ened his body to compensate for his disability, and in 1928 he won the gov-
ernorship of New York. Reelected by a whopping majority of 700,000 in
1930, Roosevelt became the Democrats’ favorite for president in 1932. In a
bold, unprecedented gesture during the summer of 1932, Roosevelt flew for
nine hours to Chicago to accept the Democratic presidential nomination
instead of awaiting formal notification. He had intentionally broken with
1094 • REPUBLICAN RESURGENCE AND DECLINE (CH. 26)

The “New Deal” candidate

Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Democratic nominee for president in
1932, campaigning in Topeka, Kansas. Roosevelt’s confidence inspired voters.

tradition, he told the delegates, because the stakes were so high. “Republican
leaders not only have failed in material things, they have failed in national
vision, because in disaster they have held out no hope. . . . I pledge you,
I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people” that would “break
foolish traditions.” Roosevelt’s acceptance speech was a bundle of contradic-
tions, promising “to cut taxes and balance the budget” as well as to launch
numerous expensive innovations to provide the people with “work and
security.” What his New Deal “crusade” would be in practice Roosevelt had
little idea as yet, but he was much more willing to experiment than Hoover.
What was more, his upbeat personality communicated joy, energy, and
hope. Roosevelt’s campaign song was “Happy Days Are Here Again.”
Partly to dispel doubts about his health, the Democratic nominee set
forth on a grueling campaign tour in 1932. He blamed the Depression on the
Republicans, attacked Hoover for his “extravagant government spending,”
and he repeatedly promised Americans a New Deal. Like Hoover, Roosevelt
pledged to balance the budget, but he was willing to incur short-term deficits
 From Hooverism to the New Deal • 1095

WA
8 NH 4
MT ND ME
4 VT 3 5
OR 4 MN
5 ID 11
4 SD WI MI NY MA 17
WY 4 12 19 47
3 RI 5
IA PA CT 8
NV NE 11
7 OH 36 NJ 16
3 UT IL IN 26 WV
CA 4 CO 29 14 DE 3
22 6 KS MO VA MD 8
8 11
9 15 KY 11
NC
AZ OK TN 11 13
NM AR SC
3 3 11
9
MS AL GA 8
9 11 12
TX
23 LA
10
FL
7

THE ELECTION OF 1932 Electoral Vote Popular Vote

Franklin D. Roosevelt 472 22,800,000
(Democrat)
Herbert Hoover 59 15,800,000
(Republican)

Why did Roosevelt appeal to voters struggling during the Depression? What were
Hoover’s criticisms of Roosevelt’s “New Deal”? What policies defined Roosevelt’s
New Deal during the presidential campaign?

to prevent starvation and revive the economy. On the tariff he was evasive.
On farm policy, he offered several options pleasing to farmers and ambigu-
ous enough not to alarm city dwellers. He called for strict regulation of util-
ities and for at least some government development of electricity, and he
consistently stood by his party’s pledge to repeal the Prohibition amend-
ment. Perhaps most important, he recognized that a revitalized economy
would require national planning and new ideas. “The country needs, and,
unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experi-
mentation,” he said. “Above all, try something.”
What came across to voters, however, was less the content of Roosevelt’s
speeches than his uplifting confidence and his commitment to change. By
1096 • REPUBLICAN RESURGENCE AND DECLINE (CH. 26)

contrast, Hoover lacked vitality and vision. Democrats, Hoover argued,

ignored the international causes of the Depression. They were also taking a
reckless course. Roosevelt’s proposals, he warned, “would destroy the very
foundations of our American system.” Pursue them, he warned, and “grass
will grow in the streets of a hundred cities, a thousand towns.” But few were
listening. Mired in the persistent Depression, the country wanted a new
course, a new leadership, a new deal.
Some disillusioned voters took a dim view of both major candidates.
Those who believed that only a radical departure would suffice supported
the Socialist party candidate, Norman Thomas, who polled 882,000 votes,
and a few preferred the Communist party candidate, who won 103,000. The
wonder is that a desperate people did not turn in greater numbers to radical
candidates. Instead, they swept Roosevelt into office with 23 million votes to
Hoover’s 16 million. Hoover carried only four states in New England, plus
Pennsylvania and Delaware, and lost decisively in the Electoral College by
472 to 59.

T H E 1 9 3 3 I N AU G U R AT I O N For the last time the nation waited four

months, from early November until March 4, for a newly elected president and
Congress to take office. The Twentieth Amendment, ratified on January 23,
1933, provided that presidents would thereafter take office on January 20
and the newly elected Congress on January 3. Just two weeks before his
March inauguration, Roosevelt survived an attempted assassination while
speaking in Miami, Florida. The gunman, an unemployed bricklayer and
Italian-born anarchist, fired five shots at the president-elect. Roosevelt was
not hit, but the mayor of Chicago was killed.
The bleak winter of 1932–1933 witnessed spreading destitution and
misery. Unemployment increased, and panic struck the banking system.
As bank after bank collapsed, people rushed to their own banks to remove
their deposits. Many discovered that they, too, were caught short of cash.
When the Hoover administration ended in early 1933, four fifths of the
nation’s banks were closed, and the country teetered on the brink of eco-
nomic paralysis.
The profound crisis of confidence that greeted Roosevelt when he took the
oath of office on March 4, 1933, soon gave way to a mood of expectancy and
hope. The charismatic new president displayed monumental self-assurance
when he declared “that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless,
unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert
 From Hooverism to the New Deal • 1097

retreat into advance.” If need be, he said, “I shall ask the Congress for . . .
broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency as great as the
power that would be given me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.” It
was a measure of the country’s mood that Roosevelt’s call for unprecedented
presidential power received the loudest applause.
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• “Return to Normalcy” Although progressivism lost its appeal after the Great
War, the Eighteenth Amendment (paving the way for Prohibition) and the Nine-
teenth Amendment (guaranteeing women’s suffrage) marked the culmination of
that movement at the national level. Reformers still actively worked for good
and efficient government at the local level, but overall the drive was for a “return
to normalcy”—conformity and moral righteousness.
• Isolationism America distanced itself from global affairs—a stance reflected in
the Red Scare, laws limiting immigration, and high tariffs. Yet America could not
ignore international events because its business interests were becoming increas-
ingly global. Although the United States never joined the League of Nations, it
sent unofficial observers to Geneva. The widespread belief that arms limitations
would reduce the chance of future wars led America to participate in the Wash-
ington Naval Conference of 1921 and the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928.
• Era of Conservatism Many Americans, particularly people in rural areas and
members of the middle class, wanted a return to a quieter, more conservative
way of life after World War I, and Warren G. Harding’s landslide Republican vic-
tory allowed just that. The policies of Harding’s pro-business cabinet were remi-
niscent of those of the McKinley White House more than two decades earlier.
Union membership declined in the 1920s as workers’ rights were rolled back by
a conservative Supreme Court and in response to fears of Communist subver-
sion. Workers, however, shared in the affluence of the 1920s, thereby contribut-
ing to the rise of a mass culture.
• Growth of Economy The budget was balanced through reductions in spending
and taxes, while tariffs were raised to protect domestic industries, setting the
tone for a prosperous decade. Harding’s successor, Calvin Coolidge, actively pro-
moted the interests of big business. The public responded enthusiastically to the
mass marketing of new consumer goods such as radios and affordable automo-
biles. Agricultural production, however, lagged after the wartime boom evapo-
rated.
• The Great Depression The stock market crash revealed the structural flaws in
the economy, but it did not cause the Great Depression. Government policies
throughout the twenties—high tariffs, lax enforcement of anti-trust laws,
an absence of checks on speculation in real estate and the stock market, and
adherence to the gold standard—contributed to the onset of the Depression.
Hoover’s attempts to remedy the problems were too few and too late. Banks
failed, businesses closed, homes and jobs were lost.
 CHRONOLOGY

1921

1922
Representatives of the United States, Great Britain, France,
Italy, and Japan attend the Washington Naval Conference
United States begins sending observers to the League of
Nations
Benito Mussolini comes to power in Italy
1923 President Warren G. Harding dies in office
1928 Herbert Hoover is elected president
More than sixty nations sign the Kellogg-Briand Pact pledg-
ing not to go to war with one another, except in matters of
self-defense
October 29, 1929 Stock market crashes
1930 Congress passes the Hawley-Smoot Tariff
1932 Congress sets up the Reconstruction Finance Corporation
1932 Congress passes the Glass-Steagall Act
1933 Bonus Expeditionary Force converges on Washington to
demand payment of bonuses promised to war veterans

KEY TERMS & NAMES

Warren G. Harding p. 1061 Herbert Hoover p. 1074 Reconstruction Finance
Corporation (RFC)
“return to normalcy” p. 1061 McNary-Haugen bill p. 1089
p. 1075
Andrew W. Mellon p. 1062 Bonus Expeditionary
Alfred E. Smith p. 1078 Force p. 1091
Ohio gang p. 1069
Great Depression p. 1081
Teapot Dome p. 1070
buying (stock) on
Calvin “Silent Cal” Coolidge margin p. 1081
p. 1072

27
NEW DEAL AMERICA

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• What were the immediate challenges facing Franklin Delano

Roosevelt in March 1933?
• What were the lasting effects of the New Deal legislation?
• Why did the New Deal draw criticism from conservatives and
liberals?
• How did the New Deal expand the federal government’s authority?
• What were the major cultural changes of the 1930s?

F ranklin Delano Roosevelt was elected in 1932 to lead an

anxious nation mired in the third year of an unprecedented
depression. No other business slump had been so deep, so
long, or so painful. One out of every four Americans in 1932 was unem-
ployed; in many large cities, nearly half of the adults were out of work. Some
five hundred thousand people had lost homes or farms because they could
not pay their mortgages. Thousands of banks had failed; millions of deposi-
tors had lost their life savings. The suffering was global. The worldwide
depression helped accelerate the rise of fascism and communism; totalitari-
anism was on the march in Europe and Asia. “The situation is critical,” the
prominent political analyst Walter Lippmann warned President-elect Roo-
sevelt. “You may have to assume dictatorial powers.” Roosevelt did not
become a dictator, but he did take decisive action that transformed the scope
and role of the federal government. He and a supportive Congress immedi-
ately adopted bold measures intended to relieve the human suffering and
promote economic recovery. Although the New Deal initiatives produced
 New Deal America • 1101

mixed results, they halted the economic downturn and provided the founda-
tion for a system of federal social welfare programs.

COMPETING PROPOSALS In 1933, the relentlessly optimistic Presi-

dent Roosevelt confronted three major challenges: reviving the economy,
relieving the widespread human misery, and rescuing the farm sector and its
desperate families. To address these daunting challenges, Roosevelt assembled
a “brain trust” of talented advisers who feverishly set to work developing
ideas to address the nation’s compelling problems. More than any previous
president, Roosevelt made effective use of his advisers, constantly learning
from them as well as refereeing their disputes with one another. The diverse
group of professors, planners, policy makers, and administrators making up
the brain trust were brilliant and opinionated: they offered conflicting opin-
ions about how best to rescue the economy from depression. Some promoted
vigorous enforcement of the anti-trust laws as a means of restoring business
competition; others argued for the opposite, saying that anti-trust laws should
be suspended so as to enable the largest corporations to collaborate with the
federal government and thereby better manage the overall economy. Still
others called for a massive expansion of social welfare programs and a pro-
longed infusion of increased government spending to address the profound
human crisis and revive the economy.
Roosevelt was willing to try some elements of each approach without ever
embracing any one of them completely. In part, his flexible outlook reflected a
stern political reality: seasoned conservative southern Democrats controlled
the Congress, and the new president could not risk alienating these powerful
proponents of balanced budgets and limited government. Roosevelt’s incon-
sistencies also reflected his own outlook. He did not have a comprehensive
philosophy of government. When asked what his philosophy was, he replied, “I
am a Christian and a Democrat—that’s all.” Roosevelt was a pragmatist rather
than an ideologue, a tinkerer more than a dogmatist. As he once explained,
“Take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another.” Roo-
sevelt’s elastic New Deal would therefore take the form of a series of trial-and-
error actions, some of which were well-intentioned failures.
Roosevelt and his advisers initially settled on a three-pronged strategy to
revive the economy. First, they sought to remedy the immediate banking cri-
sis and to provide short-term emergency relief for the jobless. Second, the
New Dealers tried to promote industrial recovery by increasing federal
spending and by facilitating cooperative agreements between management
and organized labor. Third, they attempted to raise depressed commodity
prices by paying farmers to reduce the size of their crops and herds. When
1102 • NEW DEAL AMERICA (CH. 27)

the overall supply of agricultural products was reduced, prices for grain and
meat would rise over time and thereby increase farm income. None of these
initiatives worked perfectly, but their combined effect was to restore hope
and energy to a nation paralyzed by fear and uncertainty.

S T R E N G T H E N I N G T H E M O N E TA R Y S Y S T E M Money is the lubri-

cant of capitalism, and money was fast disappearing from circulation by
1933. Panicky depositors withdrew their savings from banks and hoarded
their currency. By taking money out of circulation, however, people unwit-
tingly exacerbated the Depression. On his second day in office, Roosevelt
called upon Congress to meet in a special session on March 9, and together
they declared a four-day bank holiday to allow the financial panic to subside.
It took Congress only seven hours to pass the Emergency Banking Relief Act,
which permitted sound banks to reopen and appointed managers for those
that remained in trouble. On March 12, in the first of his radio-broadcast
“fireside chats,” the president assured the 60 million Americans listening that
it was safer to “keep your money in a reopened bank than under the mat-
tress.” His reassurances soothed a nervous nation. The following day,
deposits in reopened banks exceeded withdrawals. “Capitalism was saved in
eight days,” said one of Roosevelt’s advisers. The banking crisis had ended,
and the new administration was ready to get on with its broader program of
economic recovery.
Roosevelt next followed through on two campaign pledges. At his behest,
Congress passed an Economy Act, granting the executive branch the power to
cut government workers’ salaries, reduce payments to military veterans for
non-service-connected disabilities, and reorganize federal agencies in the
interest of reducing expenses. Second, Roosevelt ended Prohibition. The
Beer-Wine Revenue Act amended the Volstead Act to permit the sale of bever-
ages with an alcohol content of 3.2 percent or less. The Twenty-first Amend-
ment, already submitted by Congress to the states, would be declared ratified
on December 5, thus ending the “noble experiment” of Prohibition.
The measures of March were but the beginning of an avalanche of New
Deal legislation. From March 9 to June 16, the so-called Hundred Days, a
cooperative Congress endorsed fifteen major pieces of legislation proposed
by the president that collectively transformed the role of the federal govern-
ment in social and economic life. Journalist Walter Lippmann said that
during the Hundred Days the United States “became an organized nation
confident of our power to provide for our own [economic] security and to
control our own destiny.”
 New Deal America • 1103

Several of the programs com-

prising what came to be called
the First New Deal (1933–1935)
addressed the acute debt prob-
lem faced by farmers and home-
owners. During 1933, a thousand
homes or farms were being fore-
closed upon each day. Desperate
farmers across the country used
violence and intimidation to
halt the eviction of their friends
and neighbors. In 1933, farmers
in Le Mars, Iowa, attacked a judge
in his courtroom because he
refused to stop signing farm fore- The galloping snail
closure orders. Scores of angry A vigorous Roosevelt drives Congress to
men surrounded the judge, hit- action in this Detroit News cartoon from
ting and choking him until they March 1933.
slipped a noose around his
neck—though they stopped short of hanging him. Iowa’s governor declared
martial law and sent 250 National Guardsmen to keep the peace.
By executive decree, Roosevelt reorganized all federal farm credit agencies
into the Farm Credit Administration. By the Emergency Farm Mortgage Act
and the Farm Credit Act, Congress authorized the extensive refinancing of
farm mortgages at lower interest rates to stem the tide of foreclosures. The
Home Owners’ Loan Act provided a similar service to city dwellers through
the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, which refinanced mortgage loans at
lower monthly payments for strapped homeowners, again helping to slow the
rate of foreclosures. In 1934, Roosevelt created the Federal Housing Adminis-
tration (FHA), which offered Americans much longer home mortgages (twenty
years) to reduce their monthly payments. The Banking Act further shored up
confidence in the banking system. Its Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
(FDIC) guaranteed personal bank deposits up to $5,000. To prevent speculative
abuses, the Banking Act separated investment and commercial banking corpo-
rations and extended the Federal Reserve Board’s regulatory power. The Federal
Securities Act required the full disclosure of information about new stock and
bond issues, at first by registration with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
and later with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which was cre-
ated to regulate the chaotic stock and bond markets.
1104 • NEW DEAL AMERICA (CH. 27)

RELIEF MEASURES Another urgent priority in 1933 was relieving the

widespread human distress caused by the Great Depression. Herbert Hoover
had stubbornly refused to provide direct assistance to the unemployed and
homeless. Roosevelt was more flexible. For example, he convinced Congress to
create the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to provide jobs to unemployed,
unmarried young men aged eighteen to twenty-five. Nearly 3 million men
were hired to work at a variety of CCC jobs in national forests, parks, and
recreational areas and on soil-conservation projects. CCC workers built
roads, bridges, campgrounds, and fish hatcheries; planted trees; taught
farmers how to control soil erosion; and fought fires. They were paid a nom-
inal sum of $30 a month, of which $25 went home to their families. The
enrollees could also earn high-school diplomas.
The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) addressed the
broader problems of human distress. Harry L. Hopkins, a tough-talking,
big-hearted social worker who had directed then-Governor Roosevelt’s relief

Federal relief programs

Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees in 1933, on a break from work. Directed by
army officers and foresters, the CCC adhered to a semi-military discipline.
 Regulatory Efforts • 1105

efforts in New York State, was appointed director of the FERA. The agency
expanded federal assistance to the unemployed. Federal money flowed to the
states in outright grants rather than “loans.” Hopkins pushed an “immediate
work instead of dole” approach on state and local officials, but they pre-
ferred the dole (direct cash payments to individuals) as a quicker way to
reach the needy.
The first large-scale experiment with federal work relief, which put people
directly on the government payroll at competitive wages, came with the for-
mation of the Civil Works Administration (CWA). Created in November
1933, after the state-sponsored programs funded by the FERA proved inade-
quate, the CWA provided federal jobs to those unable to find work that win-
ter. It was hastily conceived and implemented, but during its four-month
existence the CWA put to work over 4 million people. The agency organized
a variety of useful projects: making highway repairs and laying sewer lines,
constructing or improving more than a thousand airports and forty thou-
sand schools, and providing fifty thousand teaching jobs that helped keep
rural schools open. As the number of people employed by the CWA soared,
however, the program’s costs skyrocketed to over $1 billion. Roosevelt balked
at such expenditures and worried that people would become dependent
upon federal jobs. So in the spring of 1934, he ordered the CWA dissolved.
By April, some 4 million workers were again unemployed.

R E G U L AT O R Y E F F O R T S

In addition to rescuing the banks and providing immediate relief to the

unemployed, Roosevelt and his advisers promoted the long-term recovery
of agriculture and industry during the Hundred Days in the spring of 1933.
The languishing economy needed a boost—a big one. There were 13 million
people without jobs.

A G R I C U LT U R A L A S S I S TA N C E The sharp decline in commodity

prices after 1929 meant that many farmers could not afford to plant or har-
vest their devalued crops. Farm income had plummeted from $6 billion in
1929 to $2 billion in 1932. The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 created a
new federal agency, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), which
sought to raise prices for crops and herds by paying farmers to reduce produc-
tion. The money for such payments came from a tax levied on the processors of
certain basic commodities—cotton gins, for example, and flour mills.
1106 • NEW DEAL AMERICA (CH. 27)

By the time Congress acted, however, the spring growing season was
already under way. The prospect of another bumper cotton crop forced the
AAA to sponsor a plow-under program. To destroy a growing crop was a
“shocking commentary on our civilization,” Agriculture Secretary Henry A.
Wallace lamented. “I could tolerate it only as a cleaning up of the wreckage
from the old days of unbalanced production.” Moreover, given the oversup-
ply of hogs, some 6 million pigs were slaughtered and buried. It could be jus-
tified, Wallace said, only as a means of helping farmers do with pigs what
steelmakers did with pig iron—cut production to raise prices.
For a while these farm measures worked. By the end of 1934, Wallace could
report significant declines in wheat, cotton, and corn production and a simul-
taneous increase in commodity prices. Farm income increased by 58 percent
between 1932 and 1935. The AAA was only partially responsible for the gains,
however. A devastating drought that settled over the plains states between
1932 and 1935 played a major role in reducing production and creating the
epic “dust bowl” migrations so poignantly evoked in John Steinbeck’s famous
novel, The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Many migrant families had actually been
driven off the land by AAA benefit programs that encouraged large farmers to
take land worked by tenants and sharecroppers out of cultivation.
Although it created unexpected problems, the AAA achieved successes in
boosting the overall farm economy. Conservatives castigated its sweeping
powers, however. On January 6, 1936, in United States v. Butler, the Supreme
Court declared the AAA’s tax on food processors unconstitutional because
the Constitution does not delegate to the federal government the power to
control agricultural production. The administration hastily devised a new
plan in the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act, which it pushed
through Congress in six weeks. The new act omitted processing taxes and
acreage quotas but provided benefit payments for soil-conservation practices
that reduced the planting of soil-depleting crops, thus indirectly achieving
crop reduction.
The act was an almost unqualified success as an engineering and educa-
tional project because it helped heal the scars of erosion and the plague of
dust storms. But soil conservation nevertheless failed as a device for limiting
production. With their worst lands taken out of production, farmers culti-
vated their fertile acres more intensively. In response, Congress passed the
Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, which reestablished the earlier pro-
grams but left out the processing taxes. Benefit payments would come from
federal funds. By the time the second AAA was tested in the Supreme Court,
new justices had altered its outlook. This time the law was upheld as a legiti-
mate exercise of federal power to regulate interstate commerce.
 Regulatory Efforts • 1107

R EV I V I N G I N D U S T R I A L G ROW T H The industrial counterpart to

the AAA was the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), the two major
parts of which dealt with economic recovery and public-works projects. The
latter part created the Public Works Administration (PWA), granting $3.3 bil-
lion for new government buildings, highway construction, flood control
projects, and other transportation improvements. Under the direction of
Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes, the PWA indirectly served the purpose of
relief for the unemployed. Ickes focused it on well-planned permanent
improvements, and he used private contractors rather than workers on the
government payroll. PWA workers built Virginia’s Skyline Drive, New York’s
Triborough Bridge, the Overseas Highway from Miami to Key West, and
Chicago’s subway system.
The more controversial part of the NIRA created the National Recovery
Administration (NRA), headed by Hugh S. Johnson, a chain-smoking
retired army general. Its purpose was twofold: (1) to stabilize the economy
by reducing chaotic competition through the implementation of industry-
wide codes that set wages and prices and (2) to generate more purchasing
power for consumers by providing jobs, defining workplace standards, and
raising wages. In each major industry, committees representing manage-
ment, labor, and government drew up the fair practices codes. The labor
standards featured in every code set a forty-hour workweek and minimum
weekly wages of $13 ($12 in the South, where living costs were lower), which
more than doubled earnings in some cases. Announcement of a proviso pro-
hibiting the employment of children under the age of sixteen did “in a few
minutes what neither law nor constitutional amendment had been able to
do in forty years,” Johnson said.
Labor unions, already hard-pressed by the economic downturn and a loss
of members, were understandably concerned about the NRA’s efforts to
reduce competition by allowing competing businesses to cooperate by fixing
wages and prices. To gain union support, the NRA included a provision
(Section 7a) that guaranteed the right of workers to organize unions. But
while prohibiting employers from interfering with union-organizing efforts,
the NRA did not create adequate enforcement measures, nor did it require
employers to bargain in good faith with labor representatives.
For a time the NRA worked, and the downward spiral of wages and prices
subsided. But as soon as economic recovery began, business owners com-
plained that the larger corporations dominated the code-making activities
and that price-fixing robbed small producers of the chance to compete. In
1934, an investigating committee substantiated some of the charges. More-
over, allowing manufacturers to limit production had discouraged capital
1108 • NEW DEAL AMERICA (CH. 27)

“The Spirit of the New Deal”

In this cartoon, employer and employee agree to cooperate in the spirit of unity that
inspired the National Recovery Administration.

investment. And because the NRA wage codes excluded agricultural and
domestic workers, three out of every four employed African Americans
derived no direct benefit from the program. By 1935, the NRA had devel-
oped more critics than friends. When it effectively died, in May 1935, struck
down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional, few paused to mourn.
Yet the NRA experiment left an enduring mark. With dramatic sudden-
ness the industry-wide codes had set new workplace standards, such as the
forty-hour work week, a minimum wage, and the abolition of child labor.
The NRA’s endorsement of collective bargaining spurred the growth of
unions. Moreover, the codes advanced trends toward stabilization and ratio-
nalization that were becoming the standard practice of business at large and
that, despite misgivings about the concentration of power, would be further
promoted by trade associations. Yet as 1934 ended, economic recovery was
nowhere in sight.
 Regulatory Efforts • 1109

REGIONAL PLANNING One of the most innovative New Deal pro-

grams was the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a bold ven-
ture designed to bring electrical power, flood control, and jobs to one of the
poorest regions in the nation. In May 1933, Congress created the TVA as a
multipurpose public corporation serving seven states: Alabama, Georgia,
Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee. By 1936, it
had six dams completed or under way and a master plan to build nine high
dams on the Tennessee River, which would create the “Great Lakes of the
South,” and other dams on the tributaries. The agency, moreover, opened the
rivers to boats and barges, fostered soil conservation and forestry, experi-
mented with fertilizers, drew new industries to the region, encouraged the
formation of labor unions, improved schools and libraries, and sent cheap
electric power pulsating through the valley for the first time. But the con-
struction of dams and the creation of huge power-generating lakes also
meant the destruction of homes, farms, and communities. “I don’t want to
move,” said an elderly East Tennessee woman. “I want to sit here and look
out over these hills where I was born.” Inexpensive electricity became more
and more the TVA’s reason for being—a purpose that would become all the
more important during World War II. The TVA transported farm families of
the valley from the age of kerosene to the age of electricity.

Norris Dam
The massive dam in Tennessee, completed in 1936, was essential to the TVA’s effort
to expand power production.
 1110 • NEW DEAL AMERICA (CH. 27)

Holston River
hio Rive
O KENTUCKY K E N T U C K Y Powell River

r
Clinch
Paducah WOLF CREEK
MISSOURI River

Tennessee Rive
SOUTH
DALE HOLLOW HOLSTON

iver

Cu
mb R BOONE
iver

erland NORRIS WATAUGA

iR

CENTER HILL CHEROKEE

ipp

Nashville
r

Oak Ridge
iss

T E N N E S S E E Knoxville DOUGLAS
ss
Mi

WATTS BAR FORT LOUDOUN N O RT H

FONTANA Asheville
PICKWICK CHICKAMAUGA
C A RO L I NA
Memphis LANDING HIWASSEE French Broad
HALES BAR
WILSON WHEELER River
Corinth Huntsville Chattanooga
SOUTH

r
ve
Muscle Shoals Ri Little C A RO L I NA
e
se

Tennessee
es
nn

GUNTERSVILLE River
Tupelo
Te

GEORGIA
MISSISSIPPI A L A BA M A Atlanta
Birmingham

THE TENNESSEE VALLEY

AUTHORITY
Principal TVA dams Area of map

0 50 100 Miles Area served by TVA

electric power
0 50 100 Kilometers

What was the Tennessee Valley Authority? Why did Congress create it? How did it
transform the Tennessee Valley?

THE SOCIAL COST OF THE DEPRESSION

Although programs of the so-called First New Deal helped ease the
devastation wrought by the Depression, they did not restore prosperity or
end the widespread human suffering. By 1935 the Depression continued to
take a toll on Americans as the shattered economy slowly worked its way
back to health.

CONTINUING HARDSHIPS As late as 1939, some 9.5 million workers

(17 percent of the labor force) remained unemployed. Prolonged economic
hardship continued to create personal tragedies and tremendous social
 The Social Cost of the Depression • 1111

strains. Poverty led desperate people to do desperate things. Petty theft

soared during the 1930s, as did street-corner begging, homelessness, and
prostitution. Although the divorce rate dropped during the decade, in part
because couples could not afford to live separately or pay the legal fees to
obtain a divorce, all too often husbands down on their luck simply deserted
their wives and children. A 1940 survey revealed that 1.5 million husbands
had left home. With their future uncertain, married couples often decided
not to have children; the birthrate plummeted. Parents sometimes could not
support their children. In 1933, the Children’s Bureau reported that one out
of every five children was not getting enough to eat. Struggling parents sent
their children to live with relatives or friends. Some nine hundred thousand
children simply left home and joined the army of homeless “tramps.”

D U S T B O W L M I G R A N T S In the southern plains of the Midwest and

the Mississippi Valley, a decade-long drought during the 1930s spawned an
environmental and human catastrophe known as the dust bowl. Colorado,
New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas, and Oklahoma were the states hardest
hit. In the scorching heat, crops withered and income plummeted. Relentless
winds swept across the treeless plains, scooping up millions of tons of

Dust storm approaching, 1930s

When a dust storm blew in, it brought utter darkness, as well as the sand and grit
that soon covered every surface, both indoors and out.
1112 • NEW DEAL AMERICA (CH. 27)

A sharecropper’s family affected by the Oklahoma dust bowl

When the drought and dust storms showed no signs of relenting,
many people headed west toward California.

parched topsoil into billowing dark clouds that floated east across entire
states, engulfing farms and towns in what were called black blizzards. A mas-
sive dust storm in May 1934 darkened skies from Colorado to the Atlantic
seaboard, depositing silt on porches and rooftops as well as on ships in the
Atlantic Ocean. In 1937 there were seventy-two such major dust storms. The
worst of them killed livestock and people and caused railroads to derail and
automobiles to careen off roads. By 1938, over 25 million acres of prairie
land had lost most of its topsoil.
What made the dust storms worse than normal was the transition during
the early twentieth century from scattered subsistence farming to wide-
spread commercial agriculture. Huge “factory farms” used dry-farming
techniques to plant vast acres of wheat, corn, and cotton. The advent of
powerful tractors, deep-furrow plows, and mechanical harvesters greatly
 The Social Cost of the Depression • 1113

increased the scale and intensity of farming—and the indebtedness of farm-

ers. The mercurial cycle of falling crop prices and rising indebtedness led
farmers to plant as much and as often as they could. Overfarming and over-
grazing disrupted the fragile ecology of the plains by decimating the native
prairie grasses that stabilized the nutrient-rich topsoil. Constant plowing
loosened vast amounts of dirt, which were easily swept up by powerful winds.
Hordes of grasshoppers followed the gigantic dust storms and devoured what
meager crops were left standing.
Human misery paralleled the environmental devastation. Parched farm-
ers could not pay mortgages, and banks foreclosed on their property. Sui-
cides soared. With each year, millions of people abandoned their farms.
Uprooted farmers and their families formed a migratory stream of hardship
flowing westward from the South and the Midwest toward California,
buoyed by currents of hope and desperation. The West Coast was rumored
to have plenty of jobs. So off they went on a cross-country trek in pursuit of
new opportunities. Frequently lumped together as “Okies” or “Arkies,” most
of the dust bowl refugees were from cotton belt communities in Arkansas,
Texas, and Missouri, as well as Oklahoma. During the 1930s and 1940s, some
eight hundred thousand people left those four states and headed to the Far
West. Not all were farmers; many were white-collar workers and retailers
whose jobs had been tied to the health of the agriculture sector. Most of the
dust bowl migrants were white, and most were adults in their twenties and
thirties who relocated with spouses and children. Some traveled on trains or
buses; others hopped a freight train or hitched a ride; most rode in their own
cars, the trip taking four to five days on average.
Most people uprooted by the dust bowl gravitated to California’s urban
areas—Los Angeles, San Diego, or San Francisco. Others moved into the San
Joaquin Valley, the agricultural heartland of California. There they discov-
ered that rural California was no paradise. Only a few of the Midwestern
migrants, mostly whites, could afford to buy land. Most found themselves
competing with local Hispanics and Asians for seasonal work as pickers in
the cotton fields or orchards of large corporate farms. Living in tents or
crude cabins and frequently on the move, they suffered from exposure and
poor sanitation.
They also felt the sting of social prejudice. The novelist John Steinbeck
explained that “Okie us’ta mean you was from Oklahoma. Now it means
you’re a dirty son-of-a-bitch. Okie means you’re scum.” Such hostility
toward the migrants drove a third of them to return to their home states.
Most of the farm workers who stayed tended to fall back upon their old folk-
ways rather than assimilate into their new surroundings. These gritty “plain
1114 • NEW DEAL AMERICA (CH. 27)

folk” had brought with them their own prejudices against blacks and ethnic
minorities, as well as a potent tradition of evangelical Protestantism and a
distinctive style of music variously labeled country, hillbilly, or cowboy. This
“Okie” subculture remains a vivid part of California society.

M I N O R I T I E S A N D T H E N E W D E A L The Great Depression was

especially traumatic for the most disadvantaged groups. However progressive
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was on social issues, he failed to assault long-
standing patterns of racism and segregation for fear of alienating conserva-
tive southern Democrats in Congress. As a result, many of the New Deal
programs discriminated against blacks. The FHA, for example, refused to
guarantee mortgages on houses purchased by blacks in white neighbor-
hoods. In addition, both the CCC and the TVA practiced racial segregation.
The efforts of the Roosevelt administration to raise crop prices by reduc-
ing production proved especially devastating for African Americans and
Mexican Americans. To earn the federal payments for reducing crops as pro-
vided by the AAA and other New Deal agriculture programs, many farm
owners would first take out of cultivation the marginal lands worked by ten-
ants and sharecroppers. The effect was to drive the landless off farms and
eliminate the jobs of many migrant workers. Over two hundred thousand
black tenant farmers nationwide were displaced by the AAA.
Mexican Americans suffered as well. Thousands of Mexicans had
migrated to the United States during the 1920s, most of them settling in Cal-
ifornia, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Texas, and the midwestern states.
But because many of them were unable to prove their citizenship, either
because they were ignorant of the regulations or because their migratory
work hampered their ability to meet residency requirements, they were
denied access to the new federal relief programs under the New Deal. As eco-
nomic conditions worsened, government officials called for the deportation
of Mexican-born Americans to avoid the cost of providing them with public
services. By 1935, over 500,000 Mexican Americans and their American-
born children had returned to Mexico. The state of Texas alone returned
over 250,000 people.
Deportation became a popular solution in part because of the rising level
of involvement of Mexican American workers in union activities. In 1933,
Mexican American women in El Paso, Texas, formed the Society of Female
Manufacturing Workers to protest wages as low as 75¢ a day. In the same
year some 18,000 Mexican cotton pickers went on strike in California’s San
Joaquin Valley. Police crushed the strike by burning the workers’ camps.
 The Social Cost of the Depression • 1115

Migratory Mexican field worker at home

On the edge of a frozen pea field in Imperial Valley, California, this home to a
migratory Mexican family reflects both poverty and impermanence.

The Great Depression also devastated Native Americans. They initially

were encouraged by Roosevelt’s appointment of John Collier as the commis-
sioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Collier steadily increased the
number of Native Americans employed by the BIA and strove to ensure that
Native Americans gained access to the various relief programs. Collier’s pri-
mary objective, however, was passage of the Indian Reorganization Act. He
wanted the new legislation to replace the provisions of the General Allot-
ment Act (1887), known as the Dawes Act, which had sought to “American-
ize” the indigenous peoples by breaking up their tribal land and allocating it
to individuals. Collier insisted that the Dawes Act had produced only wide-
spread poverty and demoralization. He hoped to reinvigorate Native Ameri-
can cultural traditions by restoring land to tribes, granting them the right to
charter business enterprises and establish self-governing constitutions, and
1116 • NEW DEAL AMERICA (CH. 27)

providing federal funds for vocational training and economic development.

The act that Congress finally passed was a much-diluted version of Collier’s
original proposal, however, and the “Indian New Deal” brought only a par-
tial improvement to the lives of Native Americans. But it did spur the vari-
ous tribes to revise their constitutions so as to give women the right to vote
and hold office.

C O U RT D E C I S I O N S A N D C I V I L R I G H TS Although the National

Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) waged a legal
campaign against racial prejudice that gathered momentum during the
1930s, a major setback occurred in the Supreme Court decision Grovey v.
Townsend (1935), which upheld the Texas Democrats’ whites-only election
primary. But the Grovey decision held for only nine years and marked the
end of the major decisions that for half a century had narrowed application
of the civil rights amendments ratified after the Civil War. A reversal had
already set in.
Two important precedents arose from the celebrated Scottsboro case in
Alabama in 1931, in which an all-white jury, on flimsy evidence, hastily con-
victed nine black youths, ranging in age from thirteen to twenty-one, of rap-
ing two white women while riding a freight train headed to Memphis. Eight
of the youths were sentenced to death before cheering white audiences. The
injustice of the Scottsboro case aroused protests throughout the nation and

The Scottsboro case

Heywood Patterson (center), one of the defendants in the case, is seen here with his
attorney, Samuel Liebowitz (left) in Decatur, Alabama, in 1933.
 Culture in the Thirties • 1117

around the world. The two girls, it turned out, had been selling sex to white
and black boys on the train. One of the girls eventually recanted the charges.
Several groups, including the International Labor Defense (a Communist
organization) and the NAACP, offered legal assistance in efforts to appeal the
decision. No case in American legal history produced as many trials, appeals,
reversals, and retrials. The Supreme Court, in Powell v. Alabama (1932), over-
turned the original conviction because the judge had not ensured that the
accused were provided adequate defense attorneys. It ordered new trials. In
Norris v. Alabama (1935), the Court ruled that the systematic exclusion of
African Americans from Alabama juries had denied the Scottsboro defen-
dants equal protection of the law—a principle that had widespread impact
on state courts by opening up juries to blacks. Eventually, the state of
Alabama dropped the charges against the four youngest of the “Scottsboro
boys” and granted paroles to the others; the last one was released in 1950.
Like Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not give a high pri-
ority to racial issues, in part because of the power exerted by southern
Democratic legislators. Nevertheless, Roosevelt included in his administra-
tion people who did care deeply about racial issues. As his first term drew to
a close, Roosevelt found that there was a de facto “black cabinet” of some
thirty to forty advisers in government departments and agencies, people
who were very concerned about racial issues and the plight of African Ameri-
cans. Moreover, by 1936 many black voters were fast transferring their politi-
cal loyalty from the Republicans (the “party of Lincoln”) to the Democrats
and would vote accordingly in the coming presidential election. But few
southern blacks were able to vote during the 1930s. The preponderant major-
ity of African Americans still lived in the eleven southern states of the former
Confederacy, the most rural region in the nation, where blacks remained dis-
enfranchised, segregated, and largely limited to farm work. As late as 1940,
fewer than 5 percent of eligible African Americans were registered to vote.

C U LT U R E IN THE T H I RT I E S

In view of the celebrated—if exaggerated—alienation felt by the “lost

generation” of writers, artists, and intellectuals during the 1920s, one might
have expected the onset of the Great Depression to have deepened their
despair. Instead, it brought a renewed sense of militancy and affirmation, as if
society could no longer afford the art-for-art’s-sake outlook of the 1920s. Said
one writer early in 1932: “I enjoy the period thoroughly. The breakdown of
our cult of business success and optimism, the miraculous disappearance of
1118 • NEW DEAL AMERICA (CH. 27)

our famous American complacency, all this is having a tonic effect.” In the
early 1930s, the “tonic effect” of commitment sometimes sparked revolu-
tionary political activities. By the summer of 1932, even the “golden boy” of
the “lost generation,” the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, had declared that “to
bring on the revolution, it may be necessary to work within the Communist
party.” But few Americans remained Communists for long. Being a notori-
ously independent lot, most writers rebelled at demands to hew to a shifting
party line. And many abandoned communism upon learning that the Soviet
leader Joseph Stalin practiced a tyranny more horrible than anything under
the czars.

L I T E R AT U R E A N D T H E D E P R E S S I O N Among the writers who

addressed themes of immediate social significance during the 1930s, two
novelists deserve special notice: John Steinbeck and Richard Wright. The
single piece of fiction that best captured the ordeal of the Depression, Stein-
beck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939), treats workers as people rather than just a
variable in a political formula. Steinbeck had traveled with displaced “Okies”
driven from the Oklahoma dust bowl to pursue the illusion of good jobs in the
fields of California’s Central Valley. This firsthand experience allowed him to
create a vivid tale of the Joad family’s painful journey west from Oklahoma.
Among the most talented of the young novelists emerging in the 1930s was
Richard Wright, an African American born near Natchez, Mississippi. The
grandson of former slaves and the son of a Mississippi sharecropper who
deserted his family, Wright ended his formal schooling with the ninth grade
(as valedictorian of his class). He then worked in Memphis and devoured
books he borrowed on a white friend’s library card, all the while saving up to
go north to escape the racism of the segregated South. In Chicago, the Federal
Writers’ Project gave him a chance to develop his talent. His period as a Com-
munist, from 1934 to 1944, gave him an intellectual framework that did not
overpower his fierce independence. Native Son (1940), Wright’s masterpiece,
is the story of Bigger Thomas, a product of the ghetto, a man hemmed in, and
finally impelled to murder, by forces beyond his control.

P O P U L A R C U LT U R E While many writers and artists dealt directly

with the human suffering and social tensions aroused by the Great Depres-
sion, the more popular cultural outlets, such as radio programs and movies,
provided patrons with a welcome escape from the decade’s grim realities. By
the 1930s, radio had become a major source of family entertainment. In
1930, more than 10 million families owned a radio, and by the end of the
decade the number had tripled. “There is radio music in the air, every night,
 Culture in the Thirties • 1119

everywhere,” reported a San Francisco newspaper. “Anybody can hear it at

home on a receiving set which any boy can put up in an hour.” Franklin
Delano Roosevelt was the first president to take full advantage of the popu-
larity of radio broadcasting. He hosted sixteen “fireside chats” to generate
public support for his New Deal initiatives.
In the late 1920s, what had been silent films were transformed by the
introduction of sound. The “talkies” made movies by far the most popular
form of entertainment during the 1930s—much more popular than they are
today. The introduction of double features in 1931 and the construction of
outdoor drive-in theaters in 1933 boosted interest and attendance. More
than 60 percent of the population—70 million people—saw at least one
movie each week.
The movies of the 1930s rarely dealt directly with hard times. Exceptions
were the film version of The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and the classic docu-
mentaries of Pare Lorentz, The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) and The
River (1937). Much more popular were feature films intended for pure
entertainment; they transported viewers from the daily deprivations of the

The Marx Brothers

In addition to their vaudeville antics, the Marx Brothers satirized social issues such
as Prohibition.
1120 • NEW DEAL AMERICA (CH. 27)

Great Depression into the escapist realm of adventure, spectacle, and fan-
tasy. People relished shoot-’em-up gangster films, animated cartoons, spec-
tacular musicals (especially those starring dancers Fred Astaire and Ginger
Rogers), “screwball” comedies, and horror films such as Dracula (1931),
Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), King Kong (1933), The Invisible
Man (1933), and Werewolf of London (1935).
But the best way to escape the daily troubles of the Depression was to
watch one of the zany comedies of the Marx Brothers, former vaudeville
performers turned movie stars. As one Hollywood official explained, the
movies of the 1930s were intended to “laugh the big bad wolf of the depres-
sion out of the public mind.” The Cocoanuts (1929), Animal Crackers (1930),
and Monkey Business (1931) introduced moviegoers to the anarchic antics of
Chico, Groucho, Harpo, and Zeppo Marx, who combined slapstick humor
with verbal wit to create plotless masterpieces of irreverent satire.

T H E N E W D E A L M AT U R E S

During Roosevelt’s first year in office, his programs and his personal
charm generated massive support. The president’s travels and speeches, his
twice-weekly press conferences, and his radio-broadcast fireside chats brought
vitality and warmth in contrast to the aloofness of the Hoover White House. In
the congressional elections of 1934, the Democrats increased their strength
in both the House and the Senate, an almost unprecedented midterm victory
for a party in power. Only seven Republican governors remained in office
throughout the country. Yet while Democrats remained dominant, critics of
various aspects of the New Deal began to emerge in both parties as well as
within the Supreme Court. Roosevelt’s opponents stressed that the economy,
while stabilized, remained mired in the Depression. In 1935 Roosevelt
responded to the situation by launching a second wave of New Deal legislation.

E L E A N O R R O O S E V E LT One of the reasons for Roosevelt’s unprece-

dented popularity was his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, who had become an enor-
mous political asset and would prove to be one of the most influential and
revered leaders of the time. Born in 1884 in New York City, the niece of
Theodore Roosevelt, Eleanor was barely eight years old when her mother died.
Within two more years, her younger brother and her father, a chronic alco-
holic, also died. Lonely and shy, she attended school in London before marry-
ing Franklin, a distant cousin, in 1905. During the 1920s, Eleanor Roosevelt
taught school and began a lifelong crusade on behalf of women, blacks, and
 The New Deal Matures • 1121

youth. Her compassion resulted

in part from the loneliness she
had experienced as she was
growing up and in part from the
sense of betrayal she felt upon
learning in 1918 that her hus-
band was engaged in an extra-
marital affair with Lucy Mercer,
her personal secretary. “The
bottom dropped out of my own
particular world,” she recalled.
Eleanor and Franklin resolved to
maintain their marriage, but as
their son James said, it became an
“armed truce.” In the face of per- The First Lady
sonal setbacks, Eleanor Roosevelt An intelligent, principled, and candid
forged an independent life. She woman, Eleanor Roosevelt became a political
“lived to be kind.” Compassion- figure in her own right. Here she is serving as
guest host for a radio program, ca. 1935.
ate without being maudlin, more
stoical than sentimental, she
exuded warmth and sincerity, and she challenged the complacency of the com-
fortable and the affluent. “No woman,” observed a friend, “has ever so com-
forted the distressed or so distressed the comfortable.”
Eleanor Roosevelt redefined the role of the First Lady. She was an outspo-
ken activist: the first woman to address a national political convention, to
write a nationally syndicated column, and to hold regular press conferences.
A tireless advocate and agitator, Eleanor crisscrossed the nation, represent-
ing the president and the New Deal, defying local segregation ordinances to
meet with African American leaders, supporting women’s causes and orga-
nized labor, highlighting the plight of unemployed youth, and imploring
people to live up to their egalitarian and humanitarian ideals. Eleanor Roo-
sevelt also became her husband’s most visible and effective liaison with
many liberal groups, bringing labor organizers, women’s rights activists, and
African American leaders to the White House after hours and serving to
deflect criticism of the president by taking progressive stands and running
political risks he himself dared not attempt. He was the politician, she once
remarked, and she was the agitator.

CRITICS By the mid-1930s, the New Deal had stopped the economy’s
downward slide, but prosperity remained elusive. “We have been patient and
1122 • NEW DEAL AMERICA (CH. 27)

long suffering,” said a farm leader. “We were promised a New Deal. . . .
Instead we have the same old stacked deck.” Even more unsettling to conser-
vatives was the dramatic growth of executive power and the emergence of
welfare programs that led some people to develop a sense of entitlement to
federal support programs. In 1934 a group of conservative businessmen and
politicians, including Alfred E. Smith and John W. Davis, two former Demo-
cratic presidential candidates, formed the American Liberty League to
oppose New Deal measures as violations of personal and property rights.
More potent threats to Roosevelt came from the hucksters of social
panaceas. The most flamboyant of the group was Louisiana’s “Kingfish,”
Senator Huey P. Long. A short, strutting man, cunning and ruthless, Long
grew up within the rural revivalism of central Louisiana and fashioned him-
self into a theatrical political preacher (demagogue). He sported pink suits
and pastel shirts, red ties, and two-toned shoes. Long was a brilliant but
unscrupulous reformer driven by a compulsive urge for power and atten-
tion. First as Louisiana’s governor, then as Louisiana’s political boss and sen-
ator, Long viewed the state as his political fiefdom. True, he delivered to his
constituents tax favors, roads, schools, free textbooks, charity hospitals, and
better public services. But in the process, he became a bullying dictator who
used bribery, intimidation, and blackmail to achieve his goals.
In 1933, Long arrived in Washington as a Democratic senator. He initially
supported Roosevelt and the New Deal but quickly grew suspicious of the
NRA’s collusion with big business.
Having developed his own presidential
aspirations, he had also grown jealous
of “Prince Franklin” Roosevelt’s mush-
rooming popularity. To facilitate his
presidential candidacy, Long devised
his own populist plan for dealing with
the Great Depression, which he called
the Share-the-Wealth Society.
Long proposed to confiscate large
personal fortunes so as to guarantee
every poor family a cash grant of
$5,000 and every worker an annual
“The Kingfish”
income of $2,500, provide pensions to
Huey Long, governor of Louisiana. the aged, reduce working hours, pay
Although he often led people to
believe he was a country bumpkin, veterans’ bonuses, and ensure a col-
Long was a shrewd lawyer and lege education for every qualified stu-
consummate politician. dent. It did not matter to him that his
 The New Deal Matures • 1123

projected budgets failed to add up or that his program offered little to stim-
ulate an economic recovery. As he told a group of distressed Iowa farmers,
“Maybe somebody says I don’t understand it. Well, you don’t have to. Just
shut your damn eyes and believe it. That’s all.” Whether he had a workable
plan or not, by early 1935 the charismatic Long was claiming that there were
twenty-seven thousand Share-the-Wealth clubs scattered across the nation
with 8 million supporters. Long was convinced that he could unseat Roo-
sevelt. “I can take him,” Long bragged. “He’s a phony. . . . He’s scared of me. I
can outpromise him, and he knows it. People will believe me and they won’t
believe him.”
Another popular social scheme critical of Roosevelt was hatched by a tall,
gray-haired, mild-mannered California doctor, Francis E. Townsend. Out-
raged by the sight of three elderly women raking through garbage cans for
scraps of food, Townsend called for government pensions for the aged. In
1934 he began promoting the Townsend Recovery Plan, which would pay
$200 a month to every citizen over sixty who retired from employment and
promised to spend the money within each month. The plan had the lure of
providing financial security for the aged and stimulating economic growth
by freeing up jobs for younger people. Critics noted that the cost of his pro-
gram, which would serve 9 percent of the population, would be more than
half the national income. Yet Townsend, like Long, was indifferent to details
and balanced budgets. “I’m not in the least interested in the cost of the plan,”
he blandly told a House committee.
A third huckster of panaceas, Father Charles E. Coughlin, the Roman
Catholic “radio priest,” founded the National Union for Social Justice in
1935. In passionate broadcasts over the CBS radio network, he dismissed the
New Deal as a Communist conspiracy and revived the old Populist scheme
of coining vast amounts of silver to increase the money supply. His remarks
grew more intemperate and anti-Semitic during 1936. Like Huey Long,
Coughlin appealed to people who had lost the most during the Great
Depression and were receiving the least benefits from the early New Deal
programs.
Coughlin, Townsend, and Long were Roosevelt’s most prominent critics.
Of the three, Long had the widest following. A 1935 survey showed that he
could draw over 5 million votes as a third-party candidate for president in
1936, perhaps enough to undermine Roosevelt’s chances of reelection. Beset
by pressures from both ends of the political spectrum, Roosevelt hesitated
for months before deciding to “steal the thunder” from the left by instituting
an array of new programs. “I’m fighting Communism, Huey Longism,
Coughlinism, Townsendism,” Roosevelt told a reporter in early 1935. He
1124 • NEW DEAL AMERICA (CH. 27)

Promoters of welfare capitalism

Dr. Francis E. Townsend, Rev. Gerald L. K. Smith, and Rev. Charles E. Coughlin (left
to right) attended the Townsend Recovery Plan convention in Cleveland, Ohio.

needed “to save our system, the capitalist system,” from such “crackpot
ideas.” Political pressures impelled Roosevelt to move to the left, but so did
the growing influence within the administration of jurists Louis D. Brandeis
and Felix Frankfurter. These powerful advisers urged Roosevelt to be less
cozy with big business and to push for restored competition in the market-
place and heavy taxes on large corporations.

O P P O S I T I O N F R O M T H E C O U R T A series of Supreme Court deci-

sions finally galvanized the president to act. On May 27, 1935, the Court
killed the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) by a unanimous vote.
The defendants in Schechter Poultry Corporation v. United States, quickly
tagged the “sick-chicken” case, had been convicted of selling an “unfit
chicken” and violating other NIRA code provisions. The high court ruled
that Congress had delegated too much power to the executive branch when
it granted the code-making authority to the NRA. In addition, Congress had
 The New Deal Matures • 1125

exceeded its power under the commerce clause by regulating intrastate com-
merce. The poultry in question, the Court decided, had “come to permanent
rest within the state,” although earlier it had been moved across state lines. In
a press conference soon afterward, Roosevelt fumed: “We have been rele-
gated to the horse-and-buggy definition of interstate commerce.” The same
line of conservative judicial reasoning, he warned, might endanger other
New Deal programs—if he did not act swiftly.

T H E S E C O N D N E W D E A L ( 1 9 3 5 – 1 9 3 6 ) To rescue his legislative

program from such judicial and political challenges, Roosevelt in January
1935 launched the second phase of the New Deal, explaining that “social jus-
tice, no longer a distant ideal, has become a definite goal” of his administra-
tion. No longer was the New Deal to be focused on generating economic
recovery. It would also provide stability and security for the most vulnerable
Americans. The president called on Congress to pass “must” legislation that
included a new public works program to employ the jobless, banking reform,
increased taxes on high incomes and inheritances, and programs to protect
workers against the hazards of unemployment, old age, and illness. Roo-
sevelt’s aide Harry L. Hopkins told the cabinet: “Boys—this is our hour.
We’ve got to get everything we want—a [public] works program, social secu-
rity, wages and hours, everything—now or never.”
Over the next three months, dubbed the Second Hundred Days, Roosevelt
used all of his considerable charm and skills to convince the Congress to pass
most of the Second New Deal’s “must” legislation. The results changed the
face of American life. The first major initiative, the $4.8-billion Emergency
Relief Appropriation Act, sailed through the new Congress. Roosevelt called
it the “Big Bill” because it was the largest peacetime spending bill in history.
It included an array of new federal job programs managed by a new agency,
the Works Progress Administration (WPA), headed by Harry L. Hopkins,
which replaced the FERA. Hopkins was told to create millions of jobs
quickly, and as a result some of the new jobs appeared to be make-work or
mere “leaning on shovels.” Money was wasted, but by the time the WPA died,
during World War II, it had left permanent monuments in the form of build-
ings, bridges, hard-surfaced roads, airports, and schools.
The WPA also employed a wide range of talented people in the Federal The-
atre Project, the Federal Art Project, the Federal Music Project, and the Federal
Writers’ Project. Writers such as Ralph Ellison, John Cheever, and Saul Bellow
found work writing travel guides to the United States, and Orson Welles
directed the Federal Theatre Project’s productions. Critics charged that these
programs were frivolous, but Hopkins replied that writers and artists needed
1126 • NEW DEAL AMERICA (CH. 27)

City Life
This mural, painted by WPA artist Victor Arnautoff, depicts a bustling New
Deal–era street scene.

“to eat just like other people.” The National Youth Administration (NYA), also
under the WPA, provided part-time employment to students, set up technical
training programs, and aided jobless youths. Twenty-seven-year-old Lyndon
B. Johnson was director of an NYA program in Texas, and Richard M. Nixon, a
penniless Duke University law student, found work through the NYA at 35¢ an
hour. Although the WPA took care of only about 3 million out of some 10 mil-
lion jobless at any one time, in all it helped some 9 million clients weather
desperate times before it expired in 1943.

T H E WA G N E R A C T Another major element of the Second New Deal

was the National Labor Relations Act, often called the Wagner Act in honor
of the New York senator, Robert F. Wagner, who drafted it and convinced a
reluctant Roosevelt to support it. The Wagner Act was one of the most
important pieces of labor legislation in history. It aggressively supported the
rights of working-class Americans, guaranteeing workers the right to orga-
nize unions and bargain with management. It also prohibited employers
 The New Deal Matures • 1127

from interfering with union activities. The Wagner Act also created a
National Labor Relations Board of five members to certify unions as bar-
gaining agents where a majority of the workers approved. The board could
also investigate the actions of employers and issue “cease-and-desist” orders
against specified unfair practices. Emboldened by the Wagner Act, unions
organized more workers across the nation during the late 1930s. More than
70 percent of Americans surveyed in a 1937 Gallup poll said they favored
unions. Yet many companies continued to thwart union activities in defiance
of the Wagner Act.

SOCIAL SECURITY As Francis E. Townsend stressed, the Great Depres-

sion hit older Americans and those with disabilities especially hard. To
address the peculiar problems faced by the old, infirm, blind, and disabled,
Roosevelt proposed the Social Security Act of 1935. It was, he announced, the
Second New Deal’s “cornerstone” and “supreme achievement.” Indeed, it has
proved to be the most significant
and far-reaching of all the New
Deal initiatives. The basic con-
cept was not new. Progressives
during the early 1900s had pro-
posed a federal system of social
security for the aged, indigent,
disabled, and unemployed. Other
nations had already enacted such
programs, but the United States
had remained steadfast in its
tradition of individual self-
reliance. The hardships caused
by the Great Depression revived
the idea of a social security pro-
gram, however, and Roosevelt
masterfully guided the legisla-
tion through Congress.
The Social Security Act,
designed by Secretary of Labor
Frances Perkins, included three
major provisions. Its centerpiece Social Security
was a self-financed “old age” A poster distributed by the government to
pension fund for retired people educate the public about the new Social
over the age of sixty-five and Security Act.
1128 • NEW DEAL AMERICA (CH. 27)

their survivors. Beginning in 1937, workers and employers contributed pay-

roll taxes to establish the fund. Roosevelt stressed that the pension program
was not intended to guarantee a comfortable retirement; it was designed to
supplement other sources of income and protect the elderly from some of
the “hazards and vicissitudes of life.” Only later did voters and politicians
come to view Social Security as the primary source of retirement income for
most of the aged.
The Social Security Act also set up a shared federal-state unemployment-
insurance program, financed by a payroll tax on employers. In addition, the
new legislation committed the national government to a broad range of social-
welfare activities based upon the assumption that “unemployables”—people
who were unable to work—would remain a state responsibility while the
national government would provide work relief for the able-bodied. To that
end, the law inaugurated federal grants-in-aid for three state-administered
public-assistance programs—old-age assistance, aid to dependent children,
and aid for the blind—and further aid for maternal, child-welfare, and public
health services.
When compared with similar programs in Europe, the new Social Security
system was conservative. It was the only government pension program in the
world financed by taxes on the earnings of workers: most other countries
funded such programs out of general revenues. The Social Security payroll tax
was also a regressive tax: it entailed a single fixed rate for all, regardless of
income level. It thus pinched the poor more than the rich, and it also impeded
Roosevelt’s efforts to revive the economy because it removed from circulation
a significant amount of money: the new Social Security tax took money out of
workers’ pockets and placed it into a retirement trust fund, exacerbating the
shrinking money supply that was one of the main causes of the Depression. By
taking discretionary income away from workers, the government blunted the
sharp increase in consumer spending needed to restore the health of the econ-
omy. In addition, the Social Security system initially excluded 9.5 million
workers who most needed the new program: farm laborers, domestic workers,
and the self-employed, a disproportionate percentage of whom were African
Americans.
Roosevelt regretted the limitations of the Social Security Act, but he knew
that they were necessary compromises in order to see the legislation through
Congress and enable it to withstand court challenges. As he replied to an aide
who criticized funding the pension program out of employee contributions:

I guess you’re right on the economics, but those taxes were never a
problem of economics. They are politics all the way through. We put
those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a
 Roosevelt’s Second Term • 1129

moral, legal, and political right to collect their pensions and their
unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician
can ever scrap my Social Security program.

Conservatives lambasted the Social Security Act as tyrannical. Herbert

Hoover was among several Americans who initially refused to apply for a
Social Security card because of his opposition to the federal government cre-
ating such a program. He was issued a number anyway.

S OA K I N G T H E R I C H Another major bill making up the second phase

of the New Deal was the Revenue Act of 1935, sometimes called the Wealth-
Tax Act but popularly known as the soak-the-rich tax. The Revenue Act
raised tax rates on annual income above $50,000. Estate and gift taxes also
rose, as did the corporate tax rate. Business leaders fumed over Roosevelt’s
tax and spending policies. They railed against the New Deal and Roosevelt,
whom they called a traitor to his own class. Conservatives charged that Roo-
sevelt had moved in a dangerously radical direction. The newspaper editor
William Randolph Hearst growled that the wealth tax was “essentially com-
munism.” Roosevelt countered by stressing that he had no love for socialism:
“I am fighting communism. . . . I want to save our system, the capitalistic
system.” Yet he added that to save it from revolutionary turmoil required a
more equal “distribution of wealth.”

R O O S E V E LT ’ S S E C O N D T E R M

T H E E L E C T I O N O F 1 9 3 6 On June 27, 1936, Franklin Delano Roo-

sevelt accepted the Democratic party’s nomination for a second term. The
Republicans chose Governor Alfred M. Landon of Kansas, a progressive
Republican who had endorsed many New Deal programs. He was probably
more liberal than most of his backers and clearly more so than the party’s
platform, which lambasted the New Deal for overextending federal power.
The Republicans hoped that the followers of Long, Coughlin, Townsend, and
other dissidents would combine to draw enough Democratic votes away from
Roosevelt to throw the election to them. But that possibility faded when an
assassin, the son-in-law of a Louisiana judge whom Huey Long had sought to
remove, shot and killed the forty-two-year-old senator in 1935. In the 1936
election, Coughlin, Townsend, and a remnant of the Long movement sup-
ported Representative William Lemke of North Dakota on a Union party
ticket, but it was a forlorn effort, polling only 882,000 votes.
1130 • NEW DEAL AMERICA (CH. 27)

Campaigning for a second term

Roosevelt campaigning with labor leader John L. Lewis (to the right of Roosevelt)
and Marvin McIntyre (far right) in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

In the 1936 election, Roosevelt carried every state except Maine and Ver-
mont, with a popular vote of 27.7 million to Landon’s 16.7 million, the largest
margin of victory in history. Democrats would also dominate Republicans in
the new Congress, by 77 to 19 in the Senate and 328 to 107 in the House.
In winning another landslide election, Roosevelt forged a new electoral
coalition that would affect national politics for years to come. While holding
the support of most traditional Democrats, North and South, the president
made strong gains in the West among beneficiaries of New Deal agricultural
programs. In the northern cities he held on to the ethnic groups helped by
New Deal welfare measures. Many middle-class voters whose property had
been saved by New Deal measures flocked to support Roosevelt, as did intel-
lectuals stirred by the ferment of new ideas coming from the government.
The revived labor union movement threw its support to Roosevelt. And in
the most profound departure of all, African American voters for the first
time cast the majority of their ballots for a Democratic president. “My
friends, go home and turn Lincoln’s picture to the wall,” a Pittsburgh jour-
 Roosevelt’s Second Term • 1131

nalist told black voters. “That debt has been paid in full.” The final tally in
the 1936 election revealed that 81 percent of those with an income under
$1,000 a year opted for Roosevelt, as did 79 percent of those earning between
$1,000 and $2,000. By contrast, only 46 percent of those earning over $5,000
voted for Roosevelt. He later claimed that never before had wealthy business
leaders been “so united against one candidate.” They were “unanimous in
their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.”

T H E C O U R T - PA C K I N G P L A N Roosevelt’s second inaugural address,

delivered on January 20, 1937, promised even greater reforms. The challenge
to democracy, he maintained, was that millions of citizens “at this very
moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of
today call the necessities of life. . . . I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-
clad, ill-nourished.” Roosevelt argued that the election of 1936 had been a
mandate for even more extensive government action. The overwhelming
three-to-one Democratic majorities in Congress ensured the passage of new
legislation to buttress the Second New Deal. But one major roadblock stood
in the way: the conservative Supreme Court.
By the end of its 1936 term, the Supreme Court had ruled against New
Deal programs in seven of the nine major cases it reviewed. Suits challenging
the constitutionality of the Social Security and Wagner acts were pending.
Given the conservative tenor of the Court, the Second New Deal seemed in
danger of being nullified, just as much of the original New Deal had been.
For that reason, Roosevelt devised an ill-conceived and impolitic plan to
change the Court’s conservative stance by enlarging it. Congress, not the
Constitution, determines the size of the Supreme Court, which at different
times has numbered six, seven, eight, nine, and ten justices. In 1937, the
number was nine. On February 5, 1937, Roosevelt sent his controversial plan
to Congress, without having consulted congressional leaders. He wanted to
create up to six new Supreme Court justices.
But the “Court-packing” maneuver, as opponents quickly tagged the pres-
ident’s scheme, backfired. It was a shade too contrived, much too brazen,
and far too political. The normally pro-Roosevelt New York World-Telegram
dismissed it as “too clever, too damned clever.” A leading journalist said Roo-
sevelt had become “drunk with power.” Roosevelt’s plan angered Republi-
cans, but it also ran headlong into a deep-rooted public veneration of the
courts and aroused fears among Democrats that a future president might
use the precedent for quite different purposes.
As it turned out, unforeseen events blunted Roosevelt’s clumsy effort to
change the Court. A sequence of Court decisions during the spring of 1937
1132 • NEW DEAL AMERICA (CH. 27)

Court packing
An editorial cartoon commenting on Roosevelt’s grandiose plan to enlarge the
Supreme Court. He is speaking to Harold Ickes, director of the Public Works
Administration.

reversed previous judgments in order to uphold disputed provisions of the

Wagner and Social Security acts. In addition, a conservative justice resigned,
and Roosevelt named to the vacancy one of the most consistent New Dealers,
Senator Hugo Black of Alabama. But Roosevelt insisted on forcing his
Court-packing bill through the Congress. On July 22, 1937, the Senate over-
whelmingly voted it down. It was the biggest political blunder of Roosevelt’s
career. He later claimed he had lost the battle but won the war. The Court
had reversed itself on important New Deal legislation, and the president was
able to appoint justices in harmony with the New Deal. But the episode frac-
tured the Democratic party and blighted Roosevelt’s prestige. For the first time,
Democrats in large numbers, especially southerners, opposed the president,
and the Republican opposition found a powerful new issue to use against the
 Roosevelt’s Second Term • 1133

administration. During the first eight months of 1937, the momentum of

Roosevelt’s 1936 landslide victory evaporated. As Secretary of Agriculture
Henry A. Wallace later remarked, “The whole New Deal really went up in
smoke as a result of the Supreme Court fight.”

A NEW DIRECTION FOR UNIONS Rebellions erupted on other

fronts even while the Court-packing bill pended. Under the impetus of the
New Deal, the dormant labor union movement stirred anew. When the
National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) demanded that every industry
code affirm the workers’ right to organize a union, alert unionists quickly
translated it to mean “the president wants you to join the union.” John L.
Lewis, head of the United Mine Workers (UMW), was among the first to
exploit the pro-union spirit of the NIRA. He rebuilt the UMW from 150,000
members to 500,000 within a year. Spurred by Lewis’s success, Sidney Hill-
man of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and David Dubinsky of the
International Ladies Garment Workers organized workers in the clothing
industry. As leaders of industrial unions (composed of all types of workers
in a particular industry), which were in the minority by far, they found the
smaller, more restrictive craft unions (composed of skilled male workers
only, with each union serving just one trade) to be obstacles to organizing
workers in the country’s basic industries.
In 1935, with the passage of the Wagner Act, the industrial unionists
formed a Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO), and craft unionists
began to fear submergence by the mass unions made up of unskilled workers.
Jurisdictional disputes divided them, and in 1936 the American Federation
of Labor (AFL) expelled the CIO unions, which then formed a permanent
structure, called after 1938 the Congress of Industrial Organizations (also
known by the initials CIO). The rivalry spurred both groups to greater
efforts.
The CIO’s major organizing drives in the automobile and steel industries
began in 1936, but until the Supreme Court upheld the Wagner Act in 1937,
companies failed to cooperate with its pro-unionist provisions. Employers
used various forms of intimidation to fight the infant unions. Early in 1937
automobile workers spontaneously adopted a new technique, the “sit-down
strike,” in which workers refused to leave a workplace until employers had
granted collective-bargaining rights to their union.
Led by the fiery young autoworker and union organizer Walter Reuther,
thousands of employees at the General Motors assembly plants in Flint, Michi-
gan, occupied the factories and stopped all production. Female workers sup-
ported their male counterparts by picketing at the plant entrances. Company
1134 • NEW DEAL AMERICA (CH. 27)

Organized labor
CIO picketers jeer as nonstriking workers enter a mill, 1941.

officials called in police to harass the strikers, sent spies to union meetings,
and threatened to fire the workers. They also pleaded with President Roo-
sevelt to dispatch federal troops. He refused, while expressing his displeasure
with the sit-down strike, which the courts later declared illegal. The standoff
lasted over a month. Then, on February 11, 1937, the company relented and
signed a contract recognizing the fledgling United Automobile Workers
(UAW) as a legitimate union. Other automobile manufacturers soon followed
suit. And the following month, U.S. Steel capitulated to the Steel Workers
Organizing Committee (later the United Steelworkers of America), granting
the union recognition and its members a 10 percent wage hike and a forty-
hour workweek.
The Wagner Act put the power of the federal government behind the princi-
ple of unionization. Roosevelt himself, however, had come late to the support
of unions and sometimes took exception to their behavior. In the fall of 1937,
he became so irritated with the warfare between the mercurial John L. Lewis
and the Republic Steel Corporation that he pronounced “a plague on both
your houses.” In 1940, an angry Lewis would back the Republican presidential
candidate, but he could not carry the labor vote with him. As more wage work-
 Roosevelt’s Second Term • 1135

ers became organized, they more closely identified with the Democratic party.
By August 1937 the CIO claimed over 3.4 million members, more than the
AFL. The unions made a difference in the lives of workers and in the political
scene. Through their efforts, wages rose and working conditions improved,
and Roosevelt and the Democratic party were the beneficiaries of the labor
movement. But unions made little headway in the South, where conservative
Democrats and mill owners stubbornly opposed efforts to organize workers.

A S L U M P I N G E C O N O M Y During the years 1935 and 1936, the

depressed economy finally showed signs of revival. By the spring of 1937,
industrial output had moved above the 1929 level. The prosperity of early
1937 was achieved largely through federal spending. But in 1937, Roosevelt,
worried about federal budget deficits and rising inflation, ordered sharp cuts
in government spending. The result was that the economy suddenly stalled
and then slid into a business slump deeper than that of 1929. The Dow Jones
stock average fell some 40 percent between August and October of 1937. By
the end of the year, 4 million more people had been thrown out of work.
When the spring of 1938 failed to bring economic recovery, Roosevelt asked
Congress to adopt a new large-scale federal spending program, and Congress
voted almost $3.3 billion in new expenditures. In a short time, the increase in
spending reversed the economy’s decline, but only during World War II
would employment reach pre-1929 levels.
The Court-packing fight, the sit-down strikes, and the 1937 recession all
undercut Roosevelt’s prestige and power. When the 1937 congressional session
ended, the only major new bills were the Wagner-Steagall National Housing
Act and the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act. The Housing Act, developed by
Senator Robert F. Wagner, set up the Housing Authority, which extended long-
term loans to cities for public housing projects in blighted low-income neigh-
borhoods. The agency also subsidized rents for poor people. Later, during
World War II, it financed housing for workers in new defense plants.
The Farm Tenant Act addressed the epidemic of rural poverty. It created a
new agency, the Farm Security Administration (FSA), that provided loans to
shore up farm owners and prevent them from sinking into tenancy. It also
made loans to tenant farmers to enable them to purchase their own farms. In
the end, however, the FSA proved to be little more than another relief opera-
tion that tided a few farmers over during difficult times. A more effective
answer to the problem eventually arrived in the form of national mobilization
for war, which landed many struggling tenant farmers in military service or
the defense industry, broadened their horizons, and taught them new skills.
1136 • NEW DEAL AMERICA (CH. 27)

In 1938, the Democratic Congress also enacted the Fair Labor Standards
Act. For the first time in American history, the federal government established
a minimum wage of 40¢ an hour and a maximum workweek of forty hours.
The act, which applied only to businesses engaged in interstate commerce, also
prohibited the employment of children under the age of sixteen.

T H E L E G AC Y OF THE NEW DEAL

S E T BAC K S F O R T H E P R E S I D E N T During the late 1930s, the Demo-

cratic party fragmented. Many southern Democrats balked at the national
party’s growing dependence on the votes of northern labor unions and
African Americans. Profane, tobacco-chewing Ellison “Cotton Ed” Smith of
South Carolina, the powerful chair of the Committee on Agriculture, and
several other southern delegates walked out of the 1936 Democratic party
convention, with Smith declaring that he would not support any party that
views “the Negro as a political and social equal.” Other critics believed that
Roosevelt was exercising too much power and spending too much money.
Some disgruntled southern Democrats drifted toward a coalition with con-
servative Republicans. By the end of 1937, a bipartisan conservative bloc had
coalesced against the New Deal.
In 1938, the conservative opposition stymied an attempt by Roosevelt to
reorganize the executive branch of the federal government, claiming that it
would lead to dictatorship. Members of the opposition also secured drastic
cuts in the undistributed-profits and capital-gains taxes to help restore busi-
ness “confidence.” That year the House of Representatives set up a Commit-
tee on Un-American Activities, chaired by Martin Dies of Texas, who took to
the warpath against Communists. Soon he began to brand New Dealers as
Communists. “Stalin baited his hook with a ‘progressive’ worm,” Dies wrote
in 1940, “and New Deal suckers swallowed the bait, hook, line, and sinker.”
As the political season of 1938 advanced, Roosevelt unfolded a new idea as
momentous as the Court-packing plan: a proposal to reshape the Democra-
tic party in the image of the New Deal. He announced his plan to intervene
in state Democratic primaries as the party’s national leader to ensure that his
supporters were nominated in the state primaries. The effort backfired, how-
ever, and broke the spell of Roosevelt’s invincibility, or what was left of it. As
in the Court-packing fight, the president had risked his prestige while hand-
ing his adversaries a combustible issue to use against him. His opponents
tagged his intervention in the primaries an attempt to “purge” the Democra-
tic party of its southern conservatives; the word evoked visions of Adolf
 The Legacy of the New Deal • 1137

Hitler and Joseph Stalin, tyrants who had purged their Nazi and Communist
parties with blood.
The elections of November 1938 handed the administration another set-
back, partly a result of the friction among the Democrats. Roosevelt had failed
in his efforts to liberalize the party by ousting southern conservatives. The
Democrats lost seats in both the House and the Senate, and the president now
headed a divided party. In his State of the Union message in 1939, Roosevelt
for the first time proposed no new reforms but spoke of the need “to invigo-
rate the process of [economic] recovery, in order to preserve our reforms.” The
conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats had stale-
mated the Roosevelt juggernaut. As one observer noted, the New Deal “has
been reduced to a movement with no program, with no effective political
organization, with no vast popular party strength behind it.”

A H A L F WAY R E VO L U T I O N The New Deal had petered out in 1939

just as war was erupting in Europe and Asia, but it had wrought several endur-
ing changes. By the end of the 1930s, the power of the national government
was vastly larger than it had been in 1932, and hope had been restored to many
people who had grown disconsolate. But the New Deal entailed more than just
bigger government and revived public confidence; it also constituted a sig-
nificant change from the older liberalism embodied in the progressivism of
Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Those reformers, despite their
sharp differences, had assumed that the function of progressive government
was to use aggressive regulation of industry and business to ensure that people
had an equal opportunity to pursue their notions of happiness.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Dealers went beyond this concept
of regulated capitalism by insisting that the government not simply respond
to social crises but also take positive steps to avoid them and their social
effects. To this end, the New Deal’s various benefit programs sought to
ensure a minimum level of well-being for all Americans. The New Deal had
established basic qualitative standards for labor conditions and public wel-
fare and helped middle-class Americans hold on to their savings, their
homes, and their farms. The protection afforded by bank-deposit insurance,
unemployment pay, and Social Security pensions would come to be univer-
sally accepted as a safeguard against future depressions.
In implementing his domestic program, Roosevelt steered a zigzag course
between the extremes of unregulated capitalism and socialism. The first New
Deal experimented for a time with a managed economy under the NRA but
abandoned that experiment for a turn toward enforcing competition and
increasing government spending. The greatest failure of the New Deal was its
1138 • NEW DEAL AMERICA (CH. 27)

inability to restore economic prosperity and end record levels of unemploy-

ment. In 1939, 10 million Americans—nearly 17 percent of the workforce—
remained jobless. Only the prolonged crisis of World War II would finally
produce full employment.
Roosevelt’s pragmatism was his greatest strength—and weakness. Impa-
tient with political theory and at heart a fiscal conservative, he was flexible in
developing policy: he kept what worked and discarded what did not. The
result was, paradoxically, both profoundly revolutionary and profoundly
conservative. Roosevelt sharply increased the regulatory powers of the federal
government and laid the foundation for what would become an expanding
welfare system. New Deal initiatives left a legacy of unprecedented social wel-
fare innovations: a joint federal-state system of unemployment insurance; a
compulsory, federally administered retirement system; financial support for
families with dependent children, maternal and child-care programs, and
several public health programs. The New Deal also improved working condi-

Meeting of the anti–New Dealers

Senator Ellison D. “Cotton Ed” Smith of South Carolina cringes at the thought of a
fourth term for Roosevelt, while meeting with fellow anti–New Dealers at the
Mayflower Hotel in Washington.
 The Legacy of the New Deal • 1139

tions and raised wage levels for millions of laborers. Despite what his critics
charged, however, Roosevelt was no socialist; he sought to preserve the basic
capitalist structure. In the process of such bold experimentation and dynamic
preservation, the New Deal represented a “halfway revolution” that perma-
nently altered the nation’s social and political landscape.
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Stabilizing the Economy In March 1933, the economy, including the farm
sector, was shattered, and millions of Americans were without jobs and the
most basic necessities of life. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his “brain trust” of
advisers set out to restore confidence in the economy by propping up the
banking industry and providing short-term emergency relief for the
unemployed, promoting industrial recovery, and raising commodity prices by
encouraging farmers to cut back on production.
• The New Deal Initially, most of the New Deal programs were conceived as
temporary relief and recovery efforts. They eased hardships but did not restore
prosperity. It was during the Second New Deal that major reform measures, such
as Social Security and the Wagner Act, reshaped the nation’s social structure.
• New Deal Criticisms Some conservatives criticized the New Deal for violating
personal and property rights and for steering the nation toward socialism. Some
liberals believed that the measures did not tax the wealthy enough to provide the
aged and disadvantaged with adequate financial security.
• Federal Expansion The New Deal expanded the powers of the national govern-
ment by establishing regulatory bodies and laying the foundation of a social
welfare system. The federal government would in the future regulate business
and provide social welfare programs to avoid social and economic problems.
• Culture of the 1930s The literature of the 1930s turned away from the alien-
ation from materialism that characterized the literary works of the previous
decade’s “lost generation.” John Steinbeck and Richard Wright, for example,
realistically depicted ordinary people living in, and suffering through, extraordi-
nary times. Radio comedies and the new “talking” movies allowed people to
escape their daily troubles.
 CHRONOLOGY

March 1933
March 1933
March 1933
Congress passes the Emergency Banking Relief Act
Congress passes the Beer-Wine Revenue Act
Congress establishes the Civilian Conservation Corps
May 1933 Congress creates the Tennessee Valley Authority
June 1933 Congress establishes the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation
November 1933 Congress creates the Civil Works Administration
1935 President Roosevelt creates the Works Progress
Administration
1935 Congress passes the Wagner Act
1937 Social Security goes into effect
1939 John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath is published
1940 Richard Wright’s Native Son is published

KEY TERMS & NAMES

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Dust Bowl p. 1106 Huey P. Long p. 1122
p. 1101
National Industrial Share-the-Wealth
Twenty-first Amendment Recovery Act p. 1107 program p. 1122
p. 1102
National Recovery Second New Deal p. 1125
First New Deal p. 1103 Administration p. 1107
Federal Writers’ Project
Agricultural Adjustment Act Eleanor Roosevelt p. 1120 p. 1125
p. 1105

28
T H E S E C O N D WOR L D WAR

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• What were the major events leading up to the outbreak of war in

Europe and in Asia?
• What effect did the Second World War have on American society?
• How did the Allied forces win the war in Europe?
• How did the United States gain the upper hand in the Pacific
sphere?
• What efforts did the Allies make to shape the postwar world?

T he unprecedented efforts of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and

the New Dealers to end the Great Depression did not restore
prosperity or return the economy to full employment. In
1940, over 14 percent of Americans remained jobless. That changed dramat-
ically with American involvement in the Second World War. Within months
after the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Roo-
sevelt mobilized all of the nation’s resources to win the battle against fascism
and imperialism. Of course, the horrible war did much more than revive the
economy. It changed the direction and shape of world history and trans-
formed America’s role in international affairs.

F R O M I S O L AT I O N I S M TO I N T E RV E N T I O N

Like Woodrow Wilson, Roosevelt had little experience or interest in

international affairs when first elected president. In his 1933 inaugural
address, he allocated only a sentence to foreign relations. The United States
 Foreign Crises • 1143

remained comfortable with its isolationism from international political tur-

moil. However, an important initiative occurred in November 1933 when
Roosevelt broke precedent with his Republican predecessors and officially
recognized the Soviet Union in hopes of stimulating trade with the commu-
nist nation. That he did so in the face of a scolding from his mother testified
to his courage. Overall, however, the prolonged Depression forced Roosevelt
to adopt a low-profile foreign policy limited to the promotion of trade and
disarmament agreements. As had happened with Woodrow Wilson, the
course of world events would eventually force him to shift from isolationism
to intervention.

THE GOOD NEIGHBOR POLICY Roosevelt announced in his 1933

inaugural address that he would continue the efforts of Herbert Hoover to
promote what he called “the policy of the good neighbor” in the Western
Hemisphere. That same year, at the Seventh Pan-American Conference, the
United States supported a resolution declaring that no nation “has the right
to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another.” True to this nonin-
terventionist commitment, the Roosevelt administration oversaw the final
withdrawal of U.S. troops from Nicaragua and Haiti, and in 1934 the presi-
dent negotiated with Cuba a treaty that dissolved the Platt Amendment and
thus ended the last formal American claim to a right to intervene in Latin
America. By refusing to intervene in Latin American countries, however,
Roosevelt indirectly gave legitimacy and support to several dictators in the
unstable region. In referring to the authoritarian rule of Anastasio Somoza
García in Nicaragua, Roosevelt revealed a pragmatism tinged with cynicism:
“He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”

FOREIGN CRISES

While the Roosevelt administration was grappling with the economic

depression and its social effects, ominous foreign crises began to engage
American attention and concern. Germany and Italy emerged during the
1930s as fascist nations bent on foreign conquest. At the same time, halfway
around the world, in Asia, Japan increasingly fell under the control of mili-
tarists who were convinced that the entire continent should be governed by
their “ruling race.”

I TA LY A N D G E R M A N Y The rise of the Japanese militarists paralleled

the rise of totalitarian dictators in Italy and Germany. Despotism thrives during
1144 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

periods of economic distress and political unrest, and during the 1920s and
1930s mass movements led by demagogues appeared throughout Europe. In
1922, the bombastic journalist Benito Mussolini had seized power in Italy.
Fascism, both in Italy and in Germany, was driven by a determined minority
willing to use violence as a political tool. By 1925, Mussolini was wielding dic-
tatorial power as “Il Duce” (the Leader). All opposition political parties were
eliminated. “Mussolini is always right,” screamed propaganda posters.
There was always something ludicrous about the strutting, chest-thumping
Mussolini. Italy, after all, was a declining industrial power whose perfor-
mance in World War I was a national embarrassment. Germany was another
matter, however, and there was nothing amusing about Mussolini’s German
counterpart, Adolf Hitler. His strange transformation during the 1920s
from failed artist and social misfit to head of the National Socialist German
Workers’ (Nazi) party startled the world. The global Depression offered
Hitler the opportunity to portray himself as the nation’s messianic savior.
He was a fanatical ideologue, ruthless racist, and magnetic speaker who
believed that leadership required exciting the masses through intense emo-
tional speeches. He would lie, he explained, and make his lies big “because in
the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility.” It was a barbaric
strategy, but Hitler believed it was necessary to overthrow the old order and
create a new German empire. As he proclaimed, “We want to be barbarians!
It is an honorable title. We shall rejuvenate the world.”
Made chancellor on January 30, 1933, five weeks before Franklin Delano
Roosevelt was first inaugurated, Hitler banned all political parties except for
the Nazis. He then took the title “der Führer” (the sole and supreme national
leader), assumed absolute power in 1934, and demanded “unconditional
obedience” from the army and the people. There would be no more elec-
tions, no more political parties, no more labor unions, no strikes. A young
German soldier attended one of Hitler’s “spectacle” speeches and reported
that he had never heard a more “brilliant orator.” Hitler’s “magnetic person-
ality is irresistible.” Throughout the 1930s, Hitler’s brutal Nazi police state
cranked up the engines of tyranny and terrorism, propaganda and censor-
ship. Brown-shirted “storm troopers” fanned out across the nation, burning
books, sterilizing or euthanizing the disabled, and persecuting Communists
and Jews, whom Hitler blamed for Germany’s troubles. In 1933, Hitler
pulled Germany out of the League of Nations and threatened to extend con-
trol over all the German-speaking peoples in central Europe.

As the 1930s unfolded, a catastrophic chain

T H E E X PA N D I N G A X I S
of events in Asia and Europe sent the world hurtling toward disaster. In
 Foreign Crises • 1145

Axis leaders
Mussolini and Hitler in Munich, June 1940.

1934, Japan renounced the Five-Power Treaty and began an aggressive mili-
tary build-up in anticipation of expanding its control in Asia. The next year,
Mussolini launched Italy’s conquest of Ethiopia in eastern Africa. In 1935
Hitler, in explicit violation of the Versailles Treaty, announced he was revi-
talizing Germany’s armed forces. The next year, he again brazenly violated
the Versailles Treaty by sending thirty-five thousand troops, with drums
beating and flags flying, into the Rhineland, the demilitarized buffer zone
between France and Germany. The French failed to summon the courage to
oust the German force. Although the Nazi action violated America’s separate
peace treaty with Germany of 1921, no one in the Roosevelt administration
condemned the Nazi incursion. Roosevelt, in fact, went fishing. The failure
of France, Great Britain, and the United States to enforce the provisions of
the Versailles Treaty convinced Hitler that the western democracies were
unwilling to thwart his aggressive plans. Hitler admitted that his show of
force was a theatrical bluff: “If the French had marched into the Rhineland,
we would have had to withdraw with our tail between our legs.”
The year 1936 also witnessed the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, which
began when Spanish troops loyal to General Francisco Franco and other
1146 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

right-wing officers, with the support of the Roman Catholic Church, revolted
against the new democratically elected government. Hitler and Mussolini
rushed troops (“volunteers”), warplanes, and massive amounts of military
and financial aid to support Franco’s fascist insurgency.
At the same time that fascism was on the march across Europe, Japanese
imperialists were on the move again in China. On July 7, 1937, Japanese and
Chinese troops clashed at the Marco Polo Bridge, west of Beijing. The inci-
dent quickly developed into a full-scale war. By December, the Imperial

Keeping in mind the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, explain why Hitler began his
campaign of expansion by invading the Rhineland and the Sudetenland. Why would
Hitler have wanted to retake the Polish Corridor? Why did the attack on Poland begin
World War II, whereas Hitler’s previous invasions of his European neighbors did not?
 Foreign Crises • 1147

July 1937
Japanese troops enter Beijing after the clash at the Marco Polo Bridge.

Japanese Army had captured the Nationalist Chinese capital of Nanjing,

whereupon the undisciplined soldiers ran amok in a predatory frenzy, loot-
ing the city and murdering and raping large numbers of Chinese. Tens of
thousands (perhaps as many as three hundred thousand) civilians were
murdered in what came to be called the Rape of Nanjing.
Meanwhile, the peace of Europe was unraveling. In 1937, Italy joined Ger-
many and Japan in establishing the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo “Axis.” Having rebuilt
German military power, the Austrian-born Hitler forced the Anschluss (union)
of Austria with Germany in March 1938. Paralyzed with fear of another world
war, British and French leaders sought to “appease” Hitler by signing the noto-
rious Munich Pact on September 30, 1938. Without the consent of the Czech
government, the British and French transferred the Sudeten territory in
Czechoslovakia to Germany. The mountainous Sudetenland along the German
border hosted over 3 million ethnic Germans. However, it also contained seven
hundred thousand Czechs and was vital to the defense of Czechoslovakia.
Having promised that the Sudetenland was his last territorial demand,
Hitler violated his pledge on March 15, 1939, when he sent German tanks and
soldiers to conquer the remainder of Czechoslovakia. Hitler triumphantly
paraded through a sullen Prague in triumph. Yet despite such provocative
actions, the European democracies cowered in the face of Hitler’s ruthless
1148 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

behavior. Winston Churchill, who would become the British prime minister
in 1940, described the Munich Pact as “a defeat without a war.” It marked the
“culminating failure of British and French foreign policy and diplomacy over
several years.” The Munich Pact, he predicted, would not end Hitler’s aggres-
sions. “This is only the beginning of the reckoning.”

DEGREES OF NEUTRALITY Most Americans during the 1930s,

including both Republicans and Democrats, responded to the mounting
global crises by deepening their commitment to isolationism. As a Min-
nesota senator declared in 1935, “To hell with Europe and the rest of those
nations!” The isolationist mood was reinforced by a Senate inquiry into the
role of bankers and munitions makers in the American decision to enter
World War I. Chaired by Senator Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota, the com-
mittee concluded in 1937 that bankers and munitions makers had made
scandalous profits from the war. The implication was that arms traders and
bankers (the “merchants of death”) had spurred American intervention in
the European conflict and were still at work promoting wars for profit.
During the 1930s, the United States moved toward complete isolation
from the quarrels of Europe. In 1935, President Roosevelt signed the first of
several neutrality laws intended to prevent the kind of entanglements that
had drawn the United States into World War I. The Neutrality Act of 1935
prohibited Americans from traveling on ships owned by nations at war. It
also forbade the sale of arms and munitions to any “belligerent” nation
whenever the president proclaimed that a state of war existed abroad.
On October 3, 1935, when Italy invaded Ethiopia, Roosevelt invoked the
Neutrality Act. One shortcoming in the law became apparent right away: the
law did not cover trade in war-related materials. For example, Italy did not
need to buy weapons abroad, but it did need to buy crucial supplies, such as
oil, steel, and copper, which the Neutrality Act did not cover. So the sanc-
tions imposed under the Neutrality Act had no deterrent effect on Mus-
solini’s war machine. In the summer of 1936, Italy conquered mineral-rich
Ethiopia. “At last,” a gloating Mussolini exclaimed, “Italy has her empire.”
When Congress reconvened in 1936, it revised the Neutrality Act by
forbidding loans to nations at war. Although the Spanish Civil War
involved a fascist military uprising against an elected government, Roo-
sevelt accepted the French and British position that the western democra-
cies should not intervene. The strong bloc of pro-Franco Catholics in
America, who worried that the left-wing Spanish republic was a secular
threat to the Church, also influenced Roosevelt’s decision. Indeed, during
the brutal civil war, Spanish anarchists and Communists ran amok (“the
 Foreign Crises • 1149

Red Terror”), burning churches and killing thousands of priests, nuns,

and monks. Several thousand Americans volunteered to fight on the side
of the Spanish republic in what came to be called the Abraham Lincoln
Brigade. That the conflict in Spain was technically not a “foreign war” led
Roosevelt to ask Congress in January 1937 to revise the neutrality laws to
apply to civil wars (he later called his action a “grave mistake”). The
United States and the other western democracies then stood by as Hitler
and Mussolini sent combat planes, tanks, and soldiers to Spain in support
of General Franco’s overthrow of democracy, which was completed in
1939, leaving almost a million Spaniards dead.
In the spring of 1937, the Congress passed another neutrality law. The
Neutrality Act of 1937 allowed the president to require that goods other than
arms or munitions exported to warring nations be sold on a cash-and-carry
basis (that is, a nation would have to pay cash and then carry the U.S. goods
away in its own ships). This was intended to preserve a profitable trade with
combatants without running the risk of war.
The new law faced its first test in July 1937, when Japanese and Chinese
forces clashed in China. Since neither Japan nor China officially declared
war, Roosevelt was able to avoid invoking the neutrality law because its net
effect would have favored the Japanese and penalized the supply-dependent
Nationalist Chinese. Then, on December 12, 1937, Japanese planes sank
the U.S. gunboat Panay, which had been lying at anchor in China, on the
Yangtze River, prominently flying the American flag. The sinking of the
Panay generated few calls for retaliation in the United States. In fact, a
Texas Congressman said the incident should lead to the withdrawal of U.S.
forces from Asia. “We should learn that it is about time to mind our own
business.”
Roosevelt, however, was not so sure that the United States could keep its
back turned on an increasingly turbulent world. In October 1937, he deliv-
ered a speech in Chicago, the heartland of isolationism, in which he called
for international cooperation to “quarantine the aggressors” disturbing
world peace. But his appeal for a broader American role in world affairs fell
flat in the Congress and across the nation. A survey revealed that 70 percent
of Americans wanted all U.S. citizens to be removed from China in order to
prevent a possible incident from triggering warfare.
The isolationist mood in the United States peaked in 1938 when Indiana
Congressman Louis Ludlow proposed a constitutional amendment that
would have required a public referendum for a declaration of war except in
the case of an attack on U.S. territory. After intense lobbying from the White
House against the proposal, the Ludlow Amendment barely failed to pass by
1150 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

Neutrality
A 1938 cartoon shows U.S. foreign policy entangled by the serpent of isolationism.

a vote of 209 to 188. The close vote revealed how deeply isolationist senti-
ment was ingrained in American thought during the Great Depression. That
the proposed amendment was defeated also revealed that Roosevelt was
growing increasingly concerned about the need to contain the aggressive
militarism displayed by Japan and Germany.

WA R C L O U D S

During the late 1930s, war clouds thickened over Asia and Europe.
After Adolf Hitler’s troops brazenly occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt abandoned his neutral stance. Hitler and Mus-
solini could no longer be ignored. They were “madmen” who “respect force
and force alone.” Throughout late 1938 and 1939, Roosevelt sought to edu-
cate Americans about the growing menace of fascism. He also convinced
Congress to increase military spending in anticipation of a possible war.

THE CONQUEST OF POLAND Meanwhile, the insatiable Hitler had

set his sights on Poland, Germany’s eastern neighbor. Hitler had long
 War Clouds • 1151

dreamed of Germany acquiring Lebensraum, or living space—territory in

eastern Europe that would enable Germany to expand its empire. Modern
Poland had existed only for twenty years; it had been created by the Treaty of
Versailles that ended the First World War. Now it was about to be gobbled up
again by predatory neighbors. To ensure that the Soviet Union did not inter-
fere with his plans to conquer Poland, Hitler, on August 23, 1939, contra-
dicted his frequent denunciations of communism and signed a Nazi-Soviet
Non-Aggression Pact with Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, in which the two
totalitarian tyrants secretly and cynically agreed to divide up northern and
eastern Europe between them. It was perhaps the most astonishing event of
an astonishing decade. A few days later, on the evening of August 31, 1939,
the German secret police (Gestapo) entered a German concentration camp,
grabbed an unsuspecting prisoner, and took him to a radio station near the
Polish border. There they dressed him in a Polish army uniform and shot
him. The Gestapo then concocted a propaganda story claiming that Poles
had attacked Germany, thereby giving Hitler his pretext for attacking. At
dawn on September 1, 1939, 1.5 million German troops with thousands of
tanks and armored vehicles invaded Poland from the north, south, and west.
Hitler ordered his armies “to kill without mercy men, women, and children
of the Polish race or language.”
This was the final straw. Having allowed Czechoslovakia to be gobbled up
by Hitler’s war machine, Britain and France now did an about-face and
honored their commitment to go to war if Poland were invaded. On Septem-
ber 3, 1939, Europe, the world’s smallest continent, again lapsed into wide-
spread warfare. But it would take weeks for the British and French to mobilize
large armies, in part because they were not eager for an offensive war, hoping
against hope that the mere declaration of war would cause Hitler to pull
back. They were wrong; the Germans massacred the Poles. Sixteen days after
German troops moved across the Polish border, the Soviet Union invaded
Poland from the east. Pressed from all sides, the large but poorly equipped
Polish army (many of them fought on horseback) surrendered, having suf-
fered seventy thousand deaths. On October 6, 1939, the Nazis and Soviets
divided Poland between them. Thereafter, both the Nazis and the Soviets
arrested, deported, enslaved, or murdered over 2 million Poles.

U. S . N E U T R A L I T Y
President Roosevelt responded to the outbreak of
war in Europe by proclaiming U.S. neutrality. However, the president would
not, like Woodrow Wilson had done in 1914, ask Americans to remain neu-
tral in thought because “even a neutral has a right to take account of the
facts.” In September, Roosevelt summoned Congress into special session to
1152 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

revise the Neutrality Act. “I regret the Congress passed the Act,” the presi-
dent said. “I regret equally that I signed the Act.” Under the Neutrality Act of
1939, Britain and France were allowed to send their own freighters to the
United States and buy military supplies.
American public opinion supported such measures. “What the majority
of the American people want,” wrote the editors of the Nation, “is to be as
un-neutral as possible without getting into war.” After the quick German
conquest of Poland, the war in Europe settled into a stalemate during early
1940 that began to be called “the phony war.” What lay ahead, it seemed, was
a long war of attrition in which Britain and France would have the resources
to outlast Hitler. That illusion lasted through the winter before being shat-
tered by new German assaults.

THE STORM IN EUROPE

B L I T Z K R I E G In the spring of 1940, the winter’s long Sitzkrieg (sitting

war) suddenly erupted into Blitzkrieg (lightning war) featuring carefully
coordinated columns of fast-moving German tanks, motorized artillery, and
truck-borne infantry, all supported by warplanes. At dawn on April 9, without
warning, Nazi armies occupied Denmark and landed along the Norwegian
coast. Denmark fell in a day, Norway within a few weeks. On May 10, German
forces invaded neutral Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands (Holland).
A British army sent to help the Belgians and the French was forced to make a
frantic retreat to the coast. The Germans then missed an opportunity to inflict
a crushing defeat on the beleaguered Allies. On May 21, Hitler inexplicably
ordered the fast-moving German armored units to stop, rest, and refuel. Furious
German generals complied, thereby enabling the British to organize a
desperate evacuation of British and French soldiers from the beaches at
Dunkirk, on the northern French coast near the border with Belgium. The
British government enlisted every available boat, from warship to tug to yacht.
Amid the chaos, some 338,000 desperate soldiers escaped to England on over a
thousand ships and small boats, barges, and ferries, leaving behind vast stock-
piles of vehicles, weaponry, and ammunition. Winston Churchill called the
rescue effort a “miracle of deliverance.” Allowing the Allied forces to escape
proved to be the first of many strategic errors that would cost Germany a victory
in the Second World War.
Meanwhile, German forces cut the French armies to pieces and spread
panic throughout the civilian population. On June 14, 1940, the German
swastika flag flew over Paris. Eight days later, French leaders surrendered
 The Storm in Europe • 1153

to Hitler in the same railroad car in which Germans had been forced to sur-
render in 1918. It was the greatest military victory in German history. The
Germans established a puppet French government in Vichy to manage the
vanquished nation and implement its own anti-Jewish policies. “The war is
won,” Hitler told Mussolini. “The rest [conquest of Great Britain and the
Soviet Union] is only a matter of time.”

T H E D E B AT E O V E R A M E R I C A’ S R O L E The rapid collapse of

France stunned everyone, including the Germans. Great Britain now stood
alone facing Hitler’s triumphant war machine, but in Parliament the pugna-
cious new prime minister, Winston Churchill, breathed defiance. He vowed
that the British people would confront Hitler’s menace with “blood, toil, tears,
and sweat.” The British would “go on to the end,” he said; “we shall never sur-
render.” Instead, “we shall fight on and on forever and ever and ever.” If the
independence of Great Britain were to end, Churchill growled, “let it end only
when each one of us lies choking in his own blood on the ground.”
As Hitler prepared to unleash his air force against Britain, the United
States seemed suddenly vulnerable, and it was in no condition to wage world
war if attacked. After World War I, the U.S. Army had been reduced to a
small force; by 1939 it numbered only 175,000 and ranked sixteenth in the
world in size, just behind Romania. It would take time to create a viable mil-
itary force to stop fascism. President Roosevelt called for a precautionary
military build-up and the production of 50,000 combat planes a year. In
response to Churchill’s desperate appeal for military supplies, Roosevelt
promised to provide all possible “aid to the Allies short of war.”
The world crisis transformed Roosevelt. Having been stalemated for much
of his second term by growing congressional opposition, he was revitalized
by the urgent need to stop Nazism in Europe. In June 1940 the president set up
the National Defense Research Committee to coordinate military research,
including a top-secret effort to develop an atomic bomb. The famous physicist
Albert Einstein, a Jewish Austrian refugee from Nazism, had alerted Roosevelt
in the fall of 1939 that the Germans were trying to create atomic bombs,
leading the president to take action. The Manhattan Project launched an
alliance between scientific research and the U.S. military that would blossom
into what Dwight D. Eisenhower would call the “military-industrial complex.”
The effort to develop an atomic bomb was so secretive that few members of
Congress or the Roosevelt administration knew about it.
The fall of France in late June 1940 was a devastating blow that left Great
Britain standing alone against the Nazi onslaught, just as the British had
stood alone against the menace of Napoleon in 1805. Late summer of 1940
1154 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

brought the desperate Battle of

Britain. During August the Ger-
mans gained control of all of
western Europe, and Hitler
began preparations for an inva-
sion of Britain. His first priority
was to destroy the British air
force, just as the Germans had
done to the Polish, Dutch, Bel-
gian, and French air forces. In
July and August, the numeri-
cally superior German Air Force
(Luftwaffe) launched daily
bombing raids against military
targets—ships and naval bases,
warplanes and airfields—across
The Blitz southeast England in prepara-
tion for an invasion across the
In London, St. Paul’s Cathedral looms above
the destruction wrought by German bombs English Channel from Nazi-
during the Blitz. Winston Churchill’s controlled France.
response: “We shall never surrender.” The British Royal Air Force
(RAF), with the benefit of radar,
a new technology, surprised the world by fending off the German air assault.
Hitler then ordered the German bombers to change tactics and target facto-
ries, civilians, and cities (especially London) in massive nighttime raids
designed to break British morale. His decision backfired. In what came to be
called “the Blitz,” during September and October of 1940, the Germans
caused massive destruction in Britain’s major cities. Waves of German
bombers, escorted by hordes of fighter planes, crossed the English Channel.
On some days, a thousand German and British planes were locked in combat
over British cities. The raids killed some forty-three thousand British civil-
ians. But the Blitz enraged rather than deflated the British people at the same
time that British warplanes were destroying large numbers of German fight-
ers and bombers (1,300 between July and October). The British success in the
air proved to be a decisive turning point in the war. In October 1940, Hitler
was forced to postpone his planned invasion of the British Isles. If the Ger-
mans had destroyed the RAF, they could have invaded and conquered Great
Britain. Instead, Great Britain, with growing assistance from the United
States, became an increasingly powerful threat to Germany’s western flank.
 The Storm in Europe • 1155

German submarine attacks on

British ships, meanwhile, strained the
resources of the battered Royal Navy.
To address the challenge, Churchill
and Roosevelt negotiated an executive
agreement by which fifty “overaged”
U.S. destroyers went to the British in
return for allowing the U.S. to build
naval and air bases on British islands
in the Caribbean. Roosevelt explained
the bold action as necessary for
defense of the “American hemisphere.”
The stakes rose considerably when, on
September 16, Roosevelt signed the
“The Only Way We Can Save Her
first peacetime conscription in Ameri- [Democracy]”
can history, requiring the registration
Political cartoon suggesting the U.S.
of all 16 million men aged twenty-one not intervene in European wars.
to thirty-five.
The rapidly shifting state of global affairs prompted vigorous debate
between “internationalists,” who believed America’s security demanded aid
to Britain, and isolationists, who charged that Roosevelt was drawing the
United States into another European war. In 1940, internationalists orga-
nized the nonpartisan Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies.
On the other hand, isolationists, mostly Republicans, formed the America
First Committee. The isolationists argued that the war involved, in Idaho
Senator William E. Borah’s words, “nothing more than another chapter in
the bloody volume of European power politics.” Borah and others predicted
that a Nazi victory over Great Britain, while distasteful, would pose no threat
to America’s security.

R O O S E V E LT ’ S T H I R D T E R MIn the midst of the terrible news from

Europe, the 1940 presidential campaign dominated public attention. In June,
just as France was falling to Germany, the Republicans nominated a dark-
horse candidate, Wendell L. Willkie of Indiana, a plain-spoken corporate
lawyer who as a former Democrat had voted for Roosevelt in 1932 and had
remained registered as a Democrat until 1938. At the July Democratic con-
vention in Chicago, Roosevelt easily won the nomination for a third term.
Through the summer of 1940, Roosevelt focused on urgent matters of
defense and diplomacy rather than making campaign trips. Willkie warned that
1156 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

Roosevelt was a “warmonger,” predicting that “if you re-elect him you may
expect war in April, 1941.” To this Roosevelt responded, “I have said this before,
but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent
into any foreign wars.” In November Roosevelt, buoyed by near universal sup-
port among labor unionists and northern blacks, won an unprecedented
third term by a comfortable margin of 27 million votes to Willkie’s 22 million
and by a more decisive margin, of 449 to 82, in the Electoral College.

THE “ A R S E N A L O F D E M O C R A C Y ” A reelected Roosevelt moved

quickly to provide even more military aid to Britain, whose cash was run-
ning out. Since direct American loans to the British government were pro-
hibited by the Johnson Debt Default Act of 1934, the president created an
ingenious device to supply British needs: the lend-lease program. The lend-
lease bill, introduced in Congress on January 10, 1941, authorized the presi-
dent to lend or lease military equipment to “any country whose defense the
President deems vital to the defense of the United States.” After the war
ended, the loaned equipment would be returned to the United States. Roo-

Lend-lease
Members of the “Mother’s Crusade,” urging defeat of the lend-lease program, kneel
in prayer in front of the Capitol. They feared the program would bring the United
States into the European war.
 The Storm in Europe • 1157

sevelt explained to Congress that the lend-lease program was “like lending
your neighbor a garden hose when his house is on fire.” But isolationists
were furious. Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, an ardent isolationist, argued
that “lending war equipment is a good deal like lending chewing gum; you
wouldn’t want it back when it was through.” For two months, a bitter debate
over the lend-lease bill raged in Congress and across the country. Isolation-
ists saw it eventually forcing the nation into the European conflict. But the
president had his way in Congress. Lend-lease became law in March, prompt-
ing Roosevelt to announce that it represented “the end of any attempts at
appeasement. . . .” Most of the dissenting votes in Congress were Republicans
from the staunchly isolationist Midwest.
While the nation debated neutrality, the European war expanded. Italy had
officially entered the war in June 1940 as Germany’s ally. In the spring of 1941,
German troops joined Italian forces in Libya, forcing the British army in
North Africa to withdraw to Egypt. In April 1941, Nazi forces overwhelmed
Yugoslavia and Greece. With Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria forced into
the Axis fold, Hitler controlled nearly all of Europe. But his ambition was
unbounded.
At 3:15 A.M. on June 22, 1941, without warning, massive German armies
suddenly invaded the Soviet Union, their supposed ally. Despite numerous
warnings from Soviet officials, Stalin had willfully refused to prepare for such
an event. A supremely confident Hitler planned to destroy communism,
enslave the vast population of the Soviet Union, and exploit its considerable
natural resources. As a German officer explained, the invasion of Russia was a
renewal of the “old fight of German against Slav, the defense of European cul-
ture against the Muscovite-Asiatic flood, and the repulse of Jewish Bolshe-
vism.” The war “must have as its goal the destruction of today’s Russia—and
for this reason it must be conducted with unprecedented harshness.” The goal
of Hitler’s “Operation Barbarossa” was to “annihilate the enemy completely
and utterly.” Hitler also assumed that once Russia was conquered, Great
Britain would sue for peace.
Hitler’s decision to attack the Soviet Union was the defining event of the
European war. For years, he had gambled on the indecision and weakness of
his enemies, and repeatedly he had been proven right. Attacking the Soviet
Union, however, would prove to be Hitler’s greatest mistake. Initially, how-
ever, his surprise attack succeeded. Joined by Romanian and Finnish allies,
the Nazis massed 3.6 million troops and thousands of tanks and planes
along the 1,800-mile front from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea. It was the
largest invasion force in European history. The German armies raced across
western Russia; entire Soviet armies were surrounded and destroyed. The
1158 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

German army commander claimed that “the Russian campaign has been
won in the space of two weeks.” He spoke too soon.
For four months the Soviets retreated in the face of the German blitzkrieg. In
those four months, German forces occupied six hundred thousand square
miles of Russian territory and captured 3 million Soviet troops, besieging
Leningrad (formerly St. Petersburg) and threatening Moscow. The German
invaders had conquered an area three times the size of France. The scale and
brutality of the war on the Eastern Front were mind-boggling. When the Ger-
mans conquered the city of Kiev, some six hundred thousand Soviet troops
surrendered. Stalin flirted with the idea of surrender before deciding that the
Soviets would make a desperate last stand at Moscow, Leningrad, and Sev-
astopol. The siege of Leningrad lasted for nine hundred days and killed seven
hundred and fifty thousand civilians, many of whom starved to death after the
Germans surrounded the city. During the Battle of Moscow, Russian defenders
executed eight thousand civilians because of “cowardice”. Gradually, the Rus-
sians slowed the Nazi advance. Then, during the winter of 1941–1942, Hitler’s
lightly clad legions began to learn the bitter lesson the Russians had taught
Napoleon and the French army in 1812. Invading armies must contend with
the brutal Russian winter (temperatures of -20 degrees Fahrenheit) and Rus-
sian tenacity. Over one hundred thousand German soldiers died of frostbite.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill had already decided to offer British sup-
port to the Soviet Union in case of such an attack, for the Russians, so long as
they held out against the Nazis, helped to ensure the survival of Britain. Roo-
sevelt adopted the same pragmatic policy, offering U.S. aid to the Soviet Union.
American supplies were now indispensable to Europe’s defense. To deliver mas-
sive aid to Britain and the Soviet Union, convoys of supply ships had to maneu-
ver through German submarine “wolf packs” in the North Atlantic. In April
1941, Roosevelt informed Churchill that the U.S. Navy would extend its patrols
in the North Atlantic nearly all the way to Iceland in an effort to deter German
submarine attacks.
In August 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill held a secret meeting off New-
foundland, where they drew up a joint statement of “common principles”
known as the Atlantic Charter. It pledged that after the “final destruction of
the Nazi tyranny” the victors would promote the self-determination of all
peoples, economic cooperation, freedom of the seas, and a new system of
international security. By September, eleven anti-Axis nations, including the
Soviet Union, had endorsed the charter.
Thus Roosevelt had led the United States into a joint statement of war
aims with the anti-Axis powers. It was not long before shooting incidents
involved American ships in the North Atlantic. On October 17, 1941, while
 The Storm in the Pacific • 1159

the destroyer Kearny was attacking German submarines, it was hit by a Ger-
man torpedo, and eleven lives were lost. Two weeks later, a German subma-
rine sank the destroyer Reuben James, with a loss of 115 seamen. The sinking
spurred Congress to change the 1939 Neutrality Act by repealing the bans on
arming merchant vessels and allowing them to enter combat zones and the
ports of nations at war. Step by step, the United States had given up neutrality
and embarked on naval warfare against Nazi Germany. Still, Americans
hoped to avoid taking the final step into all-out war. The decision to go to war
would be made in response to aggression in an unexpected quarter—Hawaii.

THE STORM IN THE PA C I F I C

J A PA N E S E A G G R E S S I O N After the Nazi victories in Europe during

the spring of 1940, U.S. relations with Japan took a turn for the worse. In
1940, Japan and the United States began a series of moves, each of which
aggravated the other and pushed the two nations closer to war. During the
summer, Japan forced the helpless Vichy French government, now under
German control, to permit the construction of Japanese airfields in French-
controlled northern Indochina and to cut off the railroad into south China.
The United States responded with the Export Control Act of July 2, 1940,
which authorized the president to restrict the export of munitions and other
strategic materials to Japan. Gradually, Roosevelt extended embargoes on
aviation gas, scrap iron, and other supplies.
On September 27, 1940, the Tokyo government signed a Tripartite Pact
with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, by which each pledged to declare war
on any nation that attacked any of them. On April 13, 1941, Japan signed a
non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union. When Germany invaded the
Soviet Union in June, the Japanese were freed of any threat from the north—
at least for a while.
In July 1941, Japan announced that it was taking control of French
Indochina. Roosevelt took three steps in response: he froze all Japanese assets
in the United States, he restricted oil exports to Japan (the United States was
then producing half of the world’s oil), and he merged the armed forces of
the Philippines with the U.S. Army and put their commander, General Doug-
las MacArthur, in charge of all U.S. forces in east Asia. Forced by the Ameri-
can embargo to secure other oil supplies, the Japanese army and navy began
planning attacks on the Dutch and British colonies in the South Pacific.
Actions by both sides put the United States and Japan on a collision
course leading to a war that neither wanted. In his talks with the Japanese
 1160 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

ambassador in Washington, Secretary of State Cordell Hull demanded that

Japan withdraw its forces from French Indochina and China as the price of
renewed trade with the United States. Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe,
while known as a man of democratic principles who preferred peace, caved
in to pressures from the militarists. Perhaps he had no choice. Whatever the
case, the Japanese warlords seriously misjudged the United States when they
decided that the U.S. Navy was a threat to their expansionist ambitions and
must be destroyed.

U . S . S . R . KAMCHATKA
A PENINSULA
mur R.

(U.S.S.R.)

Lupin (Man-chou-li) SAKHALIN,

1905
M ON GOL IA Harbin Khabarovsk KURIL ISLANDS,
MANCHURIA, 1875
Vladivostok
Mukden (Shen-yang)1932
Kweisui (Hu-ho-hao-t’e), 1937 JAPANESE EXPANSION
Beijing, Port Arthur (Lü-shun), 1905
1937 KOREA JAPAN BEFORE PEARL HARBOR
R.

w K’ai-feng, Protectorate, 1905

l o Territory under Japanese
C H I N A Yel 1938
Annexed, 1910 Tokyo
Yan’-an control, Dec. 7, 1941
Han-k’ou, SHAN-TUNG PEN., 1905
I-ch’ang, 1940 1938 Shanghai, 1937 1875 Dates indicate year of
Chungking BONIN IS., acquisition or occupation.
. Nan-ch’ang, Hang-chou, RYUKYU 1876
eR
n gtz 1939 1937 ISLANDS, 1879
a
Y

Amoy, 1938 PESCADORES (P’ENG-HU), 1895

VOLCANO
Swatow (Shan-t’ou), 1939 FORMOSA ISLANDS, MARCUS ISLAND, 1899
Canton, 1938 (TAIWAN), 1895 1891
BURMA Hanoi Hong Kong PACIFIC
M

(MYANMAR) KWANGCHOW (Fr.), 1940

ek
ong

HAI-NAN, 1939 PHILIPPINE MARIANA OCEAN

THAI- SOUTH ISLANDS
R.

LAND FRENCH CHINA SEA

INDOCHINA, SEA GUAM (U.S.)
PHILIPPINE
1940 ISLANDS MICRONESIA
Saigon (U.S.) Occupied 1914, Mandated 1922
(Ho Chi Minh City) MARSHALL
CAROLINE ISLANDS ISLANDS
BRITISH
MALAYA
Singapore

0 400 800 Miles

DUTCH EAST INDIES
(INDONESIA) 0 400 800 Kilometers

Why did the Japanese want to control French Indochina and the Dutch East Indies?
Why did Japan sign the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy?
 The Storm in the Pacific • 1161

T H E AT TA C K O N P E A R L H A R B O R Late in August 1941, Japanese

Prime Minister Konoe proposed a meeting with President Roosevelt. Soon
afterward, on September 6, Japanese military leaders secretly approved a
surprise attack on U.S. bases in Hawaii and gave Konoe six weeks in which to
reach a settlement. In October, Konoe urged War Minister Hideki Tōjō to
consider withdrawal of Japanese forces in China while saving face by keeping
some troops in north China. General Tōjō refused. Konoe resigned on Octo-
ber 15; Tōjō became prime minister the next day. The war party had now
assumed control of the Japanese government, and Tōjō viewed war with the
United States as inevitable.
On November 20, a Japanese official presented Secretary of State Cordell
Hull with Tōjō’s final proposal: Japan promised to occupy no more territory in
Asia if the United States would cut off aid to China and restore trade with
Japan. On November 26, Hull insisted that Japan withdraw from China alto-
gether. Tōjō, who had expected the United States to refuse the demands,
ordered a powerful fleet of Japanese warships to begin steaming secretly toward
Hawaii, crowded with U.S. military installations, including Pearl Harbor, the
massive naval base. The naval commander, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, said
his audacious plan was an all-or-nothing gamble “conceived in desperation” to
destroy the U.S. Pacific fleet, while Japanese armies invaded British Malaya and
the Dutch East Indies, both of which were rich in supplies of rubber and oil. He
knew that the Japanese could not defeat the United States in a long war; their
only hope was “to decide the fate of the war on the very first day.”
Officials in Washington, believing that war was imminent, sent warnings
to U.S. commanders in the Pacific that the Japanese might attack somewhere
in the southwest Pacific. But no one expected that Japan would launch a sur-
prise attack five thousand miles away, at Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor on the island
of Oahu. In the early morning of December 7, 1941, low-flying Japanese
planes began bombing the unsuspecting American fleet at Pearl Harbor. Of
the eight American battleships, all were sunk or disabled, along with eleven
other ships. At airfields on the island, the Japanese bombers destroyed 180
American planes. The raid, which lasted less than two hours, killed more than
2,400 American servicemen and civilians and wounded nearly 1,200 more.
The surprise attack fulfilled the dreams of its planners, but it fell short of
success in two ways. The Japanese bombers ignored the onshore maintenance
facilities and oil tanks in Hawaii that supported the U.S. fleet, without which
the surviving ships might have been forced back to the West Coast, and they
missed the American aircraft carriers that had left port a few days earlier. In
the naval war to come, aircraft carriers would prove to be the decisive weapon.
1162 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

The attack on Pearl Harbor

This view from an army airfield shows the destruction brought on by the surprise
attack.

In a larger sense, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was a spectacular miscal-
culation. It aroused the Americans to wage total war until a devastated Japan
surrendered.
With one stroke at Pearl Harbor on December 7, the Japanese had silenced
America’s debate on neutrality. People boiled over in vengeful fury as the
United States was yanked into the Second World War. The next day, President
Roosevelt, calm, composed, and determined, delivered his war message to
Congress: “Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—
the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval
and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” Congress voted for the war resolution
with near unanimity, the sole exception being Representative Jeannette
Rankin, a Montana pacifist who refused to vote for war in 1917 or 1941. On
December 11, Germany and Italy declared war on what Hitler called the “half
Judaized and the other half Negrified” United States, a nation that he insisted
“was not dangerous to us.” The separate wars that were being waged by
armies in Asia, Europe, and Africa had become one global conflict, shattering
American isolationism.
 A World War • 1163

A W O R L D WA R

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor embroiled the United States in a

global conflict that would transform the nation’s social and economic life, as
well as its position in international affairs. The Second World War would
become the most destructive conflict in history; over 50 million deaths resulted
from the war, two thirds of them civilians. The fighting was so terrible in its
intensity and obscene in its cruelties that it altered the nature of war itself. The
warring nations developed powerful new weapons—plastic explosives, rockets,
napalm, jet airplanes, and atomic bombs—and systematic genocide emerged as
an explicit war aim of the Nazis. The scorching passions of such an all-out war
encouraged horrific excesses. The Nazis murdered up to 6 million Jewish civil-
ians and many others. Racist propaganda flourished on both sides, and
seething hatred of the enemy led to the torture and execution of many military
and civilian prisoners. The physical destruction was unprecedented, leveling
whole cities, dismembering nations, and transforming societies. Many decades
later, the world is still coping with the war’s consequences.

S E T B A C K S I N T H E PA C I F I C The United States had declared war on

December 8, but the nation was woefully unprepared to wage a world war
against what Roosevelt called the “forces of savagery and barbarism.” The
army and navy were understaffed and underequipped. And it would take
months for the economy to make the transition to full-scale military pro-
duction. Yet time was of the essence. Japanese and German forces were on
the move. For months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the news from the
Pacific was “all bad,” as President Roosevelt confessed. In quick sequence, the
Japanese captured numerous Allied outposts before the end of December
1941: Guam and Wake Islands, the Gilbert Islands, and Hong Kong. “Every-
where in the Pacific,” said Winston Churchill, “we were weak and naked.”
In the Philippines, U.S. forces and their Filipino allies, outmanned, out-
gunned, and malnourished, surrendered in the early spring of 1942. On April
10, the Japanese gathered some twelve thousand captured American troops
along with sixty-six thousand Filipinos and forced them to march sixty-five
miles in six days up the Bataan peninsula. Already underfed, ravaged by trop-
ical diseases, and provided with little food and water, the prisoners of war
were brutalized in what came to be known as the Bataan Death March. Those
who fell out of line were bayoneted or shot. Others were beaten, stabbed, or
shot for no reason. Over ten thousand of the prisoners of war died along the
way. News of the Bataan Death March outraged Americans and helps explain
the Pacific war’s ferocious emotional intensity.
1164 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

By the summer of 1942, Japan

had seized control of a vast new
Asian empire and was on the
verge of assaulting Australia
when Japanese naval leaders suc-
cumbed to what one admiral
called “victory disease.” Intoxi-
cated with easy victories and
lusting for more conquests, they
pushed on into the South Pacific,
intending to isolate Australia,
and strike again at Hawaii. A
Japanese mistake and a stroke of
American luck enabled the U.S.
Navy to frustrate the plan, how-
ever. The U.S. aircraft carriers
that were luckily at sea during the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
spent several months harassing
Early defeats Japanese outposts. Their most
U.S. prisoners of war, captured by the Japan- spectacular exploit, an air raid on
ese in the Philippines, 1942. Tokyo itself, was launched on
April 18, 1942. B-25 bombers
took off from the carrier Hornet and, unable to land on its deck, proceeded
to China after dropping their bombs over Tokyo. The raid caused only token
damage but did much to lift American morale amid a series of defeats
elsewhere.

C O R A L S E A A N D M I D WAY During the spring of 1942, U.S. forces

finally halted the Japanese advance toward Australia in two key naval battles.
The Battle of the Coral Sea (May 7–8, 1942) stopped a Japanese fleet convoy-
ing troops toward New Guinea. Planes from the Lexington and the Yorktown
sank one Japanese carrier, damaged another, and destroyed smaller ships.
American losses were greater, but the Japanese threat against Australia was
repulsed.
Less than a month after the Coral Sea engagement, Admiral Yamamoto
steered his armada for Midway, the westernmost of Hawaii’s inhabited
islands, from which he hoped to render Pearl Harbor helpless. This time it
was the Japanese who were the victims of surprise. Working night and day
deciphering some fifty thousand five-digit numerical groups, American
 Mobilization at Home • 1165

cryptanalysts (“codebreakers”) had broken the Japanese military communi-

cations code. This breakthrough reshaped the balance of power in the Pacific
war. Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander of the U.S. central Pacific fleet,
now learned from intercepted Japanese messages where Yamamoto’s fleet was
heading. He reinforced the American base at tiny Midway Island with planes
and aircraft carriers.
The first Japanese foray against Midway, on June 4, 1942, severely dam-
aged the island’s defenses, but at the cost of about a third of the Japanese
planes. American bombers struck back, sinking three aircraft carriers, and
badly damaging a fourth that was later sunk by a torpedo; it was the first
defeat for the Japanese navy in 350 years and the turning point of the Pacific
war. It blunted Japan’s military momentum, eliminated the threat to Hawaii,
demonstrated that aircraft carriers, not battleships, were the decisive ele-
ments of modern naval warfare, and bought time for the United States to
mobilize its massive industrial productivity for a wider war. Japanese hopes
for a short, decisive war were dashed at the crucial Battle of Midway.

M O B I L I Z AT I O N AT HOME

A N AT I O N AT WA R American entry into the war ended not only the

long public debate on isolation and intervention but also the long economic
Depression. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor triggered an unprece-
dented mobilization of America’s human, physical, and financial resources as
the entire economy was harnessed to the war effort. Winning the war against
Germany and Japan would require all of the nation’s immense industrial
capacity and full employment of the workforce. On December 18, 1941, Con-
gress passed the War Powers Act, which gave the president far-reaching
authority to reorganize and create government agencies, regulate business
and industry, and even censor mail and other forms of communication.
With the declaration of war, men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five
were drafted. At one time or another between 1941–1945, some 16 million
men and several hundred thousand women were in the military. The average
soldier or sailor who served in the war was 26 years old, stood five feet eight,
and weighed 144 pounds, an inch taller and eight pounds heavier than the
typical recruit in World War I.

E C O N O M I C C O N V E R S I O N The War Production Board, created in

1942, directed the conversion of industrial manufacturing to war produc-
tion. In 1941, more than 3 million automobiles were manufactured in the
1166 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

United States; only 139 were built during the next four years. Instead of cars,
the automobile plants began making tanks and airplanes. President Roosevelt
wanted to confront the enemy with a “crushing superiority of equipment.” To
do so, he established staggering military production goals: sixty thousand
warplanes in 1942 and twice as many the following year, fifty-five thousand
anti-aircraft guns, and tens of thousands of tanks. Military-related production
skyrocketed from 2 percent of the nation’s economic production in 1939 to
40 percent in 1943. “Something is happening that Hitler doesn’t understand,”
announced Time magazine in 1942. “. . . . It is the miracle of production.”

F I N A N C I N G T H E WA R To cover the war’s huge cost, Congress passed

the Revenue Act of 1942 (also called the Victory Tax). It raised tax rates and
increased the number of taxpayers. Whereas in 1939 only about 4 million
people (about 5 percent of the workforce) filed tax returns, the new act made
virtually everyone (75 percent) a taxpayer. By the end of war, 90 percent of
workers were paying income tax. Tax revenues covered about 45 percent
of military costs from 1939 to 1946; the government borrowed the rest. In
all, by the end of the war the national debt was six times what it had been at
the start of the war.
The size of the federal government soared along with its budget during
the war. The number of federal workers grew from one million to four mil-
lion. Throughout the economy, jobs were suddenly plentiful. The nation’s
unemployment rate plummeted from 14 percent in 1940 to 2 percent in 1943.
Millions of people who had lived on the margins of the economic system,
especially women, were now brought fully into the economy. Stubborn pock-
ets of poverty did not disappear, but for most civilians, especially those who
had earlier lost their jobs and homes to the Depression, the war spelled a bet-
ter life than ever before, despite the rationing of various consumer items.

E C O N O M I C C O N T RO L S The war raised fears of inflation as consumer

goods grew scarce. In 1942, Congress authorized the Office of Price Adminis-
tration to set price ceilings. With prices frozen, basic goods had to be allocated
through rationing, with coupons doled out for sugar, coffee, gasoline, automo-
bile tires, and meat. The government promoted patriotic frugality with a mas-
sive public relations campaign that circulated posters with slogans such as “Use
it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” Businesses and workers chafed at
the wage and price controls. On occasion the government seized industries
threatened by strikes. Despite these problems the government effort to stabilize
wages and prices succeeded. By the end of the war, consumer prices had risen
about 31 percent, a record far better than the World War I rise of 62 percent.
 Social Effects of the War • 1167

DOMESTIC C O N S E R VAT I S M
Despite government efforts to promote
patriotic sacrifice among civilians, dis-
content with price controls, labor short-
ages, rationing, and other petty grievances
spread. In the 1942 congressional elec-
tions, Republicans gained forty-six seats
in the House and nine in the Senate.
Democratic losses outside the “Solid
South” strengthened the conservative
southern delegation’s position within the
party. During the 1940s, a bipartisan
coalition of conservatives dismantled
“nonessential” New Deal agencies such as
the Work Projects Administration (origi-
nally the Works Progress Administra- War-effort advertisement
tion), the National Youth Administration, The Office of War Information
the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the created the ad’s slogan in 1943.
National Resources Planning Board.
Organized labor, despite substantial gains during the war, felt the impact
of the conservative trend. In the spring of 1943, when John L. Lewis led the
coal miners out on strike, Congress passed the Smith-Connally War Labor
Disputes Act, which authorized the government to seize plants and mines
useful to the war effort. In 1943 a dozen states adopted laws restricting pick-
eting and other union activities, and in 1944 Arkansas and Florida set in
motion a wave of “right-to-work” legislation that outlawed the closed shop
(requiring that all employees be union members).

SOCIAL EFFECTS OF THE WA R

In making the United States the “great arsenal of democracy,” the Roo-
sevelt administration transformed the economy into the world’s most effi-
cient military machine. By 1945, the year the war ended, the United States
would be manufacturing fully half of the goods produced in the world. Such
an economic miracle transformed American society.

M O B I L I Z AT I O N I N T H E W E S T A N D S O U T H The dramatic expan-

sion of military production after 1940 and the recruitment of millions of peo-
ple into the armed forces and defense industries triggered rapid growth in the
1168 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

western states. The Far West experienced the fastest rate of urban growth in the
country. Nearly 8 million people moved into the states west of the Mississippi
River between 1940 and 1950. The migration of workers to new defense jobs in
the West had significant demographic effects. Lured by news of job openings
and higher wages, African Americans from Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and
Louisiana headed west. During the war years, Seattle’s African American popu-
lation jumped from four thousand to forty thousand, Portland’s from two
thousand to fifteen thousand.
The South also experienced dramatic social changes as a result of the war
effort. Sixty of the one hundred new army camps created during the war were
in southern states. The construction of military bases and the influx of new
personnel transformed the local economies. The demand for military uniforms
provided a boon to southern textile mills. Manufacturing jobs led tens of thou-

Changing focus
With mobilization for war as the nation’s priority, many New Deal programs were
allowed to expire.
 Social Effects of the War • 1169

sands of “dirt poor” sharecroppers and tenant farmers, many of them African
Americans, to leave the land and gain a steady wage working in mills and facto-
ries. Throughout the United States during the Second World War, the rural
population decreased by 20 percent.

C H A N G I N G R O L E S F O R WO M E N The war marked an important

watershed in the status of women. With millions of men going into military
service, the demand for civilian workers shook up old prejudices about sex
roles in the workplace—and in the military. Nearly two hundred thousand
women served in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) and the navy’s equiva-
lent, Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES). Others
joined the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard, and the Army Air Force. Over
6 million women entered the workforce during the war, an increase of more
than 50 percent overall and in manufacturing alone an increase of some
110 percent. One striking feature of the new labor scene was the proportion
of older, married women in
the workforce. In 1940 about
15 percent of married women
were gainfully employed; by 1945
about 24 percent were. Many
men opposed the trend. A dis-
gruntled male legislator asked
what would happen to tradi-
tional domestic tasks if women
flocked to factories: “Who will do
the cooking, the washing, the
mending, the humble homey
tasks to which every woman has
devoted herself; who will rear
and nurture the children?” Many
women, however, were eager to
get away from the grinding rou-
tine of domestic life. A female
welder remembered that her
wartime job “was the first time I
had a chance to get out of the
kitchen and work in industry and Women in the military
make a few bucks. This was This navy-recruiting poster urged women
something I had never dreamed to join the WAVES (Women Accepted for
would happen.” Volunteer Emergency Service).
1170 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE SECOND WO R L D WA R

Although Americans found themselves fighting against the explicit racial
and ethnic bigotry promoted by fascism and Nazism, racism in the United
States did not end during the war. The Red Cross, for example, initially
refused to accept blood donated by blacks, and the president of North Amer-
ican Aviation announced that “we will not employ Negroes.” Blacks who
were hired often were limited to the lowest-paid, lowest-skilled jobs.
Some courageous black leaders refused to accept such racist practices. In
1941, A. Philip Randolph, the head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car
Porters, planned a march on Washington, D.C., to demand an end to racial
discrimination in defense industries. To fend off the march, the Roosevelt
administration struck a bargain. The Randolph group called off its demon-
stration in return for a presidential order that forbade discrimination in
defense industries. More than a half million African Americans left the
South for better opportunities during the war years, and more than a million
blacks nationwide joined the industrial workforce for the first time.

A F R I C A N A M E R I C A N S I N U N I F O R M The most volatile social

issue ignited by the war was African American participation in the military.
In 1941, the armed forces were the most racially polarized institution in the
nation. But African Americans rushed to enlist after the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor. As African American Joe Louis, the world heavyweight boxing
champion, stressed, “Lots of things [are] wrong with America, but Hitler
ain’t going to fix them.” About a million African Americans—men and
women—served in the armed forces during the war, but in racially segre-
gated units. Black soldiers and sailors were initially excluded from combat
units and relegated to menial tasks. Black officers also could not command
white soldiers or sailors. Henry L. Stimson, the secretary of war, cavalierly
claimed that “leadership is not embedded in the negro race.” Every army
camp and navy base had segregated facilities—and frequent and sometimes
bloody racial “incidents.” Among the most famous African American ser-
vicemen were some six hundred pilots trained in Tuskegee, Alabama. The
so-called Tuskegee Airmen ended up flying more than fifteen thousand mis-
sions during the war. Their unquestionable excellence spurred military and
civilian leaders to integrate the armed forces after the war.

T H E D O U B L E V C A M PA I G N In 1942, the editors of the Pittsburgh

Courier, the black newspaper with the largest national circulation, urged
African Americans to promote civil rights while also supporting the war effort.
It was called the Double V campaign because the newspaper published two
 Social Effects of the War • 1171

Tuskegee Airmen, 1942

One of the last segregated military training schools, the flight school at Tuskegee
trained African American men for air combat during the Second World War.

interlocking Vs with the theme “Democracy: Victory at Home, Victory

Abroad.” The campaign encouraged blacks to support the war effort while
fighting for civil rights and racial equality at home. The Double V campaign
also demanded that African Americans who were risking their lives abroad
receive full citizenship rights at home. As the newspaper explained, the Dou-
ble V campaign represented a “two-pronged attack” against those who
would enslave “us at home and those who abroad would enslave us. WE
HAVE A STAKE IN THIS FIGHT. . . . WE ARE AMERICANS TOO!” The
editors stressed that no one should interpret their “militant” efforts on
behalf back civil rights “as a plot to impede the war effort. Negroes recognize
that the first factor in the survival of this nation is the winning of the war.
But they feel integration of Negroes into the whole scheme of things ‘revital-
izes’ the U.S. war program.” The response among the nation’s black commu-
nity to the Courier’s Double V campaign was “overwhelming.” The Courier
was swamped with telegrams and letters of support supporting the public
relations campaign. Double V clubs sprouted across the nation. Other black
newspapers across the nation joined the effort to promote the values at
home that American forces were defending abroad.
Throughout the war, African Americans highlighted the irony of the
United States fighting against racism abroad while tolerating racism at home.
“The army is about to take me to fight for democracy,” a Detroit draftee said,
1172 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

Victory at Home, Victory Abroad

The Pittsburgh Courier sparked a national “Double V” campaign to fight for democ-
racy abroad, in the war effort, and for democracy at home, in civil rights and racial
equality.

“but I would [rather] fight for democracy right here.” During the summer of
1943 alone there were 274 race-related incidents in almost 50 cities. In
Detroit, growing racial tensions on a hot afternoon sparked incidents at a
park that escalated into a full-fledged riot. Fighting raged through June 20
and 21, until federal troops arrived on the second evening. By then, twenty-
five blacks and nine whites had been killed, and more than seven hundred
people had been injured.

MEXICANS AND MEXICAN AMERICANS As rural dwellers moved

to the western cities during the war, many farm counties experienced a labor
shortage. In an ironic about-face, local and federal government authorities
who before the war had forced undocumented Mexican laborers back across
the border now recruited them to harvest crops on American farms. Before it
would provide the needed workers, however, the Mexican government insisted
that the United States ensure minimum working and living conditions for the
migrant farm workers. The result was the creation of the bracero program in
1942, whereby the Mexican government, eager to gain favor in the United States,
 Social Effects of the War • 1173

agreed to provide seasonal farm workers to the southwestern states in

exchange for a series of promises by the U.S. government: the bracero workers
would not be used as strike breakers or as a pretext for lowering wages, and
they would not be drafted into military service. The workers were hired on
yearlong contracts, and American officials provided transportation from the
border to their job sites. The United States also pledged to set aside ten percent
of the wages to enable bracero workers to buy farm equipment upon their
return to Mexico. Under the bracero program, some two hundred thousand
Mexican farm workers entered the western United States. They provided
much needed labor, but the United States rarely fulfilled its promises to them.
The rising tide of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles prompted a growing
stream of anti-Mexican editorials and ugly racial incidents. Even though
some three hundred thousand Mexican Americans served in the war with
great valor, earning a higher percentage of Congressional Medals of Honor
than any other minority group, racial prejudices still prevailed. There was
constant conflict between Anglo servicemen and Mexican American gang
members or teenage “zoot-suiters” in southern California. (Zoot suits were
the flamboyant attire popular in the 1940s and worn by some young Mexi-
can American men.) In 1943, several thousand off-duty sailors and soldiers,
joined by hundreds of local whites, rampaged through downtown Los Ange-
les streets, assaulting Hispanics, African Americans, and Filipinos. The
weeklong violence came to be called the zoot-suit riots.

N AT I V E A M E R I C A N S Indians supported the war effort more fully than

any other group in American society. Almost a third of eligible Native Ameri-
can men served in the armed forces. Many others worked in defense-related
industries. Thousands of Indian women volunteered as nurses or joined the
WAVES. As was the case with African Americans, Indians benefited from the
experiences afforded by the war. Those who left reservations to work in
defense plants or to join the military gained new vocational skills as well as a
greater awareness of mainstream society and how to succeed within it.
Why did so many Native Americans fight for a nation that had stripped
them of their land and decimated their heritage? Some felt that they had no
choice. Mobilization for the war effort ended many New Deal programs that
had provided Indians with jobs. Reservation Indians thus faced the necessity
of finding new jobs elsewhere. Many viewed the Nazis and the Japanese
warlords as threats to their own homeland. The most common sentiment,
however, seems to have been a genuine sense of patriotism. Whatever the rea-
sons, Indians distinguished themselves in the military. Unlike their African
1174 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

Marine Navajo “code talkers”

The Japanese were never able to break the Native Americans’ codes used by signal-
men, such as those shown here during the Battle of Bougainville in 1943.

American counterparts, Indian servicemen were integrated into regular

units. Perhaps the most distinctive activity performed by Indians was their
service as “code talkers”: every military branch used Indians, especially
Navajos, to quickly encode and decipher messages using ancient Indian lan-
guages unknown to the Germans and Japanese.

The attack
D I S C R I M I N AT I O N AG A I N S T J A PA N E S E A M E R I C A N S
on Pearl Harbor ignited vengeful anger toward people of Japanese descent
living in the United States, known as Nisei. As Idaho’s governor declared,
“A good solution to the Jap problem would be to send them all back to Japan,
then sink the island.” Such extreme hostility helps explain why the U.S. gov-
ernment sponsored the worst violation of civil liberties during the twentieth
century when more than 112,000 Nisei were forcibly removed from their
homes on the West Coast and transported to “war relocation camps” in the
interior. President Roosevelt initiated the removal of Japanese Americans
 The Allied Drive toward Berlin • 1175

(he called them “Japs”) when he

issued Executive Order 9066 on
February 19, 1942. More than
60 percent of the internees were
U.S. citizens; a third were under
the age of nineteen. Forced to
sell their farms and businesses
at great losses, the internees lost
not only their property but also
their liberty. Few if any were
disloyal, but all were victims of
fear and racial prejudice. Not
until 1983 did the government
acknowledge the injustice of the
internment policy. Five years
later it granted those Nisei still
living $20,000 each in compen-
sation, a tiny amount relative to Internment
what they had lost during four
This young Japanese American and her par-
years of confinement. ents were forced to relocate from Los Angeles
to an internment camp in eastern California
in 1942.

THE ALLIED DRIVE T O WA R D BERLIN

By mid-1942, the home front was hearing good news from the war
fronts. Japanese naval losses at the Battles of Coral Sea and Midway had
secured Australia and Hawaii. U.S. naval forces had also been increasingly
successful at destroying German U-boats off the Atlantic coast. This was all
the more important because the Grand Alliance—Great Britain, United States,
and the Soviet Union—called for the defeat of Germany first.

WA R A I M S A N D S T R AT E G Y A major factor affecting Allied strategy

was the fighting on the vast Eastern Front in the Soviet Union, where, in fact,
the outcome of the war against Hitler was largely decided. In eastern Europe
during 1941–1942, two totalitarian regimes—the Nazis and the Soviets—
waged colossal battles while murdering millions of civilians in horrifying
slave labor/extermination camps (Nazis) and forced labor concentration
camps (Soviets). Among the combatant nations, the Soviets—by far—bore
1176 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

the brunt of the war against the Nazis, leading Joseph Stalin, the Soviet pre-
mier, to insist that the Americans and British relieve the pressure on them by
attacking the Germans in western Europe.
Roosevelt and Churchill agreed that they needed to create a second front,
but they could not agree on the location of their first attack against Hitler’s
armies. U.S. military planners were willing to take extraordinary, indeed
foolhardy, risks by striking directly across the English Channel before the
end of 1942. They wanted to secure a beachhead in German-occupied
France, and then move briskly against Germany itself in 1943. “We’ve got to
go to Europe and fight,” General Dwight D. Eisenhower stressed. The British,
however, were wary of moving too fast. An Allied defeat on the French coast,
Churchill warned, was “the only way in which we could possibly lose this

What was the Atlantic Charter? Compare and contrast the alliances in the First
World War with those in the Second World War. How were the Germans able to
seize most of the Allied territory so quickly?
 The Allied Drive toward Berlin • 1177

war.” Roosevelt, concerned about upcoming Congressional elections, told

the U.S. military planners to accept Churchill’s compromise proposal for a
joint Anglo-American invasion of French North Africa, which had been cap-
tured by German and Italian armies.

T H E N O R T H A F R I C A C A M PA I G N On November 8, 1942, British and

American forces commanded by U.S. general Dwight D. Eisenhower landed
in Morocco and Algeria on the North African coast. Farther east, British
armies were pushing the Germans back across Libya, and untested American
forces were confronting seasoned German units pouring into Tunisia. Before
spring, however, the British forces had taken Libya, and the Germans were
caught in a gigantic pair of pincers. Hammered from all sides, unable to
retreat across the Mediterranean, an army of some 250,000 Germans and Ital-
ians surrendered on May 12, 1943, leaving all of North Africa in Allied hands.
Five months earlier, in January 1943, Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Com-
bined Chiefs of Staff met at Casablanca, the largest city in Morocco. It was a
historic occasion. No U.S. president had ever flown abroad while in office, and
none had ever visited Africa. Stalin declined to leave besieged Russia for the
meeting, however, although he continued to press for a second front in west-
ern Europe to relieve the pressure on the Soviet Union. The British and Amer-
ican engagements with German forces in North Africa were minuscule in
comparison with the scope and fury of the fighting in Russia. Throughout
1943, for example, while some sixty thousand British and American service-
men were killed by German forces, the Soviet Union lost 2 million combatants.
At the Casablanca Conference, Churchill and Roosevelt spent eight days
hammering out key strategic decisions. The British convinced the Americans
that they should follow up a victory in North Africa with an assault on German
and Italian forces on the Italian island of Sicily and in Italy itself. Roosevelt and
Churchill also decided to step up the bombing of Germany and to increase
shipments of military supplies to the Soviet Union and the Nationalist Chinese
forces fighting the Japanese. American military-industrial productivity proved
to be the most strategic asset in the war. Many of the Soviet troops who would
advance west toward Berlin during the latter phase of the war rode in American
trucks, ate American rations, and wore American boots. Yet, as Stalin often
complained, the Americans were far more generous with supplies than they
were committing large numbers of soldiers on the battlefield.
Before leaving Casablanca, Roosevelt announced, with Churchill’s endorse-
ment, that the war would end only with the “unconditional surrender” of all
enemies. This decision was designed to quiet Soviet suspicions that the West-
ern Allies might negotiate separately with the various enemy nations making
1178 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

NORWAY

NORTHERN
NORTH
SWEDEN
IRELAND SEA

GREAT DENMARK
REPUBLIC BRITAIN
OF
IRELAND
Sinking of
the Bismarck Hamburg
1945
London NETHERLANDS
Ruhr Elbe Berlin
English Dover Dunkirk
Channel Antwerp Valley River Potsdam
Torgau
Cologne
1944 St.-Lô
Calais Brussels Aachen GERMANY
Compiègne BELG. Battle of
Normandy ARDENNES the Bulge
FOREST

19
AT L A N T I C 45 LUX. Frankfurt Prague
Paris Reims
x
Rhine River CZ

x
x
OCEAN Loire
Riv Seine River
Metz x x x x ECH
er Strasbourg Stuttgart O

x
Maginot Line

xx

Da
Munich nu Vienna

x x
FRANCE b e River
SWITZERLAND AUSTRIA

r
Vichy

Rive
Trieste

e
Po River

Rhon

1944
Marseilles
ITALY
PORTUGAL Nice Florence
Toulon

Lisbon
SPAIN CORSICA
(French) Rome
Anzio Cassino
Naples
SARDINIA
Salerno
M E D
Gibraltar (British)
I T
Tangier 19 4 2 E 3
R 94
1R Palermo
SPANISH Bizerte
Algiers A
MOROCCO Oran SICILY Syracuse
Casablanca N (Siracusa)
Tunis
MOROCCO E
A
N

ALGERIA TUNISIA

WORLD WAR II IN EUROPE AND AFRICA,

1942–1945
Major battle
Axis Powers at outbreak of the war
Maximum extent of Axis military power
Allied offensives L I B YA
Heaviest Allied aerial bombing
Inside limit of German U-boat operations 0 250 500 Miles

0 250 500 Kilometers

What was the Allies’ strategy in North Africa, and why was it important
for the invasion of Italy? Why did Eisenhower’s plan on D-day succeed?
What was the Battle of the Bulge? What was the role of strategic bombing
in the war? Was it effective?
 The Allied Drive toward Berlin • 1179

FINLAND
Leningrad
SEA

(St. Petersburg)

ESTONIA
IC
LT

4
4
19
BA

Moscow
LATVIA

er
R iv
Danzig LITHUANIA

ga
(Gdansk)
Dnie

Vol
U.S.S.R.
per

EAST
Riv

Vi PRUSSIA
er

stu
la R
. 1943
Warsaw
1945
2 Stalingrad
POLAND 194 (Volgograd)

SE PIAN
O S L O VA K I A

A
S
CA
Budapest
HUNGARY
ROMANIA
1944 Sevastopol
Yalta
Bucharest
Belgrade
Danube
BLACK SEA
YUGOSLAVIA River
BULGARIA
Sofia

ALBANIA
Ankara

GREECE TURKEY

Athens

CYPRUS
SYRIA
CRETE RHODES (British) IRAQ

S E A
PALESTINE
(British)
Tobruk TRANS-
Alexandria
JORDAN
Suez
Canal
El Alamein,
1942
1943 SAUDI
ARABIA

EGYPT
R A
S
E
E
D
1180 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

up the Axis. The announcement also reflected Roosevelt’s determination that

“every person in Germany should realize that this time Germany is a defeated
nation.” This dictum was later criticized for having stiffened enemy resistance,
but it probably had little effect; in fact, neither the Italian nor the Japanese sur-
render would be unconditional. But the decision did have one unexpected
result: it opened an avenue for eventual Soviet control of eastern Europe
because it required Russian armies to pursue Hitler’s forces all the way to Ger-
many. And as they liberated the nations of eastern Europe from Nazi control,
the Soviets created new Communist governments under their own control.

T H E B AT T L E O F T H E AT L A N T I C While fighting raged in North

Africa, the more crucial Battle of the Atlantic reached its climax on the high
seas. Isolated Britain desperately needed supplies from the United States. The
fall of France in June 1940 allowed German submarines to use French ports,
thus enabling them to venture all the way across the Atlantic to sink freighters
and tankers headed for England. One of the U-boat captains referred to the
east coast of the United States as the “American shooting gallery.” By July
1942, some 230 Allied ships and almost 5 million tons of war supplies had
been lost. Then, in July alone, 143 ships were sunk. “The only thing that ever
frightened me during the war,” recalled Churchill, “was the U-boat peril.”
By the end of 1942, the Allies had discovered ways to thwart the U-boats.
A key breakthrough occurred when British experts deciphered the German
naval radio codes, enabling Allied convoys to steer clear of U-boats or to hunt
them down. New technology also helped: sonar and radar enabled Allied
ships to track submarines. The most effective tactic was to organize the ships
into convoys with protective warships surrounding them. After May 1943, the
U-boats were on the defensive, and Allied shipping losses fell significantly.
The U-boats kept up the Battle of the Atlantic until the war’s end; when Ger-
many finally collapsed, almost 50 submarines were still at sea, but 783 had
been destroyed.

S I C I LY A N D I TA LY On July 10, 1943, after the Allied victory in North

Africa, about 250,000 British and American troops landed on the Italian island
of Sicily in the first effort to reclaim European territory since the war began.
The entire island was in Allied hands by August 17. Allied success in Sicily
ended Mussolini’s twenty years of Fascist rule. On July 25, 1943, Italy’s king
dismissed Mussolini as prime minister and had him arrested. The new Italian
government startled the Allies when it offered not only to surrender but also to
switch sides in the war. Unfortunately, mutual suspicions prolonged talks until
September 3, during which time the Germans poured reinforcements into
Italy. Mussolini, plucked from imprisonment by a daring German airborne
 The Allied Drive toward Berlin • 1181

Major General George S. Patton

Patton commanded the U.S. invasion of Sicily, the largest amphibious action in the
war up to that point. He believed that war “brings out all that is best in men.”

raid, became head of a puppet Fascist government in northern Italy. On June

4, 1944, the U.S. Fifth Army entered Rome. The capture of Rome received only
a brief moment of glory, however, for the long-awaited cross-Channel Allied
landing in German-occupied France came two days later. Italy, always a sec-
ondary front, faded from the world’s attention.

T H E T E H R A N M E E T I N G Late in the fall of 1943, Churchill and Roo-

sevelt had their first joint meeting with Joseph Stalin in Tehran, Iran.
Although as much competitors as collaborators, they were able to forge sev-
eral key agreements. Their chief subject was the planned invasion of France
and a Russian offensive across eastern Europe timed to coincide with it.
Stalin repeated his promise to enter the war against Japan, and the three
leaders agreed to create an international organization (the United Nations)
to maintain peace after the war. Upon arriving back in the United States,
Roosevelt confided to Churchill his distrust of Stalin, stressing that it was a
“ticklish” business keeping the “Russians cozy with us.” Indeed it was.
1182 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

THE S T R AT E G I C BOMBING OF EUROPE Behind the long-

postponed Allied invasion of German-controlled France lay months of
preparation. While waiting for D-day, the U.S. Army Air Force and the
British Royal Air Force (RAF) had sought to pound Germany into submis-
sion. The Allied air campaign killed perhaps six hundred thousand German
civilians. Yet while causing widespread damage, the strategic air offensive
failed to devastate German morale or industrial production. But with air
supremacy over Europe assured by 1944, the Allies were free to provide cover
for the much-anticipated invasion of Hitler’s “Fortress Europa.” On April 14,
1944, General Eisenhower assumed control of the strategic air forces for the
invasion of German-controlled France. On D-day, June 6, 1944, he told the
troops, “If you see fighting aircraft over you, they will be ours.”

D - D AY A N D A F T E R In early 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower

arrived in London to take command of the Allied forces. Battle-tested in
North Africa and the Mediterranean, he now faced the daunting task of

Operation Overlord
General Dwight D. Eisenhower instructing paratroopers before they boarded their
airplanes to launch the D-day assault.
 The Allied Drive toward Berlin • 1183

planning Operation Overlord, the daring assault on Hitler’s “Atlantic Wall,”

a formidable series of fortifications and mines along the French coastline.
The prospect of an amphibious assault against such defenses unnerved
some Allied planners. As D-day approached in June, Eisenhower’s chief of
staff predicted only a fifty-fifty chance of success. Operation Overlord suc-
ceeded largely because it was meticulously planned and because it surprised
the Germans. The Allies fooled the Nazis into believing that the invasion
would come at Pas-de-Calais, on the French-Belgian border, where the Eng-
lish Channel was narrowest. Instead, the landings occurred in Normandy,
almost two hundred miles south. In April and May 1944, while the vast inva-
sion forces made final preparations, the Allied air forces disrupted the trans-
portation network of northern France, smashing railroads and bridges. By
early June all was ready, and D-day fell on June 6, 1944.
On the evening of June 5, Eisenhower visited some of the sixteen thousand
American paratroopers preparing to land at night behind the German lines in
France to seize key bridges and roads. The men noticed his look of grave con-
cern and tried to lift his spirits. “Now quit worrying, General,” one of them
said, “we’ll take care of this thing for you.” After the planes took off, Eisen-
hower returned to his car with tears in his eyes. “Well,” he said quietly to his
driver, “it’s on.” He knew that many of his troops would die within a few hours.
At dawn on June 6, the invasion fleet of some 5,300 Allied vessels carrying
370,000 soldiers and sailors filled the horizon off the Normandy coast.
Sleepy German soldiers awoke to see the vast armada arrayed before them.
For several hours the local German commanders misinterpreted the Nor-
mandy landings as merely a diversion for the “real” attack at Pas-de-Calais.
When Hitler learned of the Allied landings, he boasted that “the news couldn’t
be better. As long as they were in Britain, we couldn’t get at them. Now
we have them where we can destroy them.” In the United States, word that
the long-anticipated Allied invasion of Nazi Europe had begun captured the
attention of the nation. Businesses closed, church bells tolled, and traffic was
stopped so that people could pray in the streets.
Despite Eisenhower’s intensive planning and the imposing array of Allied
troops and firepower, the D-day invasion almost failed. Thick clouds and Ger-
man anti-aircraft fire caused many of the paratroopers and glider pilots to
miss their landing zones. Oceangoing landing craft delivered their troops to
the wrong locations. Low clouds led the Allied planes to drop their bombs too
far inland—and often on Allied troops. The naval bombardment was equally
ineffective. Rough seas caused injuries and nausea and capsized dozens of
troop-filled landing craft. Radios were waterlogged. Over a thousand men
drowned. The first units ashore lost over 90 percent of their troops to German
1184 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

The landing at Normandy

D-day, June 6, 1944. Before they could huddle under a seawall and begin to root out
the region’s Nazi defenders, soldiers on Omaha Beach had to cross a fifty-yard
stretch that exposed them to bullets fired from machine guns housed in concrete
bunkers.

machine guns. In one company, 197 of the 205 men were killed or wounded
within ten minutes. By nightfall the bodies of some five thousand killed or
wounded Allied soldiers were strewn across the sand and surf of Normandy.
German losses were much higher; entire units were decimated or captured.
Operation Overlord was the greatest amphibious invasion in the annals of
warfare, but it was small when compared with the offensive launched by the
Russians a few weeks after D-Day. Between June and August 1944, the Soviet
Army killed, wounded, or captured more German soldiers (350,000) than
were stationed in all of western Europe. Still, the Normandy invasion was a
turning point in the war—and a pivotal point in America’s rise to global
power. With the beachhead secured, the Allied leaders knew that victory was in
their grasp. “What a plan!” Churchill exclaimed to the British Parliament.
Within two weeks of the Normandy assault, the Allies had landed 1 million
troops, 556,000 tons of supplies, and 170,000 vehicles in France. On July 25,
1944, American armies in Normandy broke out westward into Brittany and
eastward toward Paris. On August 15, a joint American-French invasion force
landed on the French Mediterranean coast and raced up the Rhone Valley in
 Leapfrogging to Tokyo • 1185

central France. German resistance in France collapsed. A division of the Free

French Resistance, aided by American forces, had the honor of liberating Paris
on August 25. By mid-September, most of France and Belgium had been cleared
of German troops.

LEAPFROGGING TO T O K YO

M AC A RT H U R I N N E W G U I N E A Meanwhile, in Asia, the Allies began

to strike back against the Japanese after the crucial Battle of Midway in June
1942. American and Australian forces under General Douglas MacArthur’s
command had begun to dislodge the Japanese from islands they had con-
quered in the southwest Pacific. In the summer, American and British
troops pushed the Japanese back in New Guinea. Then, on August 7, 1942,
U.S. Marines landed on Guadalcanal Island and seized the Japanese airstrip.
The savage fighting on Guadalcanal lasted through February 1943, but the
result was the first defeat of the Japanese army in the war.

ISLAND HOPPING The Japanese were skilled defensive fighters. It was

their suicidal fanaticism in New Guinea and on Guadalcanal that led Ameri-
can military strategists to adopt a “leapfrogging” strategy whereby they used
airpower and seapower to neutralize Japanese strongholds on Pacific islands
rather than assault them with ground troops. U.S. warplanes, for example,
destroyed the Japanese airfield at Rabaul in eastern New Guinea, leaving
135,000 Japanese troops stranded on the island to sit out the war, cut off from
re-supply by air and sea. What the Allies did to the Japanese garrison on
Rabaul set the pattern for the remainder of the war in the Pacific.

B AT T L E S I N T H E C E N T R A L PA C I F I C On June 15, 1944, just days

after the D-day invasion, U.S. forces liberated Tinian, Guam, and Saipan,
three Japanese-controlled islands in the Mariana Islands. Saipan was strate-
gically important because it allowed the new American B-29 “Superfortress”
bombers to strike Japan itself. With New Guinea and the Mariana Islands all
but liberated, General MacArthur’s forces invaded the Japanese-held Philip-
pines on October 20, landing first on the island of Leyte. The Japanese,
knowing that the loss of the Philippines would cut them off from the essen-
tial raw materials of the East Indies, brought in warships from three direc-
tions. The three encounters that resulted on October 25, 1944, came to be
known collectively as the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval engagement
in history. It was a strategic victory for the Allies. The Japanese lost most of
 S O V I E T U N I O N
SEA
OF
Ru OKHOTSK
ssi
an
s

,1
94
4
–1
945
SAKHALIN
MONGOLIA
MANCHURIA

A NR I L
S
D
K UL
IS

Peking SEA OF
JAPAN
KOREA JAPAN
C H I N A YELLOW Hiroshima Tokyo
SEA
Nanking Nagasaki

Chungking Shanghai EAST

AS
A L AY
HIM Stilwell CHINA
BONIN
Ledo Road
SEA ISLANDS
INDIA Burma OKINAWA
1 943 Iwo Jima
K’un-ming Road FORMOSA
Lashio (TAIWAN)
BURMA HONG 1945
(MYANMAR) KONG PHILIPPINE
MARIANA
Rangoon 1945 ISLANDS
(Yangon) Luzon SEA
THAILAND Corregidor
1942 Manila
BATAAN PENINSULA Saipan
PHILIPPINES
FRENCH SOUTH
Guam
INDOCHINA CHINA Leyte
SEA
BRITISH Mindanao PALAU
NORTH 19 CAROLINE
BRUNEI 44
BRITISH BORNEO –1
MALAYA 94
5
SARAWAK ADMIRALTY
ISLANDS
SU

Singapore
M

Equator BORNEO 19
AT

43
CELEBES MOLUCCAS
RA

(SULAWESI) BISMARCK
SEA
DUTCH EAST INDIES
Java Sea NEW GUINEA
JAVA TIMOR Port
Moresby

INDIAN
194
2

OCEAN

0 400 800 1,200 Miles

AUSTRALIA

0 400 800 1,200 Kilometers

What was “leapfrogging”? Why were the battles in the Marianas a major
turning point in the war? What was the significance of the Battle of Leyte
Gulf? How did the battle at Okinawa affect the way both sides proceeded in
the war? Why did President Truman decide to drop atomic bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
 ALASKA
BERING (U.S.)

SEA
DS
AN
ALEUTIAN ISL
KISKA
ATTU
1943 WORLD WAR II IN THE PACIFIC,
1942–1945
Areas controlled by Japan, 1942
Major Allied naval offensives
Major Allied air offensives
Japanese advances
Limit of Japanese control
P A C I F I C Major battle

O C E A N

MIDWAY

HAWAIIAN
ISLANDS
OAHU
WAKE
Pearl Harbor
ISLAND

1944
Enewetak

MARSHALL
Truk Kwajalein ISLANDS
(Chuuk)
ISLANDS
Makin (Butaritari)
GILBERT
Tarawa
ISLANDS
1943 Equator

Rabaul BOUGAINVILLE
NEW Arawa Harbour
BRITAIN SOLOMON
42
ISLANDS 19

Guadalcanal
NEW
HEBRIDES
(VANUATU)
FIJI
CORAL ISLANDS
NEW
SEA CALEDONIA
1188 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

MacArthur’s triumphant return

General Douglas MacArthur (center) theatrically coming ashore at the island of
Leyte in the Philippines, October 1944.

their remaining warships as well as their ability to defend the Philippines.

The battle also brought the first Japanese kamikaze attacks as pilots deliber-
ately crash-dived their bomb-laden planes into American warships. The
kamikaze suicide units, named for the “divine wind” that centuries before
was believed to have saved Japan from a Mongol invasion, inflicted consider-
able damage.

A N EW AG E I S B O R N

R O O S E V E LT ’ S F O U R T H T E R M In 1944, war or no war, the calendar

dictated another presidential election. This time the Republicans turned to
former crime fighting district attorney and New York governor Thomas E.
Dewey as their candidate. No Democrat challenged Roosevelt, but a fight did
develop over the vice-presidential nomination. Vice President Henry A. Wal-
lace had angered both southern conservatives and northern city bosses, who
feared his ties to labor unions. Roosevelt finally fastened on the compromise
choice of little-known Missouri senator Harry S. Truman. Dewey ran under
 A New Age Is Born • 1189

the same handicap as Landon and Willkie had before him. He did not pro-
pose to dismantle Roosevelt’s popular New Deal programs but argued that it
was time for younger men to replace the “tired” old Democratic leaders. An
aging Roosevelt did show signs of illness and exhaustion; nevertheless, on
November 7, 1944, he was once again elected, this time by a popular vote of
25.6 million to 22 million and an electoral vote of 432 to 99.

C O N V E R G I N G M I L I TA R Y F R O N T S After their quick sweep east-

ward across France after the Normandy invasion, the Allied armies lost
momentum in the fall of 1944 as they neared Germany. The Germans sprang
a surprise in the rugged Ardennes Forest, where the Allied line was thinnest.
Attacking on December 16, 1944, the Germans advanced along a fifty-mile
“bulge” in the Allies’ lines in Belgium and Luxembourg—hence the Battle of
the Bulge. The climactic event occurred at the Belgian town of Bastogne,
where German forces trapped American forces. Reinforced by the Allies just
before it was surrounded, the outnumbered American units at Bastogne held
for six days against relentless German attacks. On December 22, the U.S. gen-
eral, Tony McAuliffe, gave his memorable answer to the Nazi demand for
surrender: “Nuts.” When a German major asked what the term meant, an
American officer said, “It’s the same as ‘Go to Hell.’ And I will tell you some-
thing else—if you continue to attack, we will kill every goddamn German
that tries to break into this city.” The American situation remained desperate
until the next day, when the clouds lifted, allowing Allied airpower to halt the
German advance and drop in supplies. On December 26, U.S. forces broke
through to relieve besieged Bastogne. The Battle of the Bulge upset Eisen-
hower’s timetable for ending the war, but the failure of the desperate Nazi
effort at Bastogne had weakened German resources and left open the door to
Germany’s heartland from the west. By early March, the Allies had crossed
the Rhine River, on the western German border. In April, they encircled the
Ruhr Valley, center of Germany’s heavy industry. Meanwhile, the Soviet
offensive in eastern Europe had reached the eastern border of Germany, after
taking Warsaw, Poland, on January 17 and Vienna, Austria, on April 13.
With the British and American armies racing across western Germany and
the Soviets moving in from the east, the Allied war planners turned their
attention to Berlin, the German capital. Prime Minister Churchill worried
that if the Red Army arrived in Berlin first, Stalin would control the postwar
map of Europe. He urged Eisenhower to get his troops to Berlin ahead of the
Soviets. General Eisenhower, however, was convinced the Soviets would get to
Berlin first no matter what the Allies decided. Berlin, he determined, was no
longer of military significance; his focus remained the destruction of German
1190 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

The war’s end

U.S. soldiers corralling German prisoners of war in 1945.

ground forces. Churchill disagreed and appealed to Roosevelt, who in the end
left the decision to Eisenhower. When analysts predicted that it would cost
one hundred thousand Americans killed or wounded to liberate Berlin before
the Soviets did, Eisenhower decided it was too high a price for what an aide
called a “prestige objective,” so he left Berlin to the Soviets.

YA LTA A N D T H E P O S T WA R WO R L D As the final offensives against

Nazi Germany got under way, the Yalta Conference (February 4–11, 1945),
hosted by the Soviets, brought the “Big Three” Allied leaders together in a czar’s
former palace at Yalta, a seaside resort on the north coast of the Black Sea.
While the focus at the Tehran Conference in 1943 had been on wartime strat-
egy, the three veteran Allied leaders now discussed the shape of the postwar
world. Two aims loomed large in Roosevelt’s thinking. One was the need to
ensure that the Soviet Union would join the ongoing war against Japan. The
other was based upon the lessons he had drawn from the First World War. Chief
among the mistakes to be remedied this time were the failure of the United
States to join the League of Nations and the failure of the Allies to maintain a
united front against Germany after the war. Roosevelt was determined to
 A New Age Is Born • 1191

replace the “outdated” isolationism of the 1920s and 1930s with an engaged
internationalism.
The seventy-year-old Churchill arrived at Yalta focused on restoring inde-
pendent, democratic France and Poland and limiting efforts by the victors to
extract punitive reparations on defeated Germany, lest Europe recreate the
problems caused by the Versailles Treaty ending World War I. Stalin’s goals
were defensive and imperialistic: he wanted to retrieve former Russian terri-
tory given to Poland after World War I and to impose Soviet control over
the newly liberated countries of eastern Europe. The U.S. ambassador in
Moscow felt that Stalin was “the most inscrutable and contradictory charac-
ter I have ever known,” a baffling man of “high intelligence [and] fantastic
grasp of detail,” a leader “better informed than Roosevelt, more realistic than
Churchill. . . . At the same he was, of course, a murderous tyrant.” At Yalta,
Stalin was confident he would have his way. That the Soviet Army already
controlled key areas in eastern Europe would ensure that his demands were
met. As he confided to a Communist leader, “whoever occupies a territory
also imposes his own social system.”

The Yalta Conference

Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin confer on the shape of the postwar world in Febru-
ary 1945.
1192 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

The Yalta meeting began with the U.S. delegation calling for a conference
to create a new world security organization, which Roosevelt termed the
United Nations, to be held in the United States beginning on April 25, 1945.
The next major topic was how a defeated Germany would be governed. The
war map dictated the basic pattern of occupation zones: the Soviets would
control eastern Germany, and the Americans and British would control the
rich industrial areas of the west. Berlin, the German capital isolated within
the Soviet zone, would be subject to joint occupation. Similar arrangements
were made for Austria, with Vienna, like Berlin, under joint occupation
within the Soviet zone. At the behest of Churchill and Roosevelt, Stalin
agreed to the French being given an occupation zone along its border with
Germany and in Berlin.
With respect to eastern Europe, Poland became the main focus of Allied
concern at Yalta. Britain and France had gone to war in 1939 to defend
Poland, and now, six years later, the course of the war had left Poland’s fate
in the hands of the Soviets. When Soviet forces reentered Poland in 1944,
they had created a puppet Communist regime in Lublin. As Soviet troops
reached the gates of Warsaw, the historic Polish capital, courageous Poles
rose up against the Nazi occupiers. Instead of working with the Polish resis-
tance, however, Stalin cynically ordered the Soviet army to stop its offensive
for two months so as to enable the besieged Germans to kill thousands of
poorly armed Poles. Stalin viewed the members of the Polish Home Army as
potential rivals of the Soviets’ Lublin puppet government.
The belief that postwar cooperation among the Allies could survive tragic
events such as the Warsaw massacre was a triumph of hope over experience.
Churchill admitted after the Yalta meetings that the only thing binding the
three allies together was their common interest in defeating Nazi Germany.
The Western Allies could do no more than acquiesce to Soviet demands or
stall; Stalin controlled the situation on the ground in Poland. Having suffered
almost 30 million deaths during the war, the Soviets were determined to dic-
tate the postwar situation in eastern Europe. At Yalta, the Big Three promised
to sponsor free elections, democratic governments, and constitutional safe-
guards of freedom throughout liberated Europe. The Yalta Declaration of Lib-
erated Europe reaffirmed the principles of the Atlantic Charter, but in the end
it made little difference. The Yalta Accords only postponed Soviet takeovers in
eastern Europe for a few years. Russia, twice invaded by Germany in the twen-
tieth century, was determined to create compliant buffer states between it and
the Germans. Seven weeks after the Yalta meetings, Roosevelt could only
lamely protest to Stalin the “discouraging lack of progress made in carrying
out” his promises to organize free elections in Poland.
 A New Age Is Born • 1193

YA LTA’ S L E G A C Y The Yalta Conference ended on an upbeat note. Roo-

sevelt compared the feelings among the “Big Three” to “that of a family.”
Churchill and Roosevelt agreed that they had achieved the best results possi-
ble. Critics, mostly Republicans, later attacked Roosevelt for “giving” eastern
Europe over to Soviet domination. But the course of the war shaped the
actions at Yalta, not Roosevelt’s diplomacy. Although Roosevelt was naïve in
thinking that Stalin and the Soviets would allow democratic processes to
shape eastern Europe, the United States had no real leverage to exert in the
region. As a U.S. diplomat admitted, “Stalin held all the cards” at Yalta. The
Americans and British could not have done anything to alter these facts. Allied
forces in Europe would have been hopelessly outmanned and outgunned by
the Red Army. By suppressing opposition in the eastern European countries
liberated by the Red Army, the Soviets were acting not under the Yalta Accords
but in violation of them. And geography as well as Soviet military power pre-
cluded the Americans from forcing the issue in Poland and eastern Europe.
Perhaps the most bitterly criticized of the Yalta accords was a secret agree-
ment about the Far East, not made public until after the war. As the Big Three
met at Yalta, fighting still raged against the Japanese in the Philippines and
Burma. Military analysts estimated that Japan could hold out for eighteen
months after the defeat of Germany. Roosevelt, eager to gain Soviet participa-
tion in the war against Japan, therefore accepted Stalin’s demands on postwar
arrangements in the Far East. Stalin demanded continued Soviet control of
Outer Mongolia through its puppet People’s Republic, acquisition of the Kuril
Islands from Japan, and recovery of territory lost after the Russo-Japanese
War of 1905. Stalin in return promised to enter the war against Japan two or
three months after the German defeat, recognize Chinese sovereignty over
Manchuria, and conclude a treaty of friendship and alliance with the Chinese
Nationalists. Roosevelt’s concessions would later appear in a different light,
but given their geographic advantages in Asia, as in eastern Europe, the Sovi-
ets were in a position to get what they wanted in any case.

THE COLLAPSE OF NAZI GERMANY By 1945, the collapse of Nazi

Germany was imminent, but President Roosevelt did not live to join the
victory celebrations. In the spring of 1945, he went to his second home, in
Warm Springs, Georgia, to rest up for the conference creating the United
Nations. On April 12, 1945, he died from a cerebral hemorrhage. A desperate
Adolf Hitler saw in Roosevelt’s death a “great miracle” for the besieged Ger-
mans. “The war is not lost,” he told an aide. “Read it. Roosevelt is dead!”
Hitler’s Nazi empire collapsed less than a month later. The Allied armies
met advance detachments of Soviet soldiers on April 25 along the Elbe River,
1194 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

May 8, 1945
The celebration in New York City’s Times Square on V-E day.

near the German town of Torgau. Three days later, Italian partisans killed
Mussolini as he tried to flee. In Berlin, which was under siege by the Soviets,
Hitler married his mistress, Eva Braun, in an underground bunker on the
last day of April. He then killed her and himself. On May 2, Berlin fell to
the Soviets. Finally, on May 7, in the Allied headquarters at Reims, France,
the chief of staff of the German armed forces signed a treaty agreeing to an
unconditional surrender. So ended Nazi domination of Europe, little more
than twelve years after the monomaniacal Hitler had come to power.
Allied victory in Europe generated massive celebrations on V-E day,
May 8, 1945, but the elation was tempered by the tragedies that had engulfed
the world: the death of Franklin Roosevelt and the deaths of untold millions
over the course of the war. The Allied armies, chiefly the Americans, British,
and Soviets, were unprepared for the challenges of reconstructing defeated
Germany. The German economy had to be revived, a new democratic gov-
ernment had to be formed, and many of the German people had to be
clothed, housed, and fed. There were also some 11 million foreigners left
stranded in Germany, people from all over Europe who had been captured
and put to work in labor camps, concentration camps, or death camps. Now
 A New Age Is Born • 1195

the Allies were responsible for feeding, housing, and repatriating those “dis-
placed persons.”
Most shocking was the extent of the Holocaust, scarcely believable until
the Allied armies liberated the Nazi death camps in eastern Europe where
the Germans had enacted their “final solution” to what Hitler called the
“Jewish problem”: the wholesale extermination of some 6 million Jews along
with more than 1 million other captured peoples. Reports of the Nazis’ sys-
tematic genocide against the Jews had appeared as early as 1942, but such
ghastly stories seemed beyond belief. The Allied troops were horrified at
what they discovered in the concentration camps. Bodies were piled as
high as buildings; survivors were virtually skeletons. General Eisenhower
reported from one of the camps that the evidence of “starvation, cruelty, and
bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick.” At Dachau, the first
Nazi concentration camp in Germany, the American troops were so enraged
by the sight of murdered civilians that they (and some inmates), in horrific
violation of the Geneva Convention, executed the 550 Nazi guards who had
surrendered.

Holocaust survivors
U.S. troops encounter survivors of the Nazis’ Wöbbelin concentration camp in Ger-
many, May 1945.
1196 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

American officials, even some Jewish leaders, had dragged their feet in
acknowledging the Holocaust for fear that relief efforts for Jewish refugees
might stir up latent anti-Semitism at home. Under pressure, President Roo-
sevelt had set up a War Refugee Board early in 1944. It managed to rescue
about two hundred thousand European Jews and some twenty thousand
others. More might have been done by broadcasts warning people in Europe
that Nazi “labor camps” were in fact death traps. The Allies rejected a plan to
bomb the rail lines into Auschwitz, the largest concentration camp, in
Poland, although bombers hit industries five miles away. And few refugees
were accepted by the United States. The Allied handling of the Holocaust
was inept at best and disgraceful at worst. In 1944, Churchill called the Nazi
extermination of the Jews the “most horrible crime ever committed in the
history of the world.”

A G R I N D I N G WA R A G A I N S T J A PA N Victory in Europe enabled

Allied war planners to focus their attention on the pressing need to defeat
Japan. Yet the closer the Allies got to Japan, the fiercer the resistance they
encountered and the higher the casualties. While fighting continued in the
Philippines, U.S. Marines landed on Japanese-controlled Iwo Jima Island on
February 19, 1945, a speck of volcanic rock 760 miles from Tokyo that was
needed as a base for fighter planes escorting bombers over Japan. It took
nearly six weeks to secure the tiny island at a cost of nearly seven thousand
American lives. The Japanese defenders on Iwo Jima and other islands
fought to the death rather than surrender, often attacking in mass suicide
assaults.
The fight for Okinawa Island, beginning on Easter Sunday, April 1, was
even bloodier. Okinawa was strategically important because it would serve as
the staging area for the planned invasion of Japan. The conquest of Japanese-
controlled Okinawa was the largest amphibious operation of the Pacific war,
involving some 300,000 troops, and it took almost three months to secure
the island. An estimated 140,000 Japanese died in the intense fighting.
The Allied commanders then began planning for an invasion of Japan. To
soften up the Japanese defenses, degrade their industrial capacity, and erode
the morale of the civilian populace, the Allied command launched massive
bombing raids over Japan in the summer of 1944. In early 1945, General
Curtis Lemay, head of the U.S. Bomber Command, ordered devastating fire-
bomb raids over Japanese cities. On March 9, for example, some three hun-
dred B-29 bombers dropped napalm bombs on Tokyo, incinerating sixteen
square miles of the city and killing eighty-five thousand people in the pro-
cess. Firebomb raids then targeted other major cities—Kobe, Nagoya, Osaka,
 A New Age Is Born • 1197

Yokohama, and others—destroying 40 percent of their communities and

causing 672,000 casualties.

T H E AT O M I C B O M B In early 1945, new president Harry S. Truman

learned of the first successful test explosion of an atomic bomb in New Mex-
ico. The dramatic event resulted from intensive research and development,
begun in 1940, when President Roosevelt set up the secret Manhattan Proj-
ect to develop atomic weaponry before Nazi Germany did. Ironically,
Hitler’s anti-Semitism forced many of Germany’s leading scientists out of
the country, and they became essential participants in the American
research efforts. Gigantic secret plants to develop and test atomic bombs
sprang up at Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Hanford, Washington; and Los Alamos,
New Mexico; meanwhile, a group of brilliant physicists and chemists, many
of them German Jewish émigrés working under J. Robert Oppenheimer,
solved the scientific and technical problems of bomb design and construc-
tion. On July 16, 1945, the first “test” atomic bomb was exploded in the New
Mexico desert. Oppenheimer said later that in the observation bunker “a few
people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent.”
Now that the bomb had been shown to work, military planners selected
two Japanese cities as targets. The first was Hiroshima, a port city of four
hundred thousand people in southern Japan that was a major assembly
point for Japanese naval convoys, a center of war-related industries, and
headquarters of a Japanese army. On July 25, 1945, President Truman
ordered that the atomic bomb be used if Japan did not surrender before
August 3. Although an intense debate has emerged over the decision to drop
the atomic bomb, Truman said that he “never had any doubt that it should
be used.” He was convinced that the new weapon would save lives by avoid-
ing a costly invasion of Japan against its “ruthless, merciless, and fanatic”
defenders.
Military planners had estimated that an invasion of Japan could cost as
many as 250,000 Allied casualties and even more Japanese losses. Moreover,
some 100,000 Allied prisoners of war being held in Japan would probably be
executed when an invasion began. By that time, the firebombing of cities
and the widespread killing of civilians had become accepted military prac-
tice. The use of atomic bombs on Japanese cities was thus seen as a logical
next step to end the war. As it turned out, scientists greatly underestimated
the physical effects of the atomic bomb. They predicted that 20,000 people
would be killed, an estimate much too low.
In mid-July the Allied leaders met in Potsdam, Germany, near Berlin, to
discuss the fate of defeated Germany and the ongoing war against Japan.
1198 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

The American Chemical Society exhibit on atomic energy

Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer points to a photograph of the huge column of
smoke and flame caused by the bomb upon Hiroshima.

While there, they issued the Potsdam Declaration, demanding that Japan
surrender or face “prompt and utter destruction.” The deadline passed, and
on August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber named the Enola Gay took off at 2 A.M.
from the island of Tinian and headed for Hiroshima. At 8:15 A.M., flying at
31,600 feet, the Enola Gay released the five-ton, ten-foot-long uranium
bomb nicknamed Little Boy. Forty-three seconds later, as the Enola Gay
turned sharply to avoid the blast, the bomb tumbled to an altitude of 1,900
feet, where it exploded, creating a blinding flash of light followed by a fire-
ball towering to 40,000 feet. The tail gunner on the Enola Gay described the
scene: “It’s like bubbling molasses down there . . . the mushroom is spreading
out . . . fires are springing up everywhere . . . it’s like a peep into hell.”
The bomb’s shock wave and firestorm killed some seventy-eight thousand
people, including thousands of Japanese soldiers and twenty-three Ameri-
 A New Age Is Born • 1199

can prisoners of war housed in the city. By the end of the year, the death toll
had reached one hundred and forty thousand as the effects of radiation
burns and infection took their toll. In addition, seventy thousand buildings
were destroyed, and four square miles of the city turned to rubble.
President Truman was aboard the battleship Augusta returning from the
Potsdam Conference when news arrived that the bomb had been dropped.
“This is the greatest thing in history!” he exclaimed. In the United States,
Americans greeted the news with similar elation. To them, the atomic bomb
promised a quick end to the long nightmare of war. “No tears of sympathy will
be shed in America for the Japanese people,” the Omaha World-Herald pre-
dicted. “Had they possessed a comparable weapon at Pearl Harbor, would they
have hesitated to use it?” Others were more sobering about the implications of
atomic warfare. “Yesterday,” the journalist Hanson Baldwin wrote in the New
York Times, “we clinched victory in the Pacific, but we sowed the whirlwind.”
Two days after the Hiroshima bombing an opportunistic Soviet Union has-
tened to enter the war against Japan in order to share in the spoils of victory.
Truman and his aides, frustrated by the stubborn refusal of Japanese leaders to

The aftermath of Little Boy

This image shows the wasteland that remained after the atomic bomb Little Boy
decimated Hiroshima in 1945.
1200 • THE SECOND WORLD WAR (CH. 28)

surrender and fearful that the Soviet Union’s entry into the war would compli-
cate negotiations, ordered the second atomic bomb (“Fat Man”) dropped. On
August 9, the city of Nagasaki, a shipbuilding center, experienced the same
nuclear devastation that had destroyed Hiroshima. That night, the Japanese
emperor urged his cabinet to surrender. Frantic exchanges between leaders in
Washington, D.C., and Tokyo ended with Japanese acceptance of the surren-
der terms on August 14, 1945.

THE FINAL LED GER

Thus ended the largest and costliest military event in human history.
Between 50 and 60 million people were killed in the war between 1939 and
1945—perhaps 60 percent of them civilians, including Jews and other ethnic
minorities murdered in Nazi death camps and Soviet concentration camps.
An average of 27,000 people died each day during the six years of warfare.
The Second World War was more costly for the United States than any other
foreign war: 292,000 battle deaths and 114,000 other deaths. A million
Americans were wounded; half of them were seriously disabled. But in pro-
portion to its population, the United States suffered a far smaller loss than
that of any of the other major Allies or their enemies, and American terri-
tory escaped the devastation visited on so many other parts of the world.
The Soviet Union, for example, suffered 20 million deaths, China 10 million,
Germany 5.6 million, and Japan 2.3 million.
The Second World War was the pivotal event of the twentieth century; it
reshaped the world order. Until 1941, European colonial empires still domi-
nated the globe, and world affairs were still determined by decisions made in
European capitals. In 1941, when Japan, the Soviet Union, and the United
States entered the war, the old imperial world order led by France, Germany,
and the United Kingdom, dating back to the eighteenth century, came to an
end. German and Italian fascism as well as Japanese militarism were destroyed.
And the United States had emerged by 1945 as the acknowledged “leader of
the free world.” With the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan, Winston
Churchill told the House of Commons, “America stands at this moment at the
summit of the world.”
Of course, the Second World War also transformed American life. The
war finally brought an end to the Great Depression and laid the foundation
for an era of unprecedented prosperity. Big businesses were transformed
into gigantic corporations as a result of huge government contracts for mili-
tary production, and the size of the federal government bureaucracy mush-
 The Final Ledger • 1201

roomed. The number of government employees increased fourfold during

the war. New technologies and products developed for military purposes—
radar, computers, electronics, plastics and synthetics, jet engines, rockets,
atomic energy—began to transform the private sector as well. And new
opportunities for women as well as for African Americans, Mexican Ameri-
cans, and other minorities set in motion major social changes that would
culminate in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the feminist move-
ment of the 1970s.
The dramatic war-related expansion of the federal government continued
after 1945. Presidential authority increased enormously at the expense of
congressional and state power. At the same time, the isolationist sentiment
in foreign relations that had been so powerful in the 1920s and 1930s evapo-
rated as the United States emerged from the war with new global political
and military responsibilities and expanded economic interests.
The war opened a new era for the United States in the world arena. It
accelerated the growth of American power and prestige while devastating all
other world powers. As President Truman told the nation in a radio address
in August 1945, the United States had “emerged from this war the most pow-
erful nation in this world—the most powerful nation, perhaps, in all his-
tory.” But the Soviet Union, despite its profound human and material losses
during the war, emerged with much new territory and enhanced influence,
making it the greatest power in Europe and Asia. Just a little over a century
after the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville had predicted that western
Europe would be overshadowed by the power of the United States and Rus-
sia, his prophecy had come to pass.
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Totalitarianism In Italy, Benito Mussolini assumed control by promising law

and order. Adolf Hitler rearmed Germany in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles
and aimed to unite all German speakers. Civil war in Spain and the growth of
the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin contributed to a precarious balance of
power in Europe.
• American Neutrality By March 1939, Hitler had annexed Austria and seized
Czechoslovakia. He sent troops to invade Poland in September of 1939, after
signing a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union. At last, the British and
French governments declared war. The United States issued declarations of neu-
trality, but with the fall of France, accelerated aid to France and Britain.
• Japanese Threat After Japan allied with Germany and Italy and announced its
intention to take control of French Indochina, President Roosevelt froze Japan-
ese assets in the United States and restricted oil exports to Japan. The Japanese
bombed the Pacific Fleet in a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
• World War II and American Society Americans migrated west to take jobs in
defense factories; unemployment was soon a thing of the past. Farmers, too,
recovered from hard times. Many women took nontraditional jobs, some in the
military. About 1 million African Americans served in the military, in segregated
units. Japanese Americans, however, were interned in “war relocation camps.”
• Road to Allied Victory By 1943, the Allies controlled all of North Africa. From
there they launched attacks on Sicily and then Italy. Joseph Stalin, meanwhile,
demanded a full-scale Allied attack on the Atlantic coast to ease pressure on the
Eastern Front, but D-day was delayed until June 6, 1944.
• The Pacific War The Japanese advance was halted as early as June 1942 with the
Battle of Midway. The Americans fought slow, costly battles in New Guinea,
then, in 1943, headed toward the Philippines. Fierce resistance at Iwo Jima and
Okinawa and Japan’s refusal to surrender after the firebombing of Tokyo led the
new president, Harry S. Truman, to order the use of the atomic bomb.
• Postwar World In January 1942, the Allied nations signed the Declaration of
the United Nations. The Big Three—Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin—meeting
in Yalta in February 1945, decided that Europe would be divided into occupa-
tion zones.
 CHRONOLOGY

1933
1937
1938
Adolf Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany
Panay incident
Hitler forces the Anschluss (union) of Austria and Germany
1939 Soviet Union agrees to a nonaggression pact with Germany
September 1939 German troops invade Poland
1940 Battle of Britain
September 1940 Germany, Italy, and Japan sign the Tripartite Pact
December 7, 1941 Japanese launch surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
June 1942 Battle of Midway
January 1943 Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Combined Chiefs of Staff
meet at Casablanca
July 1943 Allied forces land on Sicily
1943 Roosevelt and Churchill meet Stalin, in Tehran
June 6, 1944 D-day
February 1945 Yalta Conference
April 1945 Franklin Delano Roosevelt dies; Hitler commits suicide
May 8, 1945 V-E day
August 1945 Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
September 2, 1945 Japanese surrender

KEY TERMS & NAMES

“good neighbor” policy Winston Churchill p. 1148 Tuskegee Airmen p. 1170
p. 1143
Joseph Stalin p. 1151 Dwight D. Eisenhower
Benito Mussolini, “Il Duce” p. 1177
p. 1144 Blitzkrieg (the Blitz) p. 1152
Operation Overlord
Adolf Hitler, “Führer” Lend-Lease Act p. 1156 p. 1183
p. 1144
Atlantic Charter p. 1158 Yalta Conference p. 1190
National Socialist German
Women’s Army Corps “final solution” p. 1195
Workers’ (Nazi) party
(WAC) p. 1169
p. 1144
Part Seven


THE

AMERICAN

AGE
T he United States emerged from the Second World War as the
world’s pre-eminent military and economic power. America exercised a
commanding role in international trade and was the only nation in pos-
session of atomic bombs. While much of Europe and Asia struggled to
recover from the horrific devastation of the war, the United States
emerged unscathed, its economic infrastructure intact and operating at
peak efficiency. In 1945, the United States produced half of the world’s
manufactured goods. Jobs that had been scarce in the 1930s were now
available for the taking. American capitalism not only demonstrated its
economic strength after the war, but it also became a dominant force
around the world as well. Products made in the United States increas-
ingly filled store shelves in most Western nations, and American-made
feature films and television shows would reinforce the influence of cul-
tural capitalism abroad. The decades following 1945 were an “American
Age” not only because of the nation’s military power but also because of
the global influence of American capitalism and consumerism. The U.S.
dollar became the accepted international currency. In Europe, Japan,
and elsewhere, American products, forms of entertainment, and fashion
trends attracted excited attention. Many Americans gloried in their
nation’s military power, economic strength, and global dominance.
Henry Luce, the publisher of Life magazine, proclaimed that the twenti-
eth century had become the “American century.”
Yet the specter of a deepening “cold war” cast a pall over the buoyant
revival of the economy. The tense ideological contest with the Soviet
Union and Communist China produced numerous foreign crises and
sparked a domestic witch hunt for Communists in the United States that
far surpassed earlier episodes of political and social repression.
Both major political parties accepted the geopolitical assumptions
embedded in the ideological cold war with international communism.
Both Republican and Democratic presidents affirmed the need to “con-
tain” the spread of Communist influence around the world. This
bedrock assumption eventually embroiled the United States in a costly
war in Southeast Asia that destroyed Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency.
The Vietnam War was also a catalyst for a countercultural movement in
which young idealists among the “baby boom” generation demanded
many overdue social reforms that spawned the civil rights, gay rights,
feminist, and environmental movements. The social upheavals of the
1960s and early 1970s provoked a conservative backlash as well. Richard
M. Nixon’s paranoid reaction to his critics led to the Watergate affair
and the destruction of his presidency.
Through all of this turmoil, however, the basic premises of welfare-
state capitalism that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had instituted with his
New Deal programs during the 1930s remained essentially intact. With
only a few exceptions, Republicans and Democrats after 1945 accepted
the notion that the federal government must assume greater responsibil-
ity for the welfare of individuals. Even President Ronald Reagan, a sharp
critic of federal social-welfare programs, recognized the need during the
1980s for the government to provide a “safety net” for those who could
not help themselves.
Yet this fragile consensus on public policy began to disintegrate in the
late 1980s amid stunning international developments and less visible
domestic events. The surprising collapse of the Soviet Union and the
disintegration of European communism forced policy makers to
respond to a post–cold war world in which the United States remained
the only legitimate superpower. After forty-five years, U.S. foreign policy
was no longer focused on a single adversary, and world politics lost its
bipolar quality. During the early 1990s East and West Germany reunited,
apartheid in South Africa ended, and Israel and the Palestinians signed a
previously unimaginable treaty ending hostilities—for a while.
At the same time, U.S. foreign
policy began to focus less on
military power and more on
economic competition and tech-
nological development. In those
arenas, Japan, a reunited Ger-
many, and Communist China
challenged the United States for
preeminence. By reducing the
public’s fear of nuclear annihila-
tion, the end of the cold war also
reduced public interest in for-
eign affairs. The presidential
election of 1992 was the first
since 1936 in which foreign-
policy issues played virtually no
role. Yet world affairs remained
volatile and dangerous. The implosion of Soviet communism after
1989 unleashed a series of ethnic, nationalist, and separatist conflicts.
During the 1990s and since, the United States found itself being
drawn into crises in faraway lands such as Bosnia, Somalia,
Afghanistan, and Iraq.
As the new multipolar world careened toward the end of the twentieth
century and the start of a new millennium, fault lines began to appear in
the social and economic landscape. A gargantuan federal debt and rising
annual deficits threatened to bankrupt a nation that was becoming top-
heavy with retirees. Without fully realizing it, much less appreciating its
cascading consequences, the American population was becoming dis-
proportionately old. The number of people aged ninety-five to ninety-
nine doubled between 1980 and 1990, and the number of centenarians
increased 77 percent. The proportion of the population aged sixty-five
and older rose steadily during the 1990s. By the year 2010, over half of
the elderly population was over seventy-five. This positive demographic
fact had profound social and political implications. It made the tone of
political debate more conservative and exerted increasing stress on
health-care costs, nursing-home facilities, and the very survival of the
Social Security system.
At the same time that the gap between young and old was increasing,
so, too, was the disparity between rich and poor. This trend threatened
to stratify a society already experiencing rising levels of racial and ethnic
tension. Between 1960 and 2010, the gap between the richest 20 percent
of the population and the poorest 20 percent more than doubled. Over
20 percent of all American children in 2012 lived in poverty compared
to 15 percent in 2000, and the infant-mortality rate rose. Despite the
much-ballyhooed “war-on-poverty” programs initiated by President
Lyndon B. Johnson during the mid-1960s and continued in one form or
another by his successors, the chronically poor at the start of the twenty-
first century were more numerous than in 1964.

29
THE FAIR DEAL AND
CONTAINMENT

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• How did the cold war emerge?

• How did Harry Truman respond to the Soviet occupation of
eastern Europe?
• What was Truman’s Fair Deal?
• What was the background of the Korean War, and how did the
United States become involved?
• What were the roots of McCarthyism?

N o sooner did the Second World War end than a “cold war”
began. The awkward wartime alliance between the United
States and the Soviet Union had collapsed by the fall of
1945. The two strongest nations to emerge from the war’s carnage could not
bridge their ideological differences over basic issues such as human rights,
individual liberties, economic philosophy, and religious freedom. Mutual
suspicion and a race to gain influence and control over the so-called non-
aligned or “third world” nations further polarized the two nations. The
defeat of Japan and Germany had created power vacuums that sucked the
Soviet Union and the United States into an unrelenting war of words fed by
clashing strategic interests and economic rivalry. During the next forty-five
years of the cold war, not a single nation in western Europe would become
Communist while every nation in eastern Europe (except Greece) would
be controlled by Soviet communism. At the same time, the devastation
wrought by the war in western Europe and the exhaustion of its peoples
ignited anti-colonial uprisings in Asia and Africa that would strip Britain,
France, and Holland of their empires and created fragile new nation states.
1210 • THE FAIR DEAL AND CONTAINMENT (CH. 29)

The emergence of Communist China (the People’s Republic) after 1949 fur-
ther complicated global politics. The postwar world was thus an unstable
one in which international tensions shaped the contours of domestic politics
and culture as well as foreign relations. Fueling the rivalry between East and
West was a nuclear arms race that threatened to annihilate entire societies.
Only too late would the two superpowers come to realize that the power to
destroy does not necessarily provide the power to control world affairs.

D E M O B I L I Z AT I O N UNDER T RU M A N

T R U M A N ’ S U N E A S Y S TA R T “Who the hell is Harry Truman?” Roo-

sevelt’s chief of staff asked the president in the summer of 1944. The ques-
tion was on more lips when, after less than twelve weeks as vice president,
Harry S. Truman took the presidential oath on April 12, 1945. Clearly Tru-
man was not Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and that was one of the burdens he
would bear. Roosevelt and Truman came from starkly different backgrounds.
For Truman there had been no inherited wealth, no European travel, no
Harvard—indeed, no college at all. Born in 1884 in western Missouri, Tru-
man grew up in Independence, near Kansas City. Bookish and withdrawn,
he moved to his grandmother’s farm after high school, spent a few years
working in Kansas City banks, and grew into an outgoing young man.
During the First World War, Truman served in France as captain of an
artillery battery. Afterward, he and a partner started a clothing business, but
it failed miserably in the recession of 1922, and Truman then became a pro-
fessional politician under the tutelage of Kansas City’s Democratic machine.
In 1934, Missouri sent him to the U.S. Senate, where he remained obscure
until he chaired a committee investigating fraud in the war mobilization
effort.
Truman was a plain, decent man who lacked Roosevelt’s dash and charm,
his brilliance and creativity. He was terribly nearsighted and a clumsy public
speaker. Yet he had virtues of his own. Some aspects of Truman’s personality
evoked the spirit of Andrew Jackson: his decisiveness, bluntness, feistiness,
loyalty, and folksy manner. On his first full day as president, Truman was
awestruck. “Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now,” he told a group of
reporters. “I don’t know whether you fellows ever had a load of hay fall on
you, but when they told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the
moon, the stars and all the planets had fallen on me.” Truman was up to the
challenge, however. Despite his lack of executive experience, he was confi-
dent and self-assured—and he needed to be. Managing the transition from
 Demobilization under Truman • 1211

war to peace was a monumental task fraught with dangers. For instance, the
wartime economy had ended the Great Depression and brought about full
employment, but what would happen as the federal government cut back on
military spending and industries transitioned from building tanks and war-
planes to automobiles and washing machines? Would the peacetime econ-
omy be able to absorb the millions of men and women who had served in
the armed forces? These and related issues greatly complicated Truman’s
efforts to lead America out of combat and into a postwar era complicated by
a cold war against Communism and the need to rebuild a devastated Europe
and Asia.
On September 6, 1945, Truman sent Congress a comprehensive domestic
program that proposed to enlarge the New Deal. Its twenty-one points
included expansion of unemployment insurance to cover more workers, a
higher minimum wage, the construction of low-cost public housing, regional
hydroelectric development of the nation’s river valleys, and a public-works
program. “Not even President Roosevelt asked for so much at one sitting,”
said the House Republican leader. “It’s just a plain case of out-dealing the
New Deal.” But Truman soon saw his new domestic proposals mired in dis-
putes over the transition to a peacetime economy.

The Eldridge General Store, Fayette County, Illinois

Postwar America quickly demobilized, turning its attention to the pursuit of
abundance.
1212 • THE FAIR DEAL AND CONTAINMENT (CH. 29)

C O N V E RT I N G TO P E AC E The raucous celebrations that greeted the

news of Japan’s surrender in the summer of 1945 signaled what would
become the most rapid military demobilization in world history. President
Truman had naively become convinced that a large air force with atomic
bombs would eliminate the need for large conventional military forces.
So he gutted the Marine Corps, mothballed warships, and slashed army
divisions. By 1947, the total armed forces had shrunk from 12 million to
1.5 million. In just the four years between 1947 and 1951, President Truman
went through four secretaries of defense because of their opposition to his
efforts to shrink the military. The outbreak of the Korean War in the summer
of 1950, however, awakened the president to the reality that robust conven-
tional military forces would still be needed in a nuclear age.
After the Second World War ended, 15 million military veterans eagerly
returned to schools, jobs, and families. Population growth, which had dropped
off sharply in the 1930s, now soared. The “baby boom generation,” those
Americans born during this postwar period (roughly 1946–1964) composed
a disproportionately large generation of Americans that would become a
dominant force shaping the nation’s social and cultural life throughout the
second half of the twentieth century and after.
The end of the war, with its sudden demobilization and conversion to a
peacetime economy, caused short-term problems but not the postwar depres-
sion that many had feared. Several shock absorbers cushioned the economic
impact of demobilization: federal unemployment insurance and other Social
Security benefits; the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, known as the
GI Bill of Rights, under which the federal government spent $13 billion on
military veterans for education, vocational training, medical treatment,
unemployment insurance, and loans for building houses and going into busi-
ness; and most important, the pent-up postwar demand for consumer goods
that was fueled by wartime deprivation.

C O N T R O L L I N G I N F L AT I O N The most acute economic problem Tru-

man faced was not depression but inflation. During the war, America was
essentially fully employed. After the war, millions of military veterans had to
find jobs as civilians in a peacetime economy. The Roosevelt administration
had also frozen wages and prices during the war—and prohibited labor
union strikes. When wartime economic controls were removed, prices for
consumer items shot up. Prices of farm commodities soared 14 percent in
one month and by the end of 1945 were 30 percent higher than they had been
in August. As prices rose, so, too, did corporate profits. The gap between soar-
ing consumer prices and stagnant hourly wages prompted growing demands
 Demobilization under Truman • 1213

by labor unions for pay increases. When such raises were not forthcoming,
unions launched a series of strikes. By January 1946, more workers were on
strike than ever before.
Major disputes developed in the coal and railroad industries, both of
which were necessary to ensure public health and safety. Like Theodore Roo-
sevelt before him, Truman grew frustrated with the stubbornness of both
management and labor. He took the drastic step of taking control of the coal
mines, whereupon the mine owners agreed to union demands. Truman also
seized control of the railroads and won a five-day postponement of a strike.
But when the union leaders refused to make further concessions, the feisty
president lashed out against their “obstinate arrogance” and threatened to
draft striking workers into the armed forces. The strike ended a few weeks
later.

PA RT I S A N C O O P E R AT I O N A N D C O N F L I C T As congressional elec-
tions approached in the fall of 1946, public discontent ran high, with most of
it focusing on the Truman administration. Both Democrats and Republicans
held the president responsible for the prolonged labor turbulence. A speaker
at the national convention of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO),
normally a pro-Democratic group, had tagged Truman “the No. 1 strike-
breaker,” while much of the public, angry at the striking unions, also blamed
the strikes on the White House. Earlier in the year, Truman had fired ultra-
liberal Henry A. Wallace as secretary of commerce in a disagreement over
foreign policy, thus offending the left-wing of the Democratic party. At the
same time, Republicans charged that Communists had infiltrated the gov-
ernment and that Truman had bungled the transition to a peacetime econ-
omy. Republicans had a field day coining partisan slogans. In the elections,
Republican partisans shouted “To err is Truman,” and they won majorities in
both houses of Congress for the first time since 1928. “The New Deal is
kaput,” one newspaper editor crowed—prematurely, as it turned out, for the
gutsy Truman thereafter launched a ferocious defense of his administration
and its policies.
The new Republican Congress, in an effort to curb the power of the
unions, passed the Taft-Hartley Labor Act of 1947, which prohibited what
was called a closed shop (in which nonunion workers could not be hired)
but permitted a “union shop” (in which workers newly hired were required
to join the union) unless banned by state law. It included provisions forbid-
ding “unfair” union practices such as staging secondary boycotts or jurisdic-
tional strikes (by one union to exclude another from a given company or
industry), “featherbedding” (paying for work not done), refusing to bargain
1214 • THE FAIR DEAL AND CONTAINMENT (CH. 29)

Taft-Hartley Act cartoons

Organized labor is pulled under by the Taft-Hartley Act (left); while in the other
cartoon, Taft and Hartley look for John Lewis, the head of the Mine Workers Union.

in good faith, and contributing to political campaigns. Furthermore, union

leaders had to take oaths declaring that they were not members of the Com-
munist party. The act also forbade strikes by federal employees and imposed a
“cooling-off” period of eighty days on any strike that the president found to be
dangerous to national health or safety.
Truman’s veto of the “shocking” Taft-Hartley bill, which unions called
“the slave-labor act,” restored his credibility with working-class Democrats.
Many blue-collar unionists who had gone over to the Republicans in 1946
returned to the Democrats. The Taft-Hartley bill passed over Truman’s veto,
however. By 1954, fifteen states, mainly in the South, had used the Taft-Hartley
Act’s authority to enact “right-to-work” laws forbidding union shops.
Truman clashed with the Republicans on other domestic issues. He vetoed
a tax cut on the principle that in times of high production and high employ-
ment the federal debt should be reduced before taxes should be lowered. Yet
the conflicts between Truman and Congress obscured the high degree of
bipartisan cooperation in matters of government reorganization and foreign
policy. In 1947, Congress passed the National Security Act, which created a
National Military Establishment, headed by the secretary of defense with
subcabinet Departments of the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, as well as
the National Security Council. The act also established the Central Intelli-
gence Agency (CIA) to coordinate global intelligence-gathering activities in
the cold war against communism.
 The Cold War • 1215

T H E C O L D WA R

B U I L D I N G T H E U N I T E D N AT I O N S The wartime military alliance

against Nazism disintegrated after 1945. Franklin Roosevelt had expected
that the Allied Powers in the postwar world would have separate spheres of
influence around the globe but, like Woodrow Wilson before him, he focused
his efforts on creating a collective security organization, the United Nations.
On April 25, 1945, two weeks after Roosevelt’s death and two weeks before the
German surrender, delegates from fifty nations at war with Germany and
Japan met in San Francisco to organize the United Nations. The General
Assembly included delegates from all member nations and would meet annu-
ally. The Security Council, essentially an executive body, would remain in
permanent session and would have “primary responsibility for the mainte-
nance of international peace and security.” Its eleven members (fifteen after
1965) included five permanent members: the United States, the Soviet Union
(replaced by the Russian Federation in 1991), Great Britain, France, and the
Republic of China (replaced by the People’s Republic of China in 1971). Each
permanent member can veto any major proposal.

D I F F E R E N C E S W I T H T H E S OV I E TS Since the end of the Second

World War, historians have debated the tempting but unanswerable question:
Was the United States or the Soviet Union more responsible for the onset of
the cold war? The conventional, or “orthodox,” view argues that the Soviets,
led by Joseph Stalin, a paranoid Communist dictator ruling a traditionally
insecure nation, set out to dominate the globe after 1945. The United States
had no choice but to stand firm in defense of democratic capitalist values. By
contrast, “revisionist” scholars insist that Truman was the culprit. Instead
of continuing Roosevelt’s efforts to collaborate with Stalin and the Soviets,
revisionists assert, Truman adopted a confrontational foreign policy designed
to create American spheres of influence around the world. In this view, Tru-
man’s provocative policies aggravated the tensions between the two super-
powers. Yet such an interpretation fails to recognize that both sides engaged
in superheated ideological rhetoric. East and West in the postwar world were
captives of a nuclear nightmare of fear, suspicion, and posturing. Scholars
eager to choose sides also at times fail to acknowledge that President Truman
inherited a deteriorating relationship with the Soviets. Events during 1945
made compromise and conciliation more difficult, whether for Roosevelt or
for Truman.
There were signs of trouble in the Grand Alliance of Britain, the Soviet
Union, and the United States as early as the spring of 1945 when the Soviet
1216 • THE FAIR DEAL AND CONTAINMENT (CH. 29)

Union installed compliant governments in eastern Europe, violating the

promises of democratic elections made at the Yalta Conference. On February 1,
the Polish Committee of National Liberation, a puppet group already claim-
ing the status of provisional government, moved from Lublin to Warsaw. In
March, the Soviets installed a puppet prime minister in Romania. Protests
against such actions led to Soviet counter protests that the British and Amer-
icans were negotiating a German surrender in Italy “behind the back of the
Soviet Union” and that German forces were being concentrated against the
Soviet Union.
Such was the charged atmosphere when Truman entered the White House
near the end of the war in Europe. A few days before the San Francisco con-
ference to organize the United Nations, Truman gave Soviet foreign minister
Vyacheslav Molotov a tongue-lashing in Washington on the Polish situation.
“I have never been talked to like that in my life,” Molotov said. “Carry out
your agreements,” Truman snapped, “and you won’t get talked to like that.”
On May 12, 1945, four days after victory in Europe, the outspoken British
prime minister, Winston Churchill, sent a worried telegram to Truman: “What
is to happen about Europe? An iron curtain is drawn down upon [the Rus-
sian] front. We do not know what is going on behind [it].” Churchill wanted to
lift the iron curtain created by Soviet military occupation and install democra-
tic governments in eastern Europe. Instead, as a gesture of goodwill to the
Soviets, and over Churchill’s protest, U.S. forces withdrew from the German
occupation zone that had been assigned to the Soviet Union at the Yalta Con-
ference. American diplomats still hoped that the Yalta agreements would be
carried out and that the Soviet Union would help defeat Japan. There was little
the Western powers could have done to prevent Soviet control of eastern
Europe even if they had not let their military forces dwindle. The presence of
Soviet armed forces frustrated the efforts of non-Communists to gain political
influence in eastern European countries. The leaders of those opposed to
Soviet influence were exiled, silenced, executed, or imprisoned.
Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, who took office in 1945, struggled
through 1946 with the problems of postwar treaties. In early 1947, the Coun-
cil of Foreign Ministers finally produced treaties for Italy, Hungary, Roma-
nia, Bulgaria, and Finland. In effect these treaties confirmed Soviet control
over eastern Europe, which in Russian eyes seemed but a parallel to Ameri-
can control over Japan and Western control over most of Germany and all of
Italy. The Yalta guarantees of democracy in eastern Europe had turned out
much like the Open Door policy in China: little more than pious rhetoric
sugar coating the realities of raw power and national interest. The Soviets
controlled eastern Europe and refused to budge.
 The Cold War • 1217

Byrnes’s impulse to pressure Soviet diplomats by brandishing the atomic

bomb only added to the irritations, intimidating no one. As early as April
1945, he had suggested to Truman that possession of nuclear weapons “might
well put us in position to dictate our own terms at the end of the war.” After
becoming secretary of state, he had threatened Soviet diplomats with Amer-
ica’s growing arsenal of nuclear weapons. But they paid little notice, in part
because they were developing their own atomic bombs.

C O N TA I N M E N T By the beginning of 1947, relations with the Soviet

Union had become even more troubled. A year before, in February 1946,
Stalin had pronounced international peace impossible “under the present
capitalist development of the world economy.” His provocative statement
impelled the State Department to send an urgent request for an interpreta-
tion of Stalin’s speech to forty-two-year-old George F. Kennan, a brilliant
diplomat and political analyst stationed at the U.S. embassy in Moscow.
Kennan responded on February 22, 1946, with a “Long Telegram” in which
he sketched the roots of Russian history and Soviet policy. In his extensive
analysis, Kennan insisted that Roosevelt’s assumptions that the Soviets
would cooperate with the United States and the United Nations after the war
(“peaceful coexistence”) were dangerously naive. Stalin would not be swayed
by good-will gestures or democratic ideals. The Soviet Union was founded
on an ideology (Leninism) that presumed a fundamental conflict between
the communist and capitalist worlds. The Soviets were a new kind of enemy
“committed fanatically to the belief
that . . . [capitalism] be destroyed.” Yet
Kennan noted that “the problem is
within our power to solve—and that
without recourse to any general mili-
tary conflict.” In the immediate after-
math of the war, he explained, the
Soviet Union was relatively weak; it
was more opportunistic than aggres-
sive; it did not want another war; it
was preoccupied with rebuilding its
war-devastated infrastructure. The
best way to deal with such an ideologi-
cal foe was to employ patient, persis-
tent, and prolonged efforts (“resolve”) George F. Kennan
to “contain” Soviet expansionism over Kennan developed the doctrine of
the long term. Kennan stressed that containment.
1218 • THE FAIR DEAL AND CONTAINMENT (CH. 29)

countering the historic and ideological tendencies of the Soviet Union to

exercise control over its neighbors would be the “greatest task our diplomacy
has ever faced.”
Secretary of State George C. Marshall was so impressed by Kennan’s
analysis that he summoned him to a new position in the State Department
in charge of policy planning. As Kennan remembered, “My reputation was
made. My voice now carried.” In 1947, Kennan solidified his reputation as
the nation’s foremost Soviet expert when he wrote an essay titled “The
Sources of Soviet Conduct,” published anonymously in Foreign Affairs and
signed by “X.” Kennan provided a brilliant psychological analysis of Russian/
Soviet insecurity and intentions. Soviet foreign policy had consistently exerted
“a cautious, persistent pressure toward the disruption and weakening of all
rival influence and rival power.” He predicted that the Soviets would try to
fill “every nook and cranny available . . . in the basin of world power.” Yet
their almost paranoid insecurity also meant that they would usually act cau-
tiously to reduce their risks. Therefore, he insisted, a third world war with
the Soviets was unlikely as long as America adopted policies to keep them
contained. As he wrote, “the main element of any United States policy toward
the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant
containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”
What made Kennan’s pathbreaking article in Foreign Affairs strategically
significant was his insistence that by containing Soviet expansionism the
United States would eventually force the implosion of the Soviet communist
system. He predicted “that Soviet power, like the capitalist world of its con-
ception, bears within it the seeds of its own decay, and that the sprouting of
those seeds is well advanced.” And he insisted that the United States could
accelerate the self-destruction of Soviet communism by adopting shrewd
political and economic counter-pressures.
No other American diplomat at the time forecast so accurately what would
in fact happen to the Soviet Union some forty years later. In its broadest
dimensions, Kennan’s “containment” concept dovetailed with the outlook of
Truman and his advisers, most of whom mistakenly viewed containment
primarily in military terms. But Kennan’s analysis remained vague on sev-
eral key issues: How exactly were the United States and its allies to “contain”
the Soviet Union? How should the United States respond to specific acts of
Soviet aggression around the world?
Kennan was an analyst, not a policymaker. He left the task of converting
the concept of “containment” into action to President Truman and his inner
circle of advisers, most of whom viewed containment as a military doctrine.
They harbored a growing fear that the Soviet lust for power reached beyond
 The Cold War • 1219

eastern Europe, posing dangers in the eastern Mediterranean, the Middle

East, and western Europe itself. Indeed, the Soviet Union sought to gain
access to the Mediterranean Sea, long important to Russia for purposes of
trade and defense. After the war, the Soviet Union pressed Turkey for territo-
rial concessions and the right to build naval bases on the Bosporus, an
important gateway between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. In 1946,
civil war broke out in Greece between a government backed by the British
and a Communist-led faction that held the northern part of the country and
drew supplies from Soviet-dominated Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Albania. On
February 21, 1947, the British ambassador informed the U.S. government
that the British could no longer bear the economic and military burden of
aiding Greece; they would withdraw in five weeks. The American reaction
was immediate. Within days, Truman conferred with congressional leaders,
whereupon the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee rec-
ommended a strong presidential appeal to the nation. The president needed
to “scare the hell out of the American people” about the menace of commu-
nism. Truman complied.

T H E T RU M A N D O C T R I N E On March 12, 1947, President Truman

gave a speech, broadcast over national radio, in which he asked Congress for
$400 million in economic aid to Greece and Turkey. In his speech, the presi-
dent enunciated what quickly came to be known as the Truman Doctrine. “I
believe,” Truman declared, “that it must be the policy of the United States to
support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed
minorities or by outside pressures.” Otherwise, the Soviet Union would
come to dominate Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. George F. Kennan
cringed at Truman’s open-ended, indiscriminate commitment to “contain”
communism everywhere; he had always insisted that American counter-
pressure needed to be exercised selectively. All crises were not equally signif-
icant; American power was limited. The United States could not intervene in
every “hot spot” around the world. Kennan said that Truman’s concept of
containment was “more grandiose and more sweeping than anything that
I . . . had ever envisioned.” But other presidential advisers had come to see
the world as being in a permanent crisis because of the Communist menace,
and they—as well as Truman—were determined to create a militarized con-
tainment policy.
In 1947, Congress passed a Greek-Turkish aid bill that helped Turkey
achieve economic stability and enabled Greece to defeat a Communist
insurrection in 1949. But the principles embedded in the Truman Doctrine
committed the United States to intervene throughout the world in order to
1220 • THE FAIR DEAL AND CONTAINMENT (CH. 29)

“contain” the spread of communism, a global commitment that would pro-

duce failures as well as successes in the years to come.
The Truman Doctrine marked the beginning, or at least the open
acknowledgment, of a contest that the former government official Bernard
Baruch named in a 1947 speech to the legislature of South Carolina: “Let us
not be deceived—today we are in the midst of a cold war.” Greece and Turkey
were but the front lines in an ideological struggle that was spreading to west-
ern Europe, where inflation soared and wartime damage and dislocation had
devastated cities, factories, mines, bridges, railroads, and farms, creating
opportunities for Communist insurgents to take political advantage of the
chaotic situation. Then, during 1946–1947, Europe experienced catastrophic
weather—severe droughts in the summers of 1946 and 1947 that destroyed
crops, followed by brutal winter temperatures and blizzards that froze rivers,
shut down railroads, power plants, and coal mines. Coal shortages in Lon-
don, where the temperature plunged to sixteen below zero, left only enough
fuel to heat and light homes for a few hours each day. In Germany, millions
died of exposure and starvation. Amid the chaos, the Communist parties
of France and Italy garnered growing support for their promised solu-
tions to the difficulties. Aid from the United Nations and imports of food
from abroad had staved off mass starvation but provided little basis for eco-
nomic recovery.

THE MARSHALL PLAN In the spring of 1947, former general George C.

Marshall, who had replaced James F. Byrnes as secretary of state in January,
called for massive American aid to rescue Europe from disaster. A retired
U.S. Army chief of staff, who had been the highest-ranking general during
the Second World War, Marshall used the occasion of the 1947 Harvard gradu-
ation ceremonies to outline his ingenious plan for the reconstruction of
Europe, which came to be known as the Marshall Plan. “Our policy,” he said, “is
directed not against country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, despera-
tion, and chaos.” Marshall offered U.S. aid to all European countries, including
the Soviet Union. On June 27, the foreign ministers of France, Britain, and the
Soviet Union met in London to discuss Marshall’s overture. Soviet foreign min-
ister Molotov arrived with eighty advisers, but during the talks he got word
from Moscow to withdraw from the “imperialist” scheme. Some among the
American delegation did not regret his departure. “He could have killed the
Marshall Plan by joining it,” said one U.S. official, who feared the Soviets might
sabotage the recovery effort.
In December 1947, Truman submitted Marshall’s proposal for the Euro-
pean Recovery Program to a special session of Congress. Two months later,
 The Cold War • 1221

a Communist-led coup in
Czechoslovakia orchestrated by
the Soviet Union ensured con-
gressional passage of the Mar-
shall Plan. It seemed to confirm
the threat to western Europe.
President Truman signed the
unique legislation on April 3,
1948. He insisted that it be called
the Marshall Plan rather than
the Truman Plan because the
former general was the “greatest
living American,” and naming it
for Marshall would do “a whole
hell of a lot better in Congress.”
From 1948 until 1951, the newly
created Economic Cooperation
Administration, which managed “It’s the Same Thing”
the Marshall Plan, poured $13 The Marshall Plan, which distributed aid
billion into economic recovery throughout Europe, is represented in this
efforts in Europe. Most of the 1949 cartoon as a modern tractor driven by
a prosperous farmer. In the foreground a
aid went to Great Britain, poor, overworked man is yoked to an old-
France, Italy, and West Germany. fashioned “Soviet” plow, forced to go over
And it worked as planned. the ground of the “Marshal Stalin Plan,”
while Stalin himself tries to persuade others
that “it’s the same thing without mechanical
DIVIDING GERMANY The
problems.”
Marshall Plan drew the nations of
western Europe closer together,
but it increased tensions with the Soviet Union, for Stalin correctly viewed
the massive American effort to rebuild the European economy as a way to
diminish Soviet influence in the region. The breakdown of the wartime
alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union also left the problem
of postwar Germany unsettled. Berlin had been divided into four sectors or
occupation zones, each governed by one of the four allied nations: the United
States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. The war-devastated
German economy languished, requiring the U.S. Army to provide food and
basic necessities to civilians. Slowly, the Allied occupation zones evolved into
functioning governments. In 1948, the British, French, and Americans con-
solidated their three zones into one and developed a common currency to be
used in West Germany as well as West Berlin. The West Germans set about
1222 • THE FAIR DEAL AND CONTAINMENT (CH. 29)

organizing state governments and elected delegates to a federal constitu-

tional convention.
The political unification of West Germany infuriated Stalin, who wanted
to keep Germany weak and decentralized. The status of West Berlin, sitting
deep inside the Soviet occupation zone (East Germany), had also become an
explosive powder keg. By 1948, there were only ninety thousand U.S. troops
left in western Germany and Berlin; the Soviets had a million soldiers in
their much smaller eastern occupation zone. In March 1948, Stalin decided
to force the issue of Berlin’s future by trying to prevent the new West Ger-
man currency from being delivered into the city. The Soviets began to
restrict road and rail traffic into West Berlin; on June 23, 1945, they stopped
all traffic into the beleaguered city. The next day, Stalin cut all electrical ser-
vice to West Berlin. The Soviets hoped the blockade would force the Allies to
give up the city. This warfare by starvation and intimidation placed the
United States on the horns of a dilemma: risk a third world war by using
force to break the blockade, or begin a humiliating retreat from West Berlin,
leaving the residents to be swallowed up by the Soviet bloc. But General
Lucius D. Clay, the iron-willed U.S. army commander in Germany, proposed
to stand firm and even use force to break the blockade. Truman agreed, say-
ing, “We [are going to] stay in Berlin—period.”
After considering the use of armed convoys to supply the 2.5 million people
living in West Berlin, the president decided—against the advice of his cabi-
net and General Clay—to organize a massive, sustained airlift to provide
needed food and supplies to West Berliners. At the time, it seemed like an
impossible task, but by October 1948 the U.S. and British air forces were fly-
ing in up to thirteen thousand tons of food, medicine, coal, and equipment
a day. The massive Berlin airlift went on for eleven months, transporting
2.32 million tons of cargo. Pilots and crews risked—and at times gave—their
lives on 14,036 flights, often in foul, foggy weather, to save the city.
Finally, on May 12, 1949, after extended talks, the Soviets lifted the block-
ade of West Berlin, in part because bad Russian harvests made them desper-
ate for food grown in West Germany. Before the end of the year, the Federal
Republic of Germany had a government functioning under Chancellor Kon-
rad Adenauer. At the end of May 1949, an independent German Democratic
Republic arose in the Soviet-controlled eastern zone, formalizing the division
of Germany into eastern and western nations. West Germany gradually
acquired more authority, until the Western powers recognized its full sover-
eignty in 1955. The Berlin airlift was the first explicit “victory” for the West in
the Cold War. Its success transformed West Berliners from defeated adver-
saries to ardent American allies. The elected mayor of divided Berlin correctly
 The Cold War • 1223

predicted that “the magnetic pull of the West will someday pull Berlin and the
Eastern zone [East Germany] back into a united Germany.”

BUILDING ALLIANCES The blockade of West Berlin convinced the

allied nations that they needed to act collectively to thwart Soviet efforts at
expansion into western Europe. As relations between the Soviets and west-
ern Europe chilled, transatlantic unity ripened into a formal military
alliance. On April 4, 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty was signed by represen-
tatives of twelve nations: the United States, Britain, France, Belgium, the
Netherlands, Luxembourg, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Norway, and
Portugal. Greece and Turkey joined the alliance in 1952, West Germany in
1955, and Spain in 1982. Senate ratification of the North Atlantic Treaty by a
vote of 82 to 13 demonstrated that the isolationism of the prewar period had
disappeared in the face of Soviet communism. The treaty pledged that an
attack against any one of the members would be considered an attack
against all and provided for a council of the North Atlantic Treaty Organiza-
tion (NATO).
The eventful year of 1948 produced another foreign-policy decision with
long-term consequences along the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea.
Palestine, as the biblical Holy Land had come to be known, had been under
Turkish rule until the League of Nations made it a British protectorate after
the First World War. During the early years of the twentieth century, many
Zionists, who advocated a Jewish nation in the region, had migrated there.
More arrived after the British gained control in 1919, and many more
arrived during the Nazi persecution of European Jews in the 1930s and just
after the Second World War ended. Having been promised a national home-
land by the British, the Jews of
Palestine demanded their own
nation after the war, and they
received energetic support from
American Jews and worldwide
Jewish organizations.
Late in 1947, the United
Nations voted to partition Pales-
tine into Jewish and Arab states,
but this plan met fierce Arab
opposition. No action was taken
until the British control of Pales- NATO
tine expired on May 14, 1948, NATO is depicted as a symbol of renewed
at which time Jewish leaders in strength for a battered Europe.
 1224 • THE FAIR DEAL AND CONTAINMENT (CH. 29)

DENMARK SWEDEN

A
E U.S.S.R.
NORTH S
SEA IC To
LT U.S.S.R.
BA
EAST
Danzig PRUSSIA
Hamburg Access (Gdansk)
Annexed To Poland
NETHERLANDS Bremen corridor
by Poland
WEST Berlin
GERMANY

Od
EAST

er
Rive
Joint occupation Warsaw

r
by four powers Ne POLAND
Bonn iss
e R.
BELGIUM GERMANY Lublin
Frankfurt

SAAR Iron Curtain

LUXEMBOURG
FRANCE er
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
r

Riv
ve

ube
Ri

Dan
ne
Rhi

Munich Vienna

SWITZERLAND AUSTRIA
HUNGARY ROMANIA
ITALY
0 50 100 Miles

THE OCCUPATION OF GERMANY AND AUSTRIA 0 50 100 Kilometers

French zone U.S. zone

British zone Soviet zone YUGOSLAVIA

How did the Allies divide Germany and Austria at the Yalta Conference? What was
the “iron curtain”? Why did the Allies airlift supplies to Berlin?

Palestine, most of them immigrants from Europe, proclaimed the indepen-

dence of Israel. President Truman, who had been in close touch with Ameri-
can Jewish leaders, officially recognized the new Israeli state within minutes;
the United States became the first nation to act. Truman’s decision in the
face of opposition from Great Britain and the U.S. State Department made
his bold action all the more remarkable. He acted in part because of his own
 Civil Rights during the 1940s • 1225

strong biblical belief that the Jews belonged in Israel. The president had also
been appalled by the revelations of the Nazi efforts to exterminate the Jews
as well as the scandalously poor treatment the displaced Jews had received in
the postwar years.
The creation of a Jewish state in Palestine prompted neighboring Arab
nations to attack Israel, which held its own, largely through weaponry pro-
vided by the Soviet Union. UN mediators gradually worked out a truce
agreement, restoring an uneasy peace by May 11, 1949, when Israel joined
the United Nations. But the hard feelings and intermittent warfare between
Israel and the Arab states have festered ever since, complicating U.S. foreign
policy, which has tried to maintain friendship with both sides but has tilted
toward Israel.

CIVIL RIGHTS DURING THE 1940S

The social tremors triggered by the Second World War and the onset of
the cold war transformed America’s racial landscape. The government-
sponsored racism of the German Nazis, the Italian Fascists, and the Japanese
imperialists focused attention on the need for the United States to improve
its own race relations and to provide for equal rights under the law. As a New
York Times editorial explained in early 1946, “This is a particularly good
time to campaign against the evils of bigotry, prejudice, and race hatred
because we have witnessed the defeat of enemies who tried to found a mas-
tery of the world upon such cruel and fallacious policy.” The postwar con-
frontation with the Soviet Union gave American leaders an added incentive
to improve race relations at home. But in the ideological contest with com-
munism for influence in post-colonial Africa, U.S. diplomats were at a dis-
advantage as long as racial segregation continued in the United States; the
Soviets often compared racism in the South to the Nazis’ treatment of the
Jews.
In the postwar South, many African American military veterans were
eager to change their region’s racist tradition that made a mockery of their
efforts to defend the principles of liberty and democracy against fascism.
The Georgia Veterans League, for example, launched an energetic effort to
register black voters after the war. Some white veterans balked at such
efforts, however. Many members of the Ku Klux Klan, the all-white Citizens’
Councils, and other southern organizations created to promote white racial
superiority had served in the military during the Second World War. As the
1226 • THE FAIR DEAL AND CONTAINMENT (CH. 29)

head of one such organization declared, “Our heroes didn’t die in Europe
to give Negroes the right to marry our wives.” One black veteran arrived
home in a uniform festooned with combat medals, only to be welcomed
by a white neighbor who said: “Don’t you forget . . . that you’re still a nig-
ger.” Those black veterans who spoke out against such racial bigotry
risked their lives—literally. In 1946, four African Americans were gunned
down by a white mob in rural Georgia. One of the murderers explained
that George Dorsey, one of the victims, was “a good nigger” until he went
in the army. “But when he came out, he thought he was as good as any
white people.”
Harry S. Truman was horrified by such incidents and grew ever more
determined to promote civil rights. For most of his political career, Truman
had shown little concern for the plight of African Americans. He had grown
up in western Missouri assuming that blacks and whites preferred to be seg-
regated from one another. As president, however, he began to reassess his
convictions. In the fall of 1946, a delegation of civil rights activists urged
Truman to issue a public statement condemning the resurgence of the Ku
Klux Klan and the lynching of African Americans. The delegation graphi-
cally described incidents of torture and intimidation against blacks in
the South. Truman was aghast. He soon appointed a Committee on Civil
Rights to investigate violence against African Americans and to recommend
preventive measures.
On July 26, 1948, President Truman banned racial discrimination in the
hiring of federal employees. Four days later, he issued an executive order
ending racial segregation in the armed forces. The air force and navy quickly
complied, but the army dragged its feet until the early 1950s. By 1960, the
armed forces were the most racially integrated of all national organizations.
Desegregating the military was, Truman claimed, “the greatest thing that
ever happened to America.”

JAC K I E RO B I N S O N In July 1944, in the middle of the war, a bus driver

at Fort Hood, Texas, directed an African American army lieutenant to “get to
the back of the bus where the colored people belong.” The young officer
refused, explaining that the army had recently ordered its buses integrated. The
bus driver said he had never heard such a thing and called upon MPs (military
police) to arrest the black lieutenant, who was subsequently charged with
insubordination. But a military court made up of nine white officers acquitted
him. The lieutenant was Georgia-born Jackie Robinson, and the incident
reflected his determination to defy the racist traditions in American life.
 Civil Rights during the 1940s • 1227

Three years later, as the pro-

fessional baseball season opened
in the spring, the National League’s
Brooklyn Dodgers included on
its roster a talented player named
Jackie Robinson, the first
African American player to cross
the color line. During Robin-
son’s first season with the
Dodgers, teammates and oppo-
sing players viciously baited
him, pitchers threw at him,
base runners spiked him, and
spectators booed him in every
city. Hotels refused him rooms,
restaurants denied him service, Jackie Robinson
and hate mail arrived by the Racial discrimination remained widespread
bucket load. On the other throughout the postwar period. In 1947,
Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers
hand, black spectators were
became the first black player in major league
electrified by Robinson’s cou- baseball.
rageous example; they turned
out in droves to watch him play. As time passed, Robinson won over many
fans and players with his quiet courage, self-deprecating wit, and deter-
mined performance. He was named the Rookie of the Year in 1947 and later
selected to six straight All-Star teams. He played in five World Series cham-
pionships. Robinson’s courageous performance led other teams to sign black
players. Baseball’s pathbreaking efforts promoting racial integration stimu-
lated other professional sports teams to do the same. Jackie Robinson vividly
demonstrated that racism, not inferiority, impeded African American
advancement in the postwar era and that segregation need not be a perma-
nent condition of American life.

S H A P I N G T H E FA I R D E A L By early 1948, after three years in the

White House, President Truman had yet to shake the impression that he was
not up to the job. The Democratic party seemed about to fragment: south-
ern conservatives resented Truman’s outspoken support of civil rights. By
1948, most political analysts assumed that Truman would lose the Novem-
ber election. Such gloomy predictions did not faze the combative president,
however. He mounted a furious reelection campaign. His first step was to
1228 • THE FAIR DEAL AND CONTAINMENT (CH. 29)

shore up the major ele-

ments of the New Deal
coalition: farmers, union-
ists, and African Ameri-
cans. In his 1948 State of
the Union message, Tru-
man offered something to
nearly every group the
Democrats hoped to at-
tract. The first goal, Tru-
man said, was to ensure
civil rights. He added
proposals to increase fed-
eral aid to education,
expand unemployment
“I Stand Pat!” and retirement benefits,
Truman’s support of civil rights for African create a comprehensive
Americans had its political costs, as this 1948 system of health insur-
cartoon suggests. ance, enhance federal sup-
port for public housing
projects, enable more rural dwellers to connect to electricity, and increase
the minimum wage.

THE ELECTION OF 1948 The Republican-controlled Congress for

the most part spurned the Truman program, an action it would later regret.
At the Republican Convention, New York governor Thomas E. Dewey
won the presidential nomination on the third ballot. The platform
endorsed most of the New Deal reforms and approved the administration’s
bipartisan foreign policy; Dewey promised to run things more efficiently,
however. In July, a glum Democratic Convention gathered in Philadelphia.
But delegates who expected to do little more than go through the motions
were doubly surprised: first by the battle over the civil rights plank, and then
by Truman’s acceptance speech. To keep from stirring southern hostility, the
administration sought a platform plank that opposed racial discrimination
only in general terms. Liberal Democrats, however, sponsored a bold resolu-
tion that called on Congress to take specific action and commended Truman
“for his courageous stand on the issue of civil rights.” Thirty-seven-year-old
Minneapolis mayor Hubert H. Humphrey electrified the delegates and set off
a ten-minute demonstration when he declared, “The time has arrived for the
 Civil Rights during the 1940s • 1229

Democratic party to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forth-
rightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.” White segregationist dele-
gates from Alabama and Mississippi instead walked out of the convention.
The solidly Democratic South had fractured for the first time since the end
of the Civil War.
On July 17, a group of rebellious southern Democrats met in Birming-
ham, Alabama. While waving Confederate flags and singing “Dixie,” the dis-
sident Democrats nominated South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond on
a States’ Rights Democratic ticket, quickly dubbed the Dixiecrat party. The
Dixiecrats denounced Truman’s “infamous” civil rights initiatives and cham-
pioned states’ rights. They hoped to draw enough electoral votes to preclude a
majority for either major party, throwing the election into the House of
Representatives, where they might strike a sectional bargain. A few days later,
on July 23, the left wing of the Democratic party gathered in Philadelphia to
form a new Progressive party and nominate for president Henry A. Wallace,
Roosevelt’s former secretary of agriculture and vice president. These splits
in the Democratic ranks seemed to spell the final blow to Truman, but the

Picketing in Philadelphia
The opening of the 1948 Democratic National Convention was marked by
demonstrations against racial segregation, led by A. Philip Randolph (left).
1230 • THE FAIR DEAL AND CONTAINMENT (CH. 29)

The Dixiecrats nominate Strom Thurmond

The Dixiecrats nominated South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond (center) to
lead their ticket in the 1948 election.

courageous president was undaunted. He pledged to “win this election and

make the Republicans like it!” He then set out on a 31,000-mile “whistle-stop”
train tour, during which he castigated the “do-nothing” Eightieth Congress.
Friendly audiences shouted, “Pour it on, Harry!” and “Give ’em hell, Harry.” Tru-
man responded: “I don’t give ’em hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.”
The polls and the pundits predicted a sure win for the Republican
Dewey, but on election day Truman won the biggest upset in history, tak-
ing 24.2 million votes (49.5 percent) to Dewey’s 22 million (45.1 percent)
and winning a thumping margin of 303 to 189 in the Electoral College.
Thurmond and Wallace each got more than 1 million votes, but the revolt
of right and left had worked to Truman’s advantage. The Dixiecrat rebel-
lion backfired by angering black voters, who turned out in droves to sup-
port Truman, while the Progressive party’s radicalism made it hard to tag
Truman as soft on communism. Thurmond carried four Deep South states
(South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana) with 39 electoral
votes, including one from a Tennessee elector who repudiated his state’s
decision for Truman. Thurmond’s success hastened a momentous disrup-
tion of the Democratic Solid South that would begin a long transition in
the region to Republicanism.
 Civil Rights during the 1940s • 1231

WA
8 NH 4
MT ND ME
4 VT 3 5
OR 4 MN
6 ID 11
4 SD WI MI NY MA 16
WY 4 12 19 47
3 RI 4
IA PA CT 8
NV NE 10
6 OH 35 NJ 16
3 UT IL IN 25 WV
CA 4 CO 28 13 DE 3
25 6 KS MO VA MD 8
8 11
8 15 KY 11
1 NC
AZ OK TN 11 14
NM AR SC
4 4 10
9
MS AL GA 8
9 11 12
TX
23 LA
10
FL
8

THE ELECTION OF 1948 Electoral Vote Popular Vote

Harry S. Truman 303 24,200,000
(Democrat)
Thomas E. Dewey 189 22,000,000
(Republican)
J. Strom Thurmond 39 1,200,000
(States’ Rights Democrat)

Why did the political pundits predict a Dewey victory? Why was civil rights
a divisive issue at the Democratic Convention? How did the candidacies
of Thurmond and Wallace help Truman?

Truman viewed his victory as a vindication for the New Deal and a man-
date for moderate liberalism. “We have rejected the discredited theory that
the fortunes of the nation should be in the hands of a privileged few,” he
said. His State of the Union message repeated the agenda he had set forth
the year before. “Every segment of our population and every individual,” he
declared, “has a right to expect from his government a fair deal.” Whether
deliberately or not, he had invented a catchy label, the Fair Deal, to distin-
guish his program from the New Deal.
Most of Truman’s Fair Deal proposals were extensions or enlargements of
New Deal programs already in place: a higher minimum wage, expansion of
1232 • THE FAIR DEAL AND CONTAINMENT (CH. 29)

“Dewey Defeats Truman”

Truman’s victory in 1948 was a huge upset, so much so that even the early edition
of the Chicago Daily Tribune was caught off guard, running this presumptuous
headline.

Social Security coverage to workers not included in the original bill in 1935,
increased federal subsidies paid to farmers, and a sizable slum-clearance and
public-housing program. Despite Democratic majorities, however, the con-
servative coalition of southern Democrats and Republicans thwarted any
drastic new departures in domestic policy. Congress rejected civil rights
bills, a proposal to create a national health insurance program, and federal
aid to education. Congress also turned down Truman’s demand for repeal of
the Taft-Hartley Act.

T H E C O L D W A R H E AT S U P

As was true during Truman’s first term, global concerns repeatedly dis-
tracted the president’s attention from domestic issues. In his 1949 inaugural
address, Truman called for a vigilant anti-Communist foreign policy resting
on four pillars: the United Nations, the Marshall Plan, NATO, and a “bold new
plan” for providing financial and technical assistance to underdeveloped parts
of the world, which came to be known simply as Point Four. But other issues
 The Cold War Heats Up • 1233

kept the Point Four program from ever reaching its potential as a means of
increasing American influence abroad at the expense of communism.

“LOSING” CHINA AND THE B OMB One of the most intractable

postwar problems, a prolonged civil war in China, was fast unraveling in
1949. The Chinese Nationalists, led by Chiang Kai-shek, had been fighting
Mao Zedong and the Communists since the 1920s. The outbreak of war with
Japan in 1937 had halted this civil war, and both Franklin Delano Roosevelt
and Stalin believed that the Nationalists would control China after the war.
But the commanders of U.S. forces in China during the Second World War
concluded that Chiang’s government was hopelessly corrupt, tyrannical, and
inefficient. After the war, American forces nevertheless ferried Nationalist
Chinese armies back into the eastern and northern provinces of China as the
Japanese withdrew. Civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists
erupted in late 1945.
It soon became a losing fight for the Nationalists as the Communists won
over the land-hungry peasantry. By the end of 1949, the Nationalist govern-
ment had fled to the island of Formosa, which it renamed Taiwan. Truman’s
critics—mostly Republicans—now asked bitterly, “Who lost China?” But it
is hard to imagine how the U.S. government could have prevented a Com-
munist victory short of a massive military intervention, which would have
been risky, unpopular, and expensive. The United States continued to recog-
nize the Nationalist government on Taiwan as the rightful government of
China, delaying formal relations with Communist China (the People’s
Republic of China) for thirty years.
As the Communists were gaining control of China, the Soviets were suc-
cessfully testing an atomic bomb. The American nuclear monopoly had
lasted just four years. The discovery of the Soviet bomb in 1949 triggered
an intense reappraisal of the strategic balance of power in the world, caus-
ing Truman in 1950 to order the construction of a hydrogen bomb, a
weapon far more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, lest
the Soviets make one first. Over the next forty years, the two cold war
adversaries would manufacture over one hundred thousand nuclear
weapons ready to be launched on land, under the sea, and in the air. Both
sides were prepared to use such horrific weapons. The concept of nuclear
deterrence during the cold war depended upon convincing the “other side”
that a nuclear war was possible. As an American expert on nuclear
weaponry explained, the nation’s leaders needed to “have the balls to push
the button.”
1234 • THE FAIR DEAL AND CONTAINMENT (CH. 29)

The growing threat of atomic warfare with the Soviet Union led the National
Security Council in April 1950 to unveil a top-secret document, known as
NSC-68. It called for rebuilding America’s conventional armed forces to pro-
vide military options other than nuclear war. Such a plan represented a major
departure from the nation’s time-honored aversion to maintaining large armies
in peacetime. It was also an expensive proposition. But the public was growing
more receptive to the nation’s new role as world leader amid the cold war, and
an invasion of South Korea in 1950 by Communist forces from the north
clinched the issue for most Americans.

WA R I N KO R E A The Japanese had occupied the Korean Peninsula since

1910. After the defeat and withdrawal of the Japanese in 1945, the victorious
Allies faced the difficult task of creating a new Korean nation. Soviet troops
had advanced into northern Korea and accepted the surrender of Japanese
forces above the 38th parallel, while U.S. forces had done the same south of
that line. Rival Korean regimes then emerged. The opportunistic Soviets
quickly organized a Korean government in the North along Stalinist lines,
while the Americans set up a western-style regime in the South.
The division of Korea at the end of the Second World War, like the divi-
sion of Germany, was a temporary necessity that became permanent. In the
hectic days of August 1945, the Soviets accepted an American proposal to
divide desperately poor Korea at the 38th parallel until steps could be taken
to unify the war-torn country. With the onset of the cold war, however, the
two sides could not agree on unification. By the end of 1948, separate
regimes had appeared in the two sectors and occupation forces had with-
drawn. The weakened state of the U.S. military contributed to the impres-
sion that South Korea was vulnerable to a Communist assault. Evidence later
gleaned from Soviet archives reveals that Stalin as well as Mao encouraged
the North Koreans to unify their country and oust the Americans from the
peninsula. The Soviet-designed war plan called for North Korean forces to
seize South Korea within a week. Stalin apparently assumed that the United
States would not intervene.
On June 25, 1950, over eighty thousand North Korean soldiers crossed the
boundary into South Korea and drove the South Korean army down the
peninsula in a headlong retreat. Seoul, the South Korean capital, was cap-
tured in three days. President Truman responded decisively. He and his
advisers assumed that the North Korean attack was directed by Moscow and
was a brazen indication of the aggressive designs of Soviet communism.
“The attack upon Korea makes it plain beyond all doubt,” Truman told Con-
gress, “that communism has passed beyond the use of subversion to conquer
 The Cold War Heats Up • 1235

independent nations and will now use armed invasion and war.” Truman
then made a critical decision: he decided to wage war under the auspices of
the United Nations rather than seeking a declaration of war from Congress.
An emergency meeting of the UN Security Council quickly censured the
North Korean “breach of peace.” The Soviet delegate, who held a veto power,
was at the time boycotting the council because it would not seat Communist
China in place of Nationalist China. On June 27, the Security Council took
advantage of his absence to call on UN members to “furnish such assistance

Vladivostok Vladivostok
THE KOREAN WAR, 1950 THE KOREAN WAR, 1950–1953

CHINA CHINA
ive
r U.S.S.R ive
r U.S.S.R
MANCHURIA MANCHURIA
uR
uR

Yal Farthest
Y al

Ch
UN advance,
in
es
NORTH Nov. 1950
Ch’osan Ch’osan KOREA
ea
tta
ck

NORTH SEA
,N

KOREA
ov.

OF
1

North Korean
95

JAPAN
0

offensive,
P’yongyang P’yongyang
June – Sept. 1950
Truce line,
July 27, 1953
P’anmunjom Chorwon
38° 38⬚
SEA Seoul
Inch’on Seoul OF Inch’on UN retreat,
YELLOW Jan. 1951
JAPAN
SEA
SOUTH UN
KOREA
0

forces
95
Sept. 15 r
thu

YELLOW
,1
MacAr

SEA UN position, SOUTH UN position,

Sept. 1950 KOREA Sept. 1950
Pusan Pusan

I I
T
T

RA RA
0 50 100 Miles
AS
T 0 50 100 Miles
A ST
E JAPAN E JAPAN
0 50 100 Kilometers KO R 0 50 100 Kilometers KOR

How did the surrender of the Japanese in Korea set up the conflict between Soviet-
influenced North Korea and U.S.-influenced South Korea? What was General
MacArthur’s strategy for retaking Korea? Why did President Truman remove
MacArthur from command?
1236 • THE FAIR DEAL AND CONTAINMENT (CH. 29)

to the Republic of Korea as may be necessary to repel the armed attack and
to restore international peace and security in the area.” Truman thereupon
ordered American air, naval, and ground forces into action. In all, some
fourteen other nations contributed token military units, but the United
States carried the burden of the fighting. General Douglas MacArthur was
put in command. The American defense of South Korea set a precedent of
profound consequence: war by order of a president rather than by vote of
Congress.
Truman’s assumption that Stalin and the Soviets were behind the invasion
of South Korea prompted two other decisions that had far-reaching conse-
quences. First, Truman mistakenly viewed the Korean conflict as a diversion
for a Soviet invasion of western Europe, so he ordered a major expansion of
U.S. military forces in Europe. Second, he increased assistance to French
troops fighting a Communist independence movement in Indochina (Viet-
nam), creating the Military Assistance Advisory Group for Indochina—the
start of America’s deepening military involvement in Southeast Asia.
For three months, the fighting in Korea went badly for the Republic of
Korea and the UN forces. By September, the North Korean forces had taken
control of 90 percent of the peninsula and were on the verge of decimating
the South Koreans, who were barely hanging on to the southeast corner of
Korea. Then, in a brilliant maneuver on September 15, 1950, MacArthur
staged a surprise amphibious landing behind the North Korean lines at
Inch’ŏn, the port city for Seoul. The sudden blow stampeded the North
Korean forces back across the border. At that point, MacArthur persuaded
Truman to allow him to push north and seek to reunify Korea. By then, how-
ever, the Soviet delegate was back in the Security Council, wielding his veto.
So on October 7, the United States won approval for pushing into North
Korea from the UN General Assembly, where the veto did not apply. U.S.
forces had crossed the North Korean boundary by October 1 and were con-
tinuing northward toward the border with Communist China. The political
objective of the war had moved from containment to liberation. President
Truman, concerned about intervention by Communist China, flew seven
thousand miles to Wake Island for a conference with General MacArthur on
October 15. There the general discounted chances that the Chinese Red
Army would act, but if it did, he predicted, “there would be the greatest
slaughter.”
That same day, the Communist government in Beijing announced that
China “cannot stand idly by.” On October 20, UN forces had entered
 The Cold War Heats Up • 1237

September 1950
American soldiers engaged in the recapture of Seoul from the North Koreans.

P’yŏngyang, the North Korean capital, and on October 26, advance units
had reached Ch’osan, on the Yalu River, Korea’s northern border with
China. MacArthur predicted total victory by Christmas. On the night of
November 25, however, some 260,000 Chinese “volunteers” counterat-
tacked, and massive “human-wave” attacks, with the support of tanks and
warplanes, turned the tables on the UN troops, sending them into a des-
perate retreat just at the onset of winter. It had become “an entirely new
war,” MacArthur said. He asked for thirty-four atomic bombs and pro-
posed air raids on China’s “privileged sanctuary” in Manchuria, a naval
blockade of China, and an invasion of the Chinese mainland by the Taiwan
Nationalists.
Truman opposed leading the United States into the “gigantic booby trap”
of war with Communist China, and the UN forces soon rallied. By January
1951, over nine hundred thousand UN troops under General Matthew B.
Ridgway launched a counterattack that in some places carried them back
across the 38th parallel. When Truman offered negotiations to restore the
prewar boundary, General MacArthur undermined the move by issuing an
ultimatum for China to make peace or suffer an attack on their own country.
1238 • THE FAIR DEAL AND CONTAINMENT (CH. 29)

On April 5, on the floor of Congress, the Republican minority leader read a

letter in which General MacArthur criticized the president and said that
“there is no substitute for victory.” Such an act of open insubordination left
Truman, as the commander in chief, no choice but to accept MacArthur’s
aggressive demands or fire him. Civilian control of the military was at stake,
Truman later said, and he acted swiftly. On April 11, 1951, the president
removed the popular MacArthur (Truman called him “Mr. Prima Donna”)
from his command and replaced him with the more prudent Ridgway.
Truman’s action ignited an uproar across the country, and a tumultuous
reception greeted MacArthur upon his first return home since 1937.
MacArthur’s emotional departing speech to a joint session of Congress pro-
vided the climactic event. He recalled a barracks ballad of his youth “which
proclaimed most proudly that old soldiers never die, they just fade away.”
And like the old soldiers of that ballad, he said, “I now close my military
career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave
him the light to see that duty.” A Senate investigation brought out the
administration’s arguments, best summarized by General Omar Bradley,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Taking on Red China,” he explained,
would lead only “to a larger deadlock at greater expense.” The MacArthur
strategy “would involve us in the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong
time and with the wrong enemy.” Most Americans found General Bradley’s
logic persuasive.
On June 24, 1951, the Soviet representative at the United Nations pro-
posed a cease-fire in Korea along the 38th parallel, the original dividing line
between North and South; U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson accepted
the cease-fire a few days later with the consent of the United Nations. China
and North Korea responded favorably—at the time, General Ridgway’s
“meat-grinder” offensive was inflicting severe losses—and truce talks started
on July 10, 1951, at P’anmunjŏm, only to drag on for two years while the
fighting continued. The chief snags were exchanges of military prisoners and
the South Korean president’s insistence on unification. By the time a truce
was reached, on July 27, 1953, Truman had relinquished the White House to
Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower. The truce line followed the war front at
that time, mostly a little north of the 38th parallel, with a demilitarized zone
of two and a half miles separating the forces; repatriation of prisoners would
be voluntary, supervised by a neutral commission. No peace conference ever
took place, and Korea, like Germany, remained divided. The war had cost
the United States more than 33,000 battle deaths and 103,000 wounded or
missing. South Korean casualties, all told, were about 1 million, and North
 The Cold War Heats Up • 1239

Korean and Chinese casualties an esti-

mated 1.5 million.

ANOTHER RED SCARE The

Korean War excited a second Red
Scare as people grew increasingly fear-
ful that Communists were infiltrating
American society. Since 1938 the
House Committee on Un-American
Activities (known as HUAC) had kept
up a drumbeat of accusations about
supposed Communist subversives in
the federal government. On March 21,
1947, just nine days after he announced
the Truman Doctrine, the president Alger Hiss
signed an executive order creating a Accused of leading a Soviet spy ring,
loyalty program in the federal govern- Hiss testifies before the House
ment. Every person entering federal Un-American Activities Committee
(HUAC) in August 1948.
service would be subject to a back-
ground investigation. By early 1951,
the Civil Service Commission had cleared over 3 million people, while over
2,000 had resigned and 212 had been dismissed for doubtful loyalty.
Perhaps the case most damaging to the administration involved Alger Hiss,
president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who had earlier
served in several government agencies, including the State Department. Whit-
taker Chambers, a former Soviet agent and later an editor of Time magazine,
told the HUAC in 1948 that Hiss had given him secret documents ten years
earlier, when Chambers was spying for the Soviets and Hiss was working in the
State Department. Hiss sued for libel, and Chambers produced microfilms of
the State Department documents that he said Hiss had passed to him. Hiss
denied the accusation, whereupon he was indicted and, after one mistrial, con-
victed in 1950. The charge was perjury, but he was convicted of lying about espi-
onage, for which he could not be tried because the statute of limitations on that
crime had expired.
Most damaging to the administration was that President Truman, taking
at face value the many testimonials to Hiss’s integrity, had called the
charges against him a “red herring.” The Hiss affair had another political
consequence: it raised to national prominence a young California con-
gressman, Richard M. Nixon, who doggedly insisted on pursuing the case
1240 • THE FAIR DEAL AND CONTAINMENT (CH. 29)

and then exploited his anti-Communist rhetoric to win election to the Sen-
ate in 1950.
More cases of Communist infiltration surfaced. In 1949, eleven top lead-
ers of the Communist party in the United States were convicted under the
Smith Act of 1940, which outlawed any conspiracy to advocate the over-
throw of the government. The Supreme Court upheld the law under the
doctrine of a “clear and present danger,” which overrode the right to free
speech. What was more, in 1950 the government unearthed the existence of
a British-American spy network that had fed information about the devel-
opment of the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. These disclosures led to
the arrest of, among others, Klaus Fuchs in Britain and Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg in the United States.

M C C A RT H Y ’ S W I TC H H U N T Revelations of Soviet spying in the

United States encouraged politicians to exploit the public’s fears of the
Communist menace at home. If a man of such respectability as Alger Hiss
was guilty, many wondered, who could be trusted? Early in 1950, a little-
known Republican senator, Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin, suddenly
surfaced as the most ruthless exploiter of the nation’s anxieties. He took up
the cause of anti-communism with an incendiary speech at Wheeling, West

Joseph McCarthy
Senator McCarthy (left) and his aide Roy Cohn (right) exchange comments during
testimony.
 The Cold War Heats Up • 1241

Virginia, on February 9, 1950, in which he charged that the State Depart-

ment was infested with Communists—and he claimed to have their names,
although he never provided them. McCarthy’s headline-grabbing tactic was
to unleash a barrage of general accusations in an effort to deflect attention
from his lack of evidence. Concerns about the truth or fair play did not faze
him. He refused to answer critics or provide evidence; his focus was on
fearmongering.
And for a time it worked. McCarthy provided an anxious public genuinely
worried about Communist subversion with a simple scapegoat: the Demo-
crats were traitors. “Like a man busily shooting off firecrackers in a legislative
hall,” said a reporter, “McCarthy may not be persuasive, but he must be dealt
with before any debate at all can progress.” Despite his outlandish claims and
boorish bullying, McCarthy never uncovered a single Communist agent in
the government. But with the United States at war with Korean Communists
in mid-1950, it was easy for him to arouse public fears. During the summer
of 1951, he had outrageously called General George C. Marshall a traitor. His
smear campaign went unchallenged until the end of the Korean War and
helped fuel widespread concerns about communist subversion in the United
States. Magazines, novels, and movies played upon fears of Communist
agents infiltrating American society. The film I Married a Communist (1949)
exemplified Hollywood’s effort to capitalize on the almost hysterical con-
cerns about Soviet efforts to infiltrate American neighborhoods and
organizations.
Fears of Communist espionage led Congress in 1950 to pass the McCar-
ran Internal Security Act over President Truman’s veto, making it unlawful
“to combine, conspire, or agree with any other person to perform any act
which would substantially contribute to . . . the establishment of a totalitar-
ian dictatorship.” Communist and Communist-front organizations had to
register with the attorney general. Immigrants who had belonged to totali-
tarian parties in their home countries were barred from admission to the
United States. The McCarran Internal Security Act, Truman said in his veto
message, would “put the Government into the business of thought control.”
He might in fact have said as much about the Smith Act of 1940 or even his
own program of loyalty investigations. Yet documents recently uncovered in
Russian archives and U.S. security agencies reveal that the Soviets did indeed
operate an extensive espionage ring in the United States. Russian agents
recruited hundreds of American spies to ferret out secrets regarding atomic
weapons, defense systems, and military intelligence. The United States did
the same in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
1242 • THE FAIR DEAL AND CONTAINMENT (CH. 29)

A S S E S S I N G T H E C O L D WA R In retrospect the onset of the cold war

after the end of the Second World War takes on an appearance of terrible
inevitability. America’s traditional commitment to democratic capitalism,
political self-determination, and religious freedom conflicted with the Soviet
Union’s preference for spheres of influence on its periphery, totalitarianism at
home, and state-mandated atheism. Insecurity, more than ideology, drove
much of Soviet behavior during and after the Second World War. Russia, after
all, had been invaded by Germany twice in the first half of the twentieth
century, and Soviet leaders wanted tame buffer states on their borders for
protection. The people of eastern Europe were again caught in the middle.
If international conditions set the stage for the cold war, the actions of
political leaders and thinkers set events in motion. Hindsight is always
clearer than foresight, and President Truman may have erred in 1947 when
he pledged to “contain” communism everywhere. The government loyalty
program he launched may also have helped aggravate the anti-Communist
hysteria. Containment itself proved hard to contain amid the ideological
posturing. Its theorist, George F. Kennan, later confessed that he was to
blame in part because he had failed at the outset to stress that the United
States needed to prioritize its response to Soviet adventurism and not focus
on military responses to every trouble spot around the globe.
The years after the Second World War were unlike any other postwar period
in American history. Having taken on global burdens, the nation had become
committed to a permanent national military establishment, along with the
attendant creation of shadowy new bureaucracies such as the National Secu-
rity Council (NSC), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA). The federal government—and the presidency—
continued to grow during the Cold War, fueled by the actions of both major
political parties as well as by the intense lobbying efforts of what Dwight D.
Eisenhower would call the “military-industrial complex.” In 1952, President
Truman created the enormous National Security Agency, entrusted with moni-
toring all media and communications for foreign intelligence and exempt from
laws protecting privacy and civil liberties. The advent of nuclear weapons and
the authority given solely to the president to order a nuclear attack further
expanded executive authority.
The policy initiatives of the Truman years abandoned the nation’s long-
standing aversion to peacetime alliances. It was a far cry from the world of
1796, when George Washington in his farewell address warned his country-
men against “those overgrown military establishments which . . . are inauspi-
cious to liberty” and advised his country “to steer clear of permanent
 The Cold War Heats Up • 1243

alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” But then Washington had
warned only against participation in the “ordinary” combinations and collu-
sions of Europe. The postwar years had seen extraordinary events as well as
unprecedented new military alliances and weaponry. Times had changed
dramatically, and so too had America’s role in world affairs.
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• The Cold War The cold war was an ideological contest between the Western
democracies (especially the United States) and the Communist countries that
emerged after the Second World War. Immediately after the war, the Soviet
Union established satellite governments in eastern Europe, violating promises
made at the Yalta Conference. The United States and the Soviet Union, former
allies, differed on issues of human rights, individual liberties, and self-
determination.
• Containment President Truman responded to the Soviet occupation of eastern
Europe with the policy of containment, the aim of which was to halt the spread of
communism. Truman proposed giving economic aid to countries in danger of
Communist control, such as Greece and Turkey; and, with the Marshall Plan, he
offered such aid to all European nations. In a defensive move, the United States in
1949 became a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO), a military alliance of Western democracies.
• Truman’s Fair Deal Truman proposed not only to preserve the New Deal but
also to expand it. He vetoed a Republican attempt to curb labor unions. He
oversaw the expansion of Social Security and through executive orders ended
segregation in the military and banned racial discrimination in the hiring of
federal employees.
• The Korean War After a Communist government came to power in China in
1949, Korea became a “hot spot.” The peninsula had been divided at the 38th
parallel after the Second World War, with a Communist regime in the North and
a Western-style regime in the South. After North Korean troops crossed the
dividing line in June 1950, Truman decided to go to war under the auspices of
the United Nations and without asking Congress to declare war. The war was
thus waged by the United States with the participation of more than a dozen
member nations of the United Nations. A truce, concluded in July 1953, estab-
lished a demilitarized zone on either side of the 38th parallel.
• McCarthyism The onset of the cold war inflamed another Red Scare. During the
Korean War, investigations by the House Committee on Un-American Activities
(known as HUAC) sought to find “subversives” within the federal government.
Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin exploited Americans’ fears of Soviet
spies’ infiltrating the highest levels of the U.S. government. McCarthy was success-
ful in the short term because, with most eastern European nations being held as
buffer states by the Soviet Union and the war in Korea being indirectly fought
against Communist China, the threat of a world dominated by Communist gov-
ernments seemed real to many Americans.
 CHRONOLOGY

1944

April 1945
Congress passes the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (GI Bill
of Rights)
Fifty nations at war with the Axis Powers sign the United
Nations Charter
1947 Congress passes the Taft-Hartley Labor Act
1947 National Security Council (NSC) is established
May 1948 Israel is proclaimed an independent nation
July 1948 Truman issues an executive order ending segregation in the
U.S. armed forces
October 1948 Allied forces begin airlifting supplies to West Berlin
November 1948 Truman defeats Dewey in the presidential election
1949 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is created
1949 China “falls” to communism
1950 United States and other UN members go to war in Korea

KEY TERMS & NAMES

Security Council p. 1215 Marshall Plan p. 1220 House Committee on
Un-American Activities
iron curtain p. 1216 North Atlantic Treaty Orga- (HUAC) p. 1239
nization (NATO) p. 1223
George F. Kennan p. 1217 Alger Hiss p. 1239
Jackie Robinson p. 1226
containment p. 1218 Senator Joseph R.
Dixiecrats p. 1229 McCarthy p. 1240
Truman Doctrine p. 1219
General Douglas
George C. Marshall p. 1220 MacArthur p. 1236

30
THE 1950s: AFFLUENCE
AND ANXIETY IN AN
ATOMIC AGE

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• Why did the U.S. economy grow rapidly in the period after the
Second World War?
• To what extent was conformity the main characteristic of society
in the 1950s?
• What was the image of the family in this period, and what was the
reality?
• What were the main characteristics of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s
“dynamic conservatism”?
• How did the civil rights movement come to emerge in the 1950s?
• What shaped American foreign policy in the 1950s?

I n the summer of 1959, a newlywed couple spent their honey-

moon in an underground bomb shelter in the back yard of their
home. Life magazine showed the couple in their twenty-two-ton
steel and concrete bunker stocked with enough food and water to survive an
atomic attack. The image of the newlyweds seeking sheltered security in a
new nuclear age symbolized how America in the 1950s was awash in con-
trasting emotions.
A fog of fear and worry shrouded the 1950s. For all of the decade’s prosper-
ity and pleasures, the deepening cold war spawned what commentators called
“an age of anxiety.” The confrontation between two global superpowers—the
United States and the Soviet Union—generated chronic international tensions
 The 1950s: Affluence and Anxiety in an Atomic Age • 1247

and provoked daily anxieties about the terrible possibility of nuclear warfare.
In 1949, Billy Graham, a charismatic young Protestant evangelist, told a Los
Angeles audience that an atomic “arms race unprecedented in the history of
the world is driving us madly toward destruction! . . . Time is desperately
short. . . . Prepare to meet thy God!” Ten years later, in 1959, two out of three
Americans listed the possibility of atomic war as the nation’s most urgent
problem.
However, a very different social outlook accompanied the terrifying expec-
tation of nuclear holocaust in the aftermath of the Allied victory in the Sec-
ond World War. The nation had emerged from the war elated, proud of its
military strength, international stature, and industrial might. Having experi-
enced years of deprivation during the Depression and the war, Americans
were eager to indulge themselves in peacetime prosperity. As the editors
of Fortune magazine proclaimed in 1946, “This is a dream era, this is
what everyone was waiting through the blackouts for. The Great American
Boom is on.”
So it was, at least for the growing number of middle-class Americans. The
postwar era witnessed a manic burst of inventive materialism. During the
late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, the United States generated unprece-
dented economic growth that created a dazzling array of new consumer
products. A broadening new middle class, constituting 60 percent of fami-
lies, emerged in the 1950s (public opinion surveys revealed that three in
every four Americans thought of themselves as middle class). Amid the inse-
curities spawned by the cold war, most Americans were remarkably content
in the 1950s. Marriage rates set an all-time high, divorce and homicide rates
fell, the birth rate soared, and people lived longer on average, thanks in part
to medical breakthroughs such as new antibiotics and the “miraculous”
polio vaccine. In 1957, the editors of U.S. News and World Report proclaimed
that “never have so many people anywhere, been so well off.”
America’s stunning prosperity during the 1950s served as a powerful
propaganda weapon in the cold war with the Soviet Union. In 1959, the
bombastic Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev hosted U.S. vice president
Richard M. Nixon at a gaudy display of American consumer products at an
exhibition in Moscow, the Soviet capital. As they toured the exhibit, Nixon
boasted to his Soviet hosts of the “extraordinarily high standards of living”
in the capitalistic United States, with its 56 million automobiles, 50 million
television sets, appliance-laden houses, and array of leisure-time equipment. In
response, Khrushchev reminded Nixon that many of the desperately poor
people in the United States were homeless, whereas everyone in the Soviet
Union enjoyed guaranteed housing.
1248 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

A PEOPLE OF PLENTY

P O S T WA R PROSPERITY The widely publicized “kitchen debate”

between Nixon and Khrushchev symbolized the two dominant themes of
American life after the Second World War: unprecedented prosperity and
international tension. After a surprisingly brief postwar recession in
1945–1946, the economy shifted from wartime production to the peacetime
manufacture of an array of consumer goods. The economy soared to record
heights. By 1970, the gap between the living standard in the United States
and that in the rest of the world had become a chasm: with 6 percent of the
world’s population, America produced and consumed two thirds of its
goods. During the 1950s, government officials assured the citizenry that they
should not fear another economic collapse. “Never again shall we allow a
depression in the United States,” President Dwight D. Eisenhower promised.
African Americans and other minority groups did not share equally in
America’s bounty, however. True, by 1950, blacks were earning on average
more than four times their 1940 wages. And over the two decades after 1940,
life expectancy for nonwhites rose ten years and black wage earnings
increased fourfold. But African Americans and members of other minority
groups lagged well behind whites in their rate of improvement. The gap
between the average yearly income of whites and minorities such as African
Americans and Hispanics widened during the decade of the 1950s. At least
40 million people remained “poor” during the 1950s, but their plight was
largely ignored amid the wave of middle-class consumerism.
Several factors fueled the nation’s unprecedented economic strength.
First, the huge federal expenditures during the Second World War and the
Korean War had catapulted the economy out of the Great Depression. Gov-
ernment assistance to the economy continued after 1945. No sooner was the
war over than the federal government turned over to civilian owners many
of its war-related plants, thus giving them a boost as they retooled for peace-
time manufacturing. High government spending at all levels—federal, state,
and local—continued in the 1950s, thanks to the arms race generated by the
cold war as well as the massive construction of new highways, bridges, air-
ports, and ports. The military budget after 1945 represented the single most
important stimulant to the economy. Military-related research also helped
spawn the new glamour industries of the 1950s: chemicals (including plas-
tics), electronics, and aviation. By 1957, the aircraft industry was the nation’s
largest employer.
A second major factor stimulating economic growth was the extraordi-
nary increase in productivity stimulated by new technologies, including
 A People of Plenty • 1249

computers. Factories and industries became increasingly “automated.” Still

another reason for the surge in economic growth was the lack of foreign
competition in the aftermath of the Second World War. Most of the other
major industrial nations of the world—England, France, Germany, Japan,
the Soviet Union—had been physically devastated during the war, leaving
American manufacturers with a virtual monopoly on international trade.
The major catalyst in promoting economic expansion after 1945 was the
unleashing of pent-up consumer demand. Postwar America witnessed a new
phase of economic development centered on carefree consumption. The
new shopping malls dotting the suburban landscape epitomized the empha-
sis on spending as a new form of leisure recreation. In 1955, a marketing con-
sultant stressed that America’s “enormously productive economy demands
that we make consumption a way of life, that we convert the buying and use
of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfac-
tion, in consumption.” The consumer culture, he explained, demands that
things be “consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an
ever-increasing rate.”
Americans after the Second World War engaged in a prolonged buying
spree, in part because of demand from the war years and in part because of
new ways to buy things. In 1949, the first credit card was issued; by the
end of the decade there were tens of millions of them. “Buying with plastic”
became the new form of currency, enabling people to spend more than
they had in cash. The new “consumer culture” reshaped the contours of
American life: the nature of work, where people lived, how they interacted
with others, and what they valued. It also affected the class structure,
race relations, and gender dynamics. In 1956, BusinessWeek magazine trum-
peted that “all of our business forces are bent on getting everyone to Bor-
row. Spend. Buy. Waste. Want.” Such uncritical praise for the “throwaway”
culture of consumption during the 1950s masked the chronic poverty
amid America’s mythic plenty. In 1959, a quarter of the population had no
assets; over half the population had no savings accounts. Poverty afflicted
nearly half of the African American population compared to a quarter of
whites.

A C O N S U M E R C U LT U R E What most Americans wanted to buy after

the Second World War was a new house. In 1945, only 40 percent of Ameri-
cans owned homes; by 1960, the proportion increased to 60 percent. And
those new homes featured the latest electrical appliances—refrigerators,
washing machines, vacuum cleaners, electric mixers, carving knives, shoe
polishers. During the 1950s, consumer use of electricity tripled.
1250 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

Postwar consumerism
This Minnesota shopping mall offered a carefree outlet for the pent-up
consumerism of postwar America.

By far the most popular new household product was the television. In
1946, there were 7,000 primitive black-and-white TVs in the nation; by 1960
there were 50 million, and people were watching TV almost six hours a day
on average. Nine out of ten homes had a television, and by 1970, 38 percent
of homes had a new color set. Watching television quickly displaced listen-
ing to the radio or going to the movies as an essential daily activity for mil-
lions of people. In 1954, grocery stores began selling “TV dinners,” heated
and consumed while the family watched popular shows such as Father
Knows Best, I Love Lucy, Leave It to Beaver, and The General Electric Theater,
hosted by Ronald Reagan.
What differentiated the affluence of the post–World War II era from ear-
lier periods of prosperity was its ever-widening dispersion among workers as
well as executives. Between 1947 and 1960, the average real income for the
working class increased by as much as it had in the previous fifty years.
When George Meany was sworn in as head of the American Federation of
Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) in 1955, he pro-
claimed that “American labor never had it so good.”
To perpetuate the growth of consumerism during the 1950s, marketing
specialists and advertising agencies sought to heighten consumers’ desires by
 A People of Plenty • 1251

appealing to their sense of social envy. Expenditures for TV advertising

increased tenfold during the 1950s. Such startling growth rates led the presi-
dent of NBC to claim that the primary reason for the prosperity of the 1950s
was that “advertising has created an American frame of mind that makes
people want more things, better things, and newer things.”
Paying for such “things” was no problem. Between 1945 and 1960, con-
sumer credit and borrowing soared 1100 percent. Personal indebtedness
became a virtue rather than a vice. Frugality had become unpatriotic as con-
sumer indebtedness grew faster than personal incomes. Low mortgage rates,
tax incentives, installment buying, and credit cards helped fuel the consumer
culture. While families in other industrialized nations were typically saving
10 to 20 percent of their income, American families by the 1960s were saving
only 5 percent. “Never before have so many owed so much to so many,”
Newsweek announced in 1953. “Time has swept away the Puritan conception
of immorality in debt and godliness in thrift.”

THE GI BILL OF RIGHTS Fears

that a sharp drop in military spend-
ing and the sudden influx of veterans
into the workforce would disrupt the
economy and produce widespread
unemployment led Congress to pass
the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act
of 1944, the most lavish assistance
program for veterans in history. Pop-
ularly known as the GI Bill of Rights
(GI meaning “government issue,” a
phrase that was stamped on military
uniforms and became slang for
“serviceman”), it created a new gov-
ernment agency, the Veterans Admin-
istration (VA), and included provisions
for unemployment pay for veterans
for one year, preference for veterans
applying for government jobs, low-
interest loans for veterans to buy
homes, access to government hospitals,
and generous subsidies for on-the-job GI Bill of Rights supplement
training programs and postsecondary This booklet informed servicemen
education. about the new legislation.
1252 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

Between 1944 and 1956, almost 8 million veterans took advantage of

$14.5 billion in GI Bill subsidies to attend college or job-training programs.
Some 5 million veterans bought new homes with VA-backed mortgage loans,
which required no down payment and provided up to twenty years for
repayment. Before the Second World War, approximately 160,000 Americans
graduated from college each year. By 1950, the figure had risen to 500,000. In
1949, veterans accounted for 40 percent of all college enrollments, and the
United States could boast the world’s best-educated workforce.
For the first time in the nation’s history, a significant number of working-
class Americans (mostly men) had the opportunity to attend some form of
postsecondary school. A college education or advanced vocational training
served as a portal into the middle class. But while the GI Bill helped erode
class barriers, it was less successful in dismantling racial barriers. Many
African American veterans could not take equal advantage of the education
benefits. Most colleges and universities after the war remained racially segre-
gated, either by regulation or by practice. Of the nine thousand students
enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania in 1946, for example, only forty-
six were African Americans. Those blacks who were admitted to white col-
leges or universities were barred from playing on athletic teams, attending
dances and other social events, and joining fraternities or sororities. In 1946,
only a fifth of the one hundred thousand African Americans who had
applied for education benefits had enrolled in a program.

THE BABY BOOM The return of some 16 million veterans to private

life also helped generate the postwar “baby boom.” Many young married
couples who had delayed having children during the Depression or the Sec-
ond World War were intent on making up for lost time. Between 1946 and
1964, 76 million Americans were born, reversing a century-long decline in
the nation’s birth rate and creating a demographic upheaval whose repercus-
sions are still being felt. The baby boom peaked in 1957, when a record
4.3 million births occurred, one every seven seconds. The unusually large
baby boom generation has shaped much of America’s social history and eco-
nomic development since the 1940s. The postwar baby boom created a surge
in demand for diapers, baby food, toys, medicine, schools, automobiles,
books, teachers, furniture, and housing.

THE SUBURBAN FRONTIER The second half of the twentieth cen-

tury witnessed a mass migration to a new frontier—the suburbs. The acute
housing shortage in the late 1940s (98 percent of cities reported shortages of
houses and apartments in 1945) spurred the suburban revolution. Almost the
 A People of Plenty • 1253

The baby boom

Much of America’s social history since the 1940s has been the story of the baby
boom generation.

entire population increase of the 1950s and 1960s (97 percent) was an urban
or suburban phenomenon. Rural America continued to lose population as
many among the exploding middle-class white population during the 1950s—
and after—moved to what were called the sunbelt states—California, Arizona,
Florida, Texas, and the southeast region. Air conditioning, developed by
Willis Haviland Carrier in the first decade of the century, became a com-
mon household fixture in the 1950s and enhanced the appeal of living in
warmer climates.
Suburbia met an acute need—affordable housing—and fulfilled a con-
ventional dream—personal freedom and familial security within commuting
distance of cities. During the 1950s, suburbs grew six times as fast as cities
did. By 1970, more people lived in suburbs than in central cities. “Suburbia,”
proclaimed a journalist in 1955, “is now a dominant social group in Ameri-
can life.” Governments encouraged and even subsidized the suburban revo-
lution. Federal and state tax codes favored homeowners over renters, and local
governments paid for the infrastructure required by new subdivisions: roads,
1254 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

water and sewer lines, fire and police protection. City dwellers frustrated
by the urban housing shortage, inadequate public services, and mediocre
inner-city schools eagerly populated the new subdivisions carved out of
forests and farms.
William Levitt, a brassy New York developer, led the suburban revolution.
Between 1947 and 1951, on 6,000 acres of Long Island farmland near New
York City, he built 17,447 lookalike small homes (essentially identical in
design) to house more than 82,000 people, mostly adults under thirty-five
and their children. The planned community, called Levittown, included
schools, swimming pools, shopping centers, and playing fields. Levittown
encouraged and even enforced uniformity. The houses all sold for the same
price—$6,900, with no down payments for veterans—and featured the same
floor plan and accessories. Each had a picture window, a living room, bath-
room, kitchen, and two bedrooms. Trees were planted every twenty-eight
feet. Homeowners were required to cut their grass once a week, fences were
prohibited, and laundry could not be hung outside on weekends. Levittown

Levittown
Identical mass-produced houses in Levittown, New York, and other suburbs across
the country provided veterans and their families with affordable homes.
 A People of Plenty • 1255

and other suburban neighborhoods benefited greatly from government

assistance. By insuring loans for up to 95 percent of the value of a house, the
Federal Housing Administration made it easy for builders to construct low-
cost homes.
Other developers across the country soon mimicked Levitt’s efforts, build-
ing suburban communities with rustic names such as Lakewood, Stream-
wood, Elmwood, Cedar Hill, Park Forest, and Deer Park. By 1955, House
and Garden magazine declared that suburbia had become the “national way
of life.”
Those engaged in “white flight” from urban areas sought to maintain resi-
dential segregation in their new suburban communities. As Levitt explained,
“We can solve a housing problem or we can try to solve a racial problem. But
we can’t combine the two.” Initially, the contracts for houses in Levittown
specifically excluded “members of other than the Caucasian race.” A year
later, however, the Supreme Court in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) ruled that
such racial restrictions were illegal. But the court ruling did not end segre-
gated housing practices. In 1953, when Levittown’s population reached sev-
enty thousand, it was the largest community in the nation without a single
African American resident.
During the half century after the Second World War, the suburban good
life was presumed to include a big home with a big yard on a big lot accessed
by a big car—or two. Cars were the ultimate status symbol. As a South Car-
olina real estate agent said, “We’ve always liked big cars. For most people, it’s
a status thing.” Car production soared during the 1950s, and the cars grew
larger and more powerful. In 1955 Americans bought nearly eight million
automobiles. Car sales that year accounted for one-fifth of the nation’s entire
economic output. Nine out of ten suburban families owned a car, as com-
pared to six of ten urban households. During the fifties, automobiles pro-
vided much more than transportation. They offered social status, provided
freedom and mobility, and served as markers of personal identity. The “car
culture” soon transformed social behavior and spawned “convenience stores,”
drive-in theaters, motels (motor hotels), and a new form of dining out:
the fast-food restaurant. In 1954, a visionary high-school dropout-turned-
entrepreneur named Ray Kroc bought a popular hamburger restaurant from
the McDonald brothers in San Bernardino, California. He renamed the
restaurant McDonald’s and soon the golden arches alerting motorists to fast
food dining were visible across the nation.

M I N O R I T I E S O N T H E M OV E African Americans were not part of

the initial wave of suburban development, but they began moving in large
1256 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

numbers after 1945. The mass migration of rural southern blacks to the
urban North and Midwest after the Second World War was much larger than
that after the First World War, and its social consequences were more dra-
matic. After 1945, more than 5 million African Americans formed a new
“great migration” northward in search of better jobs, higher wages, decent
housing, and greater social equality. Most of them were southerners headed
to low-income neighborhoods in cities such as Chicago, Detroit, Philadel-
phia, and New York City. During the 1950s, for example, the African Ameri-
can population of Chicago more than doubled. Blacks living in the rural
South also migrated to southern cities. By 1960, for the first time in history,
more blacks were living in urban areas than in rural areas. As African Amer-
icans moved into northern cities, many white residents moved to the sub-
urbs, leaving behind proliferating racial ghettos. Detroit between 1950 and
1960, for example, gained 185,000 African Americans and lost 361,000
whites. Nine of the nation’s ten largest cities lost population to the suburbs
during the 1950s.
The “promised land” in the North sought by African Americans was not
perfect, however. Because they were often undereducated, poor, and black,
the migrants were regularly denied access to good jobs, good schools, and
good housing. Although states in the North, Midwest, and the Far West did
not have the most blatant forms of statutory racial discrimination common

Family on relief
Many black families who migrated from the South became a part of a
marginalized population in Chicago, dependent on public housing.
 A People of Plenty • 1257

in the South, African Americans still found themselves subject to racial prej-
udice in the every aspect of life: discrimination in hiring, in treatment in the
workplace, in housing, in schools, and in social life. In cities outside the
South, blacks and whites typically lived in separate neighborhoods and led
unequal lives. Few elected officials acknowledged the problem of hostile
employers and prejudiced landlords; most of them simply viewed racial seg-
regation and discrimination as a fact of life, a natural response to difference.
People everywhere, the logic went, preferred to live and mingle with their
own kind. Whatever the reasons, housing in regions outside the South was
virtually as segregated. When a black family tried to move into Levittown,
Pennsylvania, the white residents greeted them by throwing rocks. Between
1945 and 1954, Chicago witnessed nine large race riots.
Such deeply entrenched racial attitudes forced blacks outside the South to
organize their own efforts to assault the hostility and complacency they con-
fronted. Through organizations such as the NAACP, the Congress of Racial
Equality, and the National Urban League, they sought to change the hearts
and minds of their white neighbors. Animated by anger, hope, and solidar-
ity, local black leaders by the late 1950s had convinced most northern states
to adopt some form of anti-discrimination legislation. Segregation of schools
on the basis of race ended.
For all of the forms of racism that black migrants to the North and West
encountered, however, most of them found their new lives preferable to the
official segregation and often violent racism that they had left behind in the
South. Southern blacks still faced voting discrimination and segregation in
theaters, parks, schools, colleges, hospitals, buses, cinemas, libraries, restrooms,
beaches, bars, and prisons.
By 1960, housing in the United States was more racially segregated than
ever; as late as the 1990s, the nation’s suburban population was 90 percent
white. The United States, African Americans complained, had become a
nation of “chocolate cities and vanilla suburbs.” By 1960, for example, half
of the population of Washington, D.C., was black, as whites migrated to the
new suburbs ringing the nation’s capital.
Just as African Americans were on the move, so, too, were Mexicans and
Puerto Ricans. Congress renewed the bracero program, begun during the
Second World War, that enabled Mexicans to work as contract laborers in
the United States. Mexicans streamed across the southwest border of the
United States in growing numbers. By 1960, Los Angeles had the largest con-
centration of Mexican Americans in the nation. Like African Americans who
served in the military during the war, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans,
and other Latino minorities benefited from the GI Bill, expanding economic
1258 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

opportunities, and prolonged national prosperity to join the growing mid-

dle class. Between 1940 and 1960, nearly a million Puerto Ricans, mostly
small farmers and agricultural workers, moved into mainland American
cities, mostly New York City. By the late 1960s, more Puerto Ricans lived in
New York City than in the capital of Puerto Rico, San Juan.

A C O N F O R M I S T C U LT U R E

As evidenced in many of the new look-alike suburbs sprouting up

across the land, much of white middle-class social life during the 1950s
exhibited an increasingly homogenized character. Suburban life encouraged
uniformity. “There is no need to rub elbows with fellow Americans who
are of a different class,” explained one analyst of the suburban revolution.
Changes in corporate life as well as the influence of the consumer culture
and the cold war also played an important socializing role. “Conformity,”
predicted a journalist in 1954, “may very well become the central social
problem of this age.”

C O R P O R AT E L I F E The composition of the workforce and the very nature

of work itself changed dramatically during the 1950s. Fewer people were self-
employed, and manual labor was rapidly giving way to mental labor. The high-
performing American economy began shifting from its traditional emphasis on
manufacturing to service industries: telecommunications (including the new-
fangled computer), sales, financial services, advertising, marketing, public rela-
tions, entertainment, clerical, and government. By the mid-1950s, white-collar
(salaried) employees outnumbered blue-collar (hourly wage) workers for the
first time in history. During the Second World War, big business had grown
bigger—and the process continued during the 1950s. The government relaxed
its anti-trust activity, and huge defense contracts promoted corporate con-
centration and consolidation. After the war, a wave of mergers occurred, and
dominant corporate giants—including General Motors, IBM, General Electric,
Westinghouse, AT&T, Xerox, DuPont, and Boeing—appeared in every major
industry, providing the primary source of new jobs. Most people in the 1950s
worked for giant corporations. In such huge companies, as well as similarly large
government agencies and universities, the working atmosphere promoted
conformity rather than individualism.

WO M E N ’ S “ P L A C E ” Increasing conformity in the workplace was mir-

rored in middle-class homes. A special issue of Life magazine in 1956 fea-
 A Conformist Culture • 1259

Office in a Small City

Edward Hopper’s 1953 painting suggests the alienation associated with white-collar
work and the corporate atmosphere of the 1950s.

tured the “ideal” middle-class woman, a thirty-two-year-old “pretty and

popular” white suburban housewife, mother of four, who had married at age
sixteen. She was described as an excellent wife, mother, volunteer, and
“home manager” who preferred marriage and childrearing to a career out-
side the home. She made her own clothes, hosted dozens of dinner parties
each year, sang in her church choir, and was devoted to her husband. “In her
daily round,” Life reported, “she attends club or charity meetings, drives the
children to school, does the weekly grocery shopping, makes ceramics, and is
planning to study French.” The soaring birth rate reinforced the deeply
embedded notion that a woman’s place was in the home. “Of all the accom-
plishments of the American woman,” the Life cover story proclaimed, “the
one she brings off with the most spectacular success is having babies.”
During the Second World War, millions of women had responded to
patriotic appeals and joined the traditionally male workforce. After the war
ended, however, most middle-class women turned their wartime jobs over
to the returning male veterans and resumed their full-time commitment to
home and family. A 1945 article in House Beautiful lectured women on their
1260 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

The new household

A Tupperware party in a middle-class suburban home.

domestic responsibilities. The returning veteran, it said, was “head man

again . . . Your part in the remaking of this man is to fit his home to him,
understanding why he wants it this way, forgetting your own preferences.”
Women were also urged to dismiss wartime-generated thoughts of their own
career in the workplace. Newsweek magazine discouraged women from even
attending college when it proclaimed that “books and babies don’t mix.”
In 1956, one fourth of all white women in college married while still enrolled
in school, and most dropped out before receiving a degree. Marriage was the
primary goal. Only 9 percent of young adults in the 1950s believed that a
single person could be happy.

A R E L I G I O U S N AT I O N After the Second World War, Americans joined

churches and synagogues in record numbers. In 1940, less than half the adult
population belonged to a church; by 1960, over 65 percent were official com-
municants. Sales of Bibles soared, as did the demand for books, movies, and
songs with religious themes. The cold war provided a direct stimulant to
Christian evangelism. Communism, explained Billy Graham, was “a great
sinister anti-Christian movement masterminded by Satan” that needed to be
countered wherever it emerged.
 Cracks in the Picture Window • 1261

President Eisenhower, although he joined a church only after being nomi-

nate for the presidency, promoted a patriotic religious crusade during the
fifties. “Recognition of the Supreme Being,” he declared, “is the first, the most
basic, expression of Americanism. Without God, there could be no American
form of government, nor an American way of life.” In 1954, Congress added
the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance and in 1956 made the
statement “In God We Trust” mandatory on all coins and currency. In 1956,
Congress made “In God We Trust” the national motto. A godly nation, it was
widely assumed, would better withstand the march of “godless” communism.
The prevailing tone of the popular religious revival of the 1950s was
upbeat and soothing. As the Protestant Council of New York City explained
to its corps of radio and television speakers, their addresses “should project
love, joy, courage, hope, faith, trust in God, goodwill. Generally avoid con-
demnation, criticism, controversy. In a very real sense we are ‘selling’ reli-
gion, the good news of the Gospel.”
The best salesman of this gospel of reassuring “good news” was the Rev-
erend Norman Vincent Peale, champion of feel-good theology. No speaker
was more in demand during the 1950s, and no writer was more widely read.
Peale’s book The Power of Positive Thinking (1952) was a phenomenal best
seller throughout the decade—and for good reason. It offered a simple how-
to course in personal happiness. “Flush out all depressing, negative, and
tired thoughts,” Peale advised. “Start thinking faith, enthusiasm, and joy.” By
following this simple formula for success, he pledged, each American could
become “a more popular, esteemed, and well-liked individual.”

C R AC K S IN THE PI C T U R E W I N D OW

Amid the surging affluence of the supposed “happy days” decade, there
was also growing anxiety, dissent, and diversity. Many social critics, writers,
and artists expressed a growing sense of unease with the superficiality of
the much-celebrated consumer culture. One of the most striking aspects
of the decade was the sharp contrast between the buoyant public mood and
the increasingly bitter social criticism coming from intellectuals, theolo-
gians, novelists, playwrights, poets, and artists. Writer Norman Mailer, for
instance, said the 1950s was “one of the worst decades in the history of man.”

T H E P E R I L S O F C O N F O R M I T Y Norman Mailer was one of many

social critics who challenged what they viewed as the postwar era’s moral
complacency and bland conformity. In The Affluent Society (1958), for
1262 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

example, the prominent economist John Kenneth Galbraith attacked the

prevailing notion that sustained economic growth was solving chronic social
problems. He reminded readers that for all of America’s vaunted prosper-
ity, the nation had yet to eradicate poverty, especially among minorities in
inner cities, female-headed households, Mexican American migrant farm
workers in the Southwest, Native Americans, and rural southerners, both
black and white.
Critics also questioned the supposed bliss of middle-class suburban life.
John Keats, in The Crack in the Picture Window (1956), ridiculed the two
Levittowns, in New York and Pennsylvania, as well as other mass-produced
suburban communities as having been “conceived in error, nurtured in
greed, corroding everything they touch.” Locked into a monotonous rou-
tine, preoccupied with materialism, and engulfed by mass mediocrity, sub-
urbanites, he concluded, were living in a “homogeneous, postwar Hell.”
However, Levittown was in many ways distinctive rather than representa-
tive. There were thousands of suburbs by the mid-1950s, and few were as
regimented or as unvarying as critics implied. Keats failed to recognize the
benefits that the suburbs offered those who otherwise would have remained
in crowded urban apartments. A 1967 analysis of the evolution of Levittown
over the previous twenty years concluded that the first mass-produced sub-
urb “permits most of its residents to be what they want to be, to center their

Suburban life
A woman vacuums her living room in Queens, New York, 1953, illustrating the
1950s ideal of domestic perfection enabled by electrical appliances.
 Alienation and Liberation • 1263

lives around the home and to participate in organizations that provide

sociability and the opportunity to be of service to others. . . . Whatever its
imperfections, Levittown is a good place to live.”

A L I E N AT I O N AND L I B E R AT I O N

L I T E R AT U R E During the 1950s, a growing number of writers and artists

called into question the prevailing complacency about the goodness and
superiority of the American way of life. As novelist John Updike observed, he
and other writers felt estranged “from a government that extolled business
and mediocrity.” The most enduring novels of the postwar period featured
the individual’s struggle for survival amid the smothering forces of mass soci-
ety. The characters in novels such as James Jones’s From Here to Eternity
(1951), Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day (1956), J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye
(1951), William Styron’s Lie Down in Darkness (1951), and Updike’s Rabbit,
Run (1961), among many others, are restless, tormented souls who can find
neither contentment nor respect in an overpowering or uninterested world.
The immensely talented African American writer Ralph Ellison explored
the theme of the lonely individual imprisoned in privacy in his kaleido-
scopic novel Invisible Man (1952). By using a black narrator struggling to find
and liberate himself in the midst of an oppressive white society, Ellison force-
fully exposed the problem of alienation amid affluence. The narrator opens by
confessing: “All my life I had been look-
ing for something, and everywhere I
turned someone tried to tell me what
it was. I accepted their answers too,
though they were often in contradiction
and even self-contradictory. I was naive.
I was looking for myself and asking
everyone except myself questions which
I, and only I, could answer.”

PA I N T I N G After the Second World

War, a group of young painters in New
York City decided that the modern
atomic era demanded something dif-
ferent from literal representation of
recognizable scenes. During the late Ralph Ellison
1940s and 1950s, abstract painters Ellison is best remembered for his
dominated the international art scene. 1952 novel Invisible Man.
1264 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

Jackson Pollock explained that “the modern painter cannot express this
age—the airplane, the atomic bomb, the radio—in the old form of the
Renaissance or of any past culture. Each age finds its own technique.” The
spontaneous artistic technique that Pollock mastered came to be called
abstract expressionism. For Pollock and others engaged in what was called
“action painting,” a canvas was not simply a flat surface on which to paint a
recognizable scene; it was instead a dynamic arena for expressing the artist’s
subjective inner world. The gestural act of painting was more important
than the painting itself. Pollock, nicknamed “Jack the Dripper,” put his can-
vases on the floor and walked around attacking them, throwing, pouring,
splashing, flicking, and dribbling paint in random patterns. Such anarchic
spontaneity created mystifying canvases adorned only with splashes, drips,
swaths, lines, bands, and slashes. The idiosyncratic intensity of abstract
expressionism perplexed the general public but intrigued the art world.

“Jack the Dripper”

Artist Jackson Pollock became famous for his unique painting style; here he dribbles
house paint and sand on a canvas in his studio barn in Springs, NY.
 Alienation and Liberation • 1265

T H E B E AT S The desire expressed by the abstract expressionists to liber-

ate self-expression and discard traditional artistic conventions was also the
central concern of a small but highly visible and controversial group of young
writers, poets, painters, and musicians known as the Beats, a term with mul-
tiple meanings: “upbeat,” “beatific,” and the concept of being “on the beat” in
“real cool” jazz music. Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and other Beats rebelled
against middle-class life and conventional literary expression.
The self-described Beat hipsters grew out of the bohemian underground
in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Undisciplined and unkempt, they were
essentially apolitical throughout the 1950s, more interested in transforming
themselves than in reforming the world. They sought personal rather than
social solutions to their anxieties; they wanted their art and literature to
change consciousness rather than reform social ills. As Kerouac insisted, his
friends were not beat in the sense of beaten down; they were “mad to live,
mad to talk, mad to be saved.” They nursed an ecstatic urge to “go, go, go”
and not stop until they get there, wherever “there” might be. Their road to
salvation lay in hallucinogenic drugs and alcohol, casual sex, a penchant for
jazz, fast cars, the street life of urban ghettos, an affinity for Buddhism, and a
restless, vagabond spirit that took them speeding back and forth across the
country between San Francisco and New York during the 1950s. The rebel-
lious gaiety of the Beats played an important role in preparing for the more
widespread youth revolt of the 1960s.

YO U T H C U LT U R E A N D D E L I N Q U E N C Y The millions of children

making up the baby boom became adolescents during the 1950s, and in the
process a distinctive teen subculture began to emerge. A vast new teen mar-
ket arose for items ranging from transistor radios, Hula-Hoops, Barbie dolls,
and rock-and-roll records to Polaroid cameras, surfboards, Seventeen maga-
zine, and Pat Boone movies. Teenagers in the postwar era knew nothing of
economic depressions or wartime rationing; immersed in abundance from
an early age, the children of prospering parents took the notion of carefree
consumption for granted.
Most young people during the 1950s embraced the values of their parents
and the capitalist system. One critic labeled the white college students of the
postwar era “the silent generation,” content to cavort at fraternity parties
and “sock hops” before landing a job with a large corporation, marrying, and
settling down to the routine of middle-class suburban life. Yet such general
descriptions masked a great deal of turbulence. During the 1950s, a wave
of juvenile delinquency swept across middle-class society. By 1956, over a
million teens were being arrested each year. One contributing factor was the
1266 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

Youth culture
A drugstore soda fountain, a popular outlet for teenagers’ consumerism in the 1950s.

unprecedented mobility of young people. Access to automobiles enabled

teens to escape parental control, and in the words of one journalist, cars pro-
vided “a private lounge for drinking and for petting or sex episodes.”

R O C K A N D R O L L Many concerned observers blamed teen delinquency

on a new form of music that emerged during the 1950s: rock and roll. Alan
Freed, a Cleveland disc jockey, coined the term rock and roll in 1951. He had
noticed white teenagers buying rhythm and blues (R&B) records that had
heretofore been purchased only by African Americans and Hispanic Ameri-
cans. Freed began playing R&B records on his radio show but labeled the
music “rock and roll” (a phrase used in African American communities to
refer to dancing and sex). Freed’s popular radio program helped bridge the
gap between “white” and “black” music. African American singers such as
Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Ray Charles as well as Hispanic American
performers such as Ritchie Valens (Richard Valenzuela) captivated young
white middle-class audiences eager to claim their own cultural style.
At the same time, Elvis Presley, the lanky son of a poor Mississippi
farm family who moved to a public housing project in Memphis, Tennessee,
 Alienation and Liberation • 1267

when he was fourteen, began

experimenting with “rockabilly”
music, a unique blend of gospel,
country-and-western, and R&B
rhythms and lyrics. In 1956,
the twenty-one-year-old Presley
released his smash hit “Heart-
break Hotel.” Over the next two
years, he emerged as the most
popular musician in American
history. Presley’s long hair and
sideburns, his swiveling hips
and smirking self-confidence,
his leather jacket and tight blue
jeans—all shouted defiance of
adult conventions. His gyrating,
sensual stage performances and
his incomparably rich and raw
baritone voice drove teenagers Elvis Presley, 1956
wild and garnered him fans The teenage children of middle-class Amer-
across the social spectrum and ica made rock and roll a thriving industry in
around the world. the 1950s and Elvis its first star. The strong
beat of the music combined with the electric
Cultural conservatives were guitar, its signature instrument, produced a
outraged. Critics urged parents to distinctive new sound.
destroy Presley’s records because
they promoted “a pagan concept of life.” A Catholic cardinal denounced
Presley as a vile symptom of a teenage “creed of dishonesty, violence, lust
and degeneration.” Patriotic groups claimed that rock-and-roll music was
a tool of Communist insurgents designed to corrupt youth. Yet rock and
roll survived amid the criticism, and in the process it gave adolescents a self-
conscious sense of belonging to a unique social group with distinctive char-
acteristics. More important, the rock music phenomenon brought together
on equal terms musicians (and their audiences) of varied races and back-
grounds. In doing so, it helped dispel the long-prevailing racial prejudices
that conflicted with the American egalitarian ideal.
The “unfocused rebelliousness” displayed by a growing number of young
people at the end of the fifties would blossom into a true “counter culture”
within a few years. As writer Nat Hentoff noted, the youthful rebels “protest
segregation and [atomic bomb] testing and the hollowness of their parents,
but they cannot yet say what they are for, what new society they desire. They
1268 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

are only against, but that is a beginning.” By the mid-1960s, the alienated
members of the baby boom generation would become the leaders of the
1960s rebellion against corporate conformity and consumerism.

M O D E R AT E R E P U B L I C A N I S M —
T H E E I S E N H OW E R Y E A R S

The carefree prosperity of the 1950s was encouraged by the decade’s

political culture. Dwight David Eisenhower dominated the political land-
scape during the 1950s. The authentic military hero with an infectious grin
was a model of moderation, stability, and optimism. Eisenhower’s commit-
ment to a “moderate Republicanism” promised to restore the authority of
state and local governments and restrain the federal government from polit-
ical and social “engineering.” In the process, the former general sought to
renew traditional virtues and inspire Americans with a vision of a brighter
future amid a continuing cold war.

“TIME F O R A C H A N G E ” By 1952, the Truman administration had

piled up a heavy burden of political liabilities. Its bold stand in Korea
had brought a bloody stalemate in the war, renewed wage and price controls at
home, and the embarrassing exposure of corrupt lobbyists and influence ped-
dlers who rigged defense-related federal contracts. The disclosure of corruption
led Truman to fire nearly 250 employees of the Internal Revenue Service, but
doubts lingered that the president would ever finish the housecleaning.
It was, Republicans claimed, “time for a change,” and they saw public sen-
timent turning their way as the 1952 election approached. Beginning in the
late 1940s, both Republican and Democratic leaders, including President
Truman, recruited the nonpartisan General Eisenhower to be their presiden-
tial candidate. The affable Eisenhower, whose friends called him “Ike,” had
displayed remarkable organizational and diplomatic abilities in coordinat-
ing the Allied invasion of Nazi-controlled Europe. Born in Texas in 1890 and
raised in Kansas, Eisenhower had graduated from the U.S. military academy
at West Point before setting out on a distinguished military career. In 1952,
after serving as the president of Columbia University, he had moved to Paris
to become the supreme commander of NATO forces in Europe, only to be
recruited as a presidential candidate. Eisenhower’s decision to seek the
Republican presidential nomination was wildly popular. Bumper stickers
announced simply, “I Like Ike.”
Eisenhower won the Republican nomination on the first ballot. He then
tried to reassure the conservative wing of the party by balancing the ticket with
 Moderate Republicanism—The Eisenhower Years • 1269

a youthful Californian, the thirty-nine-year-old senator Richard M. Nixon,

who had built a career by exposing supposed left-wing “subversives” holding
government posts in the Truman administration. Yet while Eisenhower him-
self was intentionally vague about his presidential agenda, the Republican
platform was quite specific. It insisted that there “are no Communists in the
Republican Party” in contrast to the Democrats, who supposedly “shielded
traitors . . . in high places.” The platform added that the Democratic empha-
sis on “containing” communism was a “negative, futile, and misguided” form
of appeasement. The Republican platform vowed that the Eisenhower
administration, if elected, would roll back the communist menace by bring-
ing “genuine independence” to the “captive peoples” of Eastern Europe.

T H E E L E C T I O N O F 1 9 5 2 The 1952 presidential campaign matched

two contrasting personalities. Eisenhower, though a political novice, had
been in the public eye for a decade. Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson, the
Democratic candidate, was hardly known outside Illinois. Eisenhower’s
campaign pledged to clean up “the mess in Washington.” To this he added a
promise, late in the campaign, that he would secure “an early and honor-
able” peace in Korea. Stevenson was outmatched. Although a brilliant man
who gave witty speeches that charmed liberals, he came across to most voters
as a tad too aloof, a shade too intellectual. The Republicans labeled him an
“egghead” (a recently coined
term describing balding profes-
sors who had more intellect
than common sense).
On election night, the war
hero triumphed in a landslide,
gathering nearly 34 million votes
to Stevenson’s 27 million. The
electoral vote was much more
lopsided: 442 to Stevenson’s 89.
The hapless Stevenson failed to
win his home state of Illinois.
More important, the election
marked a turning point in
Republican fortunes in the
South: for the first time in over
a century, the Democratic “Solid Good first impression
South” was moving toward a In the 1952 election the Republican party
two-party system. Stevenson won significant support in the South for the
carried only eight southern first time.
 1270 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

WA
9 NH 4
MT ND ME
4 VT 3 5
OR 4 MN
6 ID 11
4 SD WI MI NY MA 16
WY 4 12 20 45
3 RI 4
IA PA CT 8
NV NE 10
6 OH 32 NJ 16
3 UT IL IN 25 WV
CA 4 CO 27 13 DE 3
32 6 KS MO VA MD 9
8 12
8 13 KY 10
NC
AZ OK TN 11 14
NM AR SC
4 4 8
8
MS AL GA 8
8 11 12
TX
24 LA
10
FL
10

THE ELECTION OF 1952 Electoral Vote Popular Vote

Dwight D. Eisenhower 442 33,900,000
(Republican)
Adlai E. Stevenson 89 27,300,000
(Democrat)

Why was the contest between Adlai Stevenson and Dwight D. Eisenhower lopsided?
Why was Eisenhower’s victory in the South remarkable? Did Eisenhower’s broad
appeal help congressional Republicans win more seats?

states plus West Virginia. Eisenhower had made it respectable, even fashion-
able, to vote for a Republican presidential candidate in the South. Many
Roman Catholics, especially those from eastern Europe, also switched from
the Democrats to the Republicans, as did farmers and blue-collar workers.
Eisenhower had fragmented the New Deal coalition developed by Franklin D.
Roosevelt.
The voters liked Eisenhower’s folksy charm and battle-tested poise better
than they liked his political party. In the 1952 election, Democrats retained
most of the governorships, lost control of the House by only eight seats, and
broke even in the Senate, where only the vote of the vice president ensured
Republican control. The congressional elections two years later would weaken
the Republican grip on Congress, and Eisenhower would have to work with
a Democratic Congress throughout his second term.
 Moderate Republicanism—The Eisenhower Years • 1271

A “MIDDLE WAY ” P R E S I D E N C Y Eisenhower was the first profes-

sional soldier elected president since Ulysses S. Grant in 1868, and the last
president born in the nineteenth century. His goal was to pursue a “middle
way between untrammelled freedom of the individual and the demands of the
welfare of the whole nation.” He said the best path for America was “down the
middle of the road.” He did not intend to dismantle all of the New Deal and
Fair Deal programs. Instead, he wanted to rectify the “excesses” resulting from
the Democratic control of the White House for the previous twenty years. He
pledged to reduce the concentration of power in the federal government and
restore the balance between the executive and congressional branches. Eisen-
hower’s cautious personality and genial leadership style aligned perfectly with
the prevailing mood of most voters. He was a conciliator rather than an ideo-
logue; he sought consensus and compromise; he avoided confrontation.
Eisenhower reverted to the nineteenth-century view that Congress should
make policy and the president should carry it out. A journalist noted in 1959
that “the public loves Ike. The less he does, the more they love him.”
Critics then and since misread Eisenhower’s relaxed style and his habit of
deflecting rather than answering questions as a sign that he was a lazy and
even incompetent president. Not so. Far from being a “do-nothing” presi-
dent, Eisenhower was a quietly effective leader who fulfilled his pledge to
shun conflict and controversy by straddling the middle of the road “where
the traction is best and where you can bring the most people along with
you.” Unlike Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Eisenhower did not believe in using
power to “impose his will” on public policy. He instead preferred to use “per-
suasion and cooperation.”

“ D Y N A M I C C O N S E R VAT I S M AT H O M E ” Eisenhower called his

domestic program dynamic conservatism, by which he meant being “conser-
vative when it comes to money and liberal when it comes to human beings.”
The new administration set out to reduce defense spending after the Korean
War, lower tax rates, weaken government regulation of business, and restore
power to the states and corporate interests. Eisenhower warned repeatedly
against the dangers of “creeping socialism,” “huge bureaucracies,” and peren-
nial budget deficits. To curb government spending, he abolished the Recon-
struction Finance Corporation (created in 1932 to deal with the depression)
and reduced federal subsidies to farmers.
In the end, however, Eisenhower kept intact the basic structure and
premises of the New Deal, much to the chagrin of conservative Republicans.
A self-described pragmatist, Eisenhower told his more conservative brother
Edgar in 1954 that if the “stupid” right-wing of the Republican party tried
1272 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

“to abolish Social Security and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you
would not hear of that party again in our political history.” In some ways, the
Eisenhower administration actually expanded New Deal programs, espe-
cially after 1954, when it had the help of Democratic majorities in Congress.
Amendments to the Social Security Act in 1954 and 1956 expanded coverage
to millions of workers formerly excluded: white-collar professionals, domes-
tic and clerical workers, farm workers, and members of the armed forces.
Eisenhower also approved increases in the minimum wage and additional
public housing projects for low-income occupants.
President Eisenhower launched two massive federal construction projects
that served national needs: the St. Lawrence Seaway and the interstate high-
way system. The St. Lawrence Seaway project (in partnership with Canada)
opened the Great Lakes to oceangoing freighters and tankers. Even more
important, the Federal-Aid Highway Act (1956) created a national network
of interstate highways to serve the needs of commerce and defense, as well as
the convenience of citizens. The interstate highway system, funded by gasoline
taxes, took twenty-five years to construct and was the largest federal con-
struction project in history. It stretches for 47,000 miles, and contains 55,512
bridges and 14,800 interchanges. The vast project created jobs, stimulated
the economy, spurred the tourism, motor hotel (“motel”), and long-haul
trucking industries, and transformed the way people traveled and lived by
reinforcing America’s car-centered culture. At the same time, the interstate
highways also hastened the decay of the passenger railroad system, deflected
attention from the need for mass transit systems, and helped foster the auto-
mobile culture that over time created a national dependency on imported oil.

T H E R E D S C A R E The Republicans thought their presidential victory

in 1952 would curb the often-unscrupulous efforts of Wisconsin senator
Joseph R. McCarthy to find Communist spies in the federal government. But
the paranoid, publicity-seeking senator grew more outlandish in his charges.
Eisenhower despised the unprincipled McCarthy, but the president refused to
criticize him in public, explaining that he did not want to “get into a pissing
contest with that skunk.” In March 1954, the president indirectly chastised
McCarthy when he told a press conference that “we are defeating ourselves if
we use methods [in opposing communism] that do not conform to the
American sense of justice.”
The cynical, bullying McCarthy finally overreached himself when he made
the absurd charge that the U.S. Army itself was “soft” on communism. On
December 2, 1954, the Senate voted 67 to 22 to “condemn” McCarthy for his
reckless tactics. Soon thereafter, McCarthy’s political influence collapsed. In
1957, at the age of forty-eight, he died of a liver inflammation brought on by
 The Early Years of the Civil Rights Movement • 1273

years of alcohol abuse (he frequently bragged about drinking a fifth of whiskey
a day). His savage crusade against communists in government had catapulted
him into the limelight and captured the nation’s attention for several years,
but the former marine trampled upon civil liberties. McCarthy’s political
demise played a role in the fall elections in 1954, helping the Democrats cap-
ture control of both houses of Congress.

INTERNAL S E C U R I T Y The anti-Communist crusade survived the

downfall of Senator McCarthy, however. The Red Scare continued to excite
public passions and garner bipartisan political support. In 1954, the liberal
Democratic senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota sponsored the Com-
munist Control Act, which outlawed the Communist party in the United
States. On a local level, public libraries removed books deemed controversial;
public school boards and university trustees fired “leftist” teachers and profes-
sors; corporations “blacklisted” people suspected of communist sympathies;
and city councils ordered communists to leave their communities within
forty-eight hours. Eisenhower stiffened the government security program that
Truman had set up in 1947, by issuing an executive order in 1953 that that led
to the firing of thousands of federal workers deemed security risks. In an even
more controversial decision, Eisenhower denied clemency to Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg, who were convicted of transmitting classified information about
atomic bombs to the Soviets, on the grounds that they “may have condemned
to death tens of millions of innocent people.” Despite passionate pleas for
clemency and lingering issues related to the evidence against Ethel, the Rosen-
bergs were electrocuted on June 19, 1953. They were the first native-born
Americans to be executed for espionage by order of a civilian court.

T H E E A R LY Y E A R S O F T H E
C I V I L R I G H TS M OV E M E N T

Soon after the cold war began, Soviet diplomats began to use America’s
continuing racial discrimination against African Americans as a propaganda
tool. During the mid-1950s, race relations in the United States threatened to
explode the domestic tranquility masking years of social injustice. The volatile
issue of ending racial segregation in the South offered Eisenhower an oppor-
tunity to exercise transformational leadership. That he balked at remedying
the nation’s gravest injustice constituted his greatest failure as president.

E I S E N H OW E R A N D R AC EEisenhower had grown up in an all-white

Kansas town and had spent his military career in a racially segregated army
1274 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

in which black soldiers were assigned

to noncombat units. In 1948, he had
opposed Truman’s decision to inte-
grate the armed forces. Eisenhower
was not a racial bigot, however. He
simply feared the backlash against
integration efforts. He entered the
White House committed to civil
rights in principle, and he pushed
the issue in some areas of federal
authority. During his first three years
as president, for example, public
facilities in Washington, D.C., were
desegregated. Eisenhower also inter-
vened to end discrimination at sev-
Chief Justice Earl Warren
eral military bases in Virginia and
One of the most influential Supreme
South Carolina. The president also
Court justices of the twentieth century.
appointed the first African American
to an executive office: E. Frederic Morrow, who was named Administrative
Officer for Special Projects. Beyond that, however, Eisenhower refused to push
the issue of civil rights.
Two aspects of Eisenhower’s philosophy limited his commitment to racial
equality: his preference for state or local action over federal involvement and
his doubt that laws could change traditional racist attitudes. “I don’t believe
you can change the hearts of men with laws or decisions,” he said. Eisen-
hower’s tepid stance meant that governmental leadership in the civil rights
field would come from the judiciary more than from the executive or legisla-
tive branch.
In 1953, Eisenhower appointed former three-term Republican governor
Earl Warren of California as chief justice of the Supreme Court, a decision
he later pronounced the “biggest damn fool mistake I ever made.” Warren,
who had seemed safely conservative while active in elected politics, dis-
played a social conscience and a streak of libertarianism that was shared by
another Eisenhower appointee to the Supreme Court, William J. Brennan Jr.
The Warren Court (1953–1969), under the chief justice’s influence, became
a powerful force for social and political change through the 1960s.

W E S H A L L OV E R C O M E However, the most important leadership

related to the civil rights movement came not from government officials but
from the long-suffering people whose rights were most suppressed: African
 The Early Years of the Civil Rights Movement • 1275

Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and other minorities.

Rural and urban, young and old, male and female, courageous blacks
formed the vanguard of what would become the most important social
movement in American history. With brilliance, bravery, and dignity, they
fought on all fronts—in the courts, at the ballot box, and in the streets—
against deeply entrenched patterns of racial segregation and discrimination.
Although many African Americans moved to the North and West during
and after the Second World War, a majority remained in the eleven former
Confederate states. There they were forced to attend segregated public
schools, accept the least desirable jobs, and operate within an explicitly seg-
regated society that systematically restricted their civil rights. In the 1952
presidential election, for example, only 20 percent of eligible African Ameri-
cans were registered to vote.
In the mid-1930s the National Association for the Advancement of Col-
ored People (NAACP) had resolved to test the separate-but-equal judicial
doctrine that had upheld racial segregation since the Plessy decision in 1896.
Charles H. Houston, a dean at the Howard University Law School, laid the
plans, and his former student Thurgood Marshall served as the NAACP’s
chief attorney. They focused first on higher education. But it would take
almost fifteen years to convince the courts that racial segregation must end.
In Sweatt v. Painter (1950), the Supreme Court ruled that a separate black law

Civil rights stirrings

In the late 1930s the NAACP began to test the constitutionality of racial segregation.
1276 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

school in Texas was not equal in quality to the state’s whites-only schools.
The Court ordered the state to remedy the situation. It was the first step of
many that would be required to dismantle America’s segregated tradition.

T H E B ROW N D E C I S I O N By the early 1950s, challenges to state laws

mandating racial segregation in the public schools were rising through the
appellate courts. Five such cases, from Kansas, Delaware, South Carolina,
Virginia, and the District of Columbia—usually cited by reference to the first,
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas—came to the Supreme
Court for joint argument by NAACP attorneys in 1952. The landmark case
provided an opportunity for courageous presidential leadership. President
Eisenhower, however, let the opportunity slip through his fingers. He told
the attorney general that he hoped the justices would defer dealing with the
case “until the next Administration took over.” When it became obvious that
the Court was moving forward, Eisenhower invited Earl Warren to a White
House dinner where he urged the chief justice to side with segregationists.
Warren responded: “You mind your business and I’ll mind mine.”
On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Warren wrote the opinion, handed down
on May 17, 1954, in which a unanimous Court declared that “in the field of
public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.” In sup-
port of its opinion, the Court cited sociological and psychological findings
demonstrating that even if racially separate facilities were equal in quality,
the mere fact of separating students by race engendered feelings of inferior-
ity. A year later, after further argument, the Court directed that the process
of racial integration should move “with all deliberate speed.”
In the greatest mistake of his presidency, Eisenhower refused to endorse
or enforce the Court’s ruling. Privately, he maintained “that the Supreme
Court decision set back progress in the South at least fifteen years. The fel-
low who tries to tell me you can do these things by force is just plain nuts.”
While token integration began as early as 1954 in the border states of Ken-
tucky and Missouri, hostility mounted in the Deep South and Virginia. The
Alabama senate passed a resolution “nullifying” the Supreme Court’s deci-
sion; Virginia’s legislature asserted the state’s right to “interpose its sover-
eignty” against the Court’s ruling. The grassroots opposition among southern
whites to the Brown case was led by the newly formed Citizens’ Councils,
middle-class versions of the Ku Klux Klan that spread quickly across the
South and eventually enrolled 250,000 members. Instead of physical violence,
the Councils used economic coercion against blacks who crossed racial bound-
aries. The Citizens’ Councils grew so powerful in many communities that
membership became almost a prerequisite for an aspiring white politician.
Opponents of court-ordered integration shouted defiance. Virginia senator
 The Early Years of the Civil Rights Movement • 1277

Harry F. Byrd supplied a rallying cry: “Massive Resistance.” In 1956, 101 mem-
bers of Congress signed a “Southern Manifesto” denouncing the Supreme
Court’s decision in the Brown case as “a clear abuse of judicial power.” In six
southern states at the end of 1956, not a single black child attended school with
whites.

T H E M O N T G O M E R Y B U S B O YC O T T The essential role played by

the NAACP and the courts in providing a legal lever for the civil rights
movement often overshadows the courageous contributions of individual
African Americans who took great personal risks to challenge segregation.
For example, in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955, Mrs. Rosa
Parks, a forty-two-year-old black seamstress and department store worker
who was a long-time critic of segregation and secretary of the local NAACP
chapter, boldly refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man. Like
many southern communities, Montgomery, the “Cradle of the Confederacy,”
required blacks to give up their bus or train seat to a white when asked.
Parks, however, was “tired of giving in” to the system of white racism. When

Rosa Parks
A Montgomery, Alabama, policeman fingerprints Parks after she was arrested for
organizing a boycott of the city’s buses in February 1956.
1278 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

the bus driver told her that “niggers must move back” and that he would
have her arrested if she did not move, she replied with quiet courage and
gentle dignity, saying, “You may do that.” Police then arrested her. The next
night, black community leaders, including the Women’s Political Council, a
group of middle-class black women, met in the Dexter Avenue Baptist
Church, near the State Capitol, to organize a long-planned boycott of the
city’s bus system, seventy-five percent of whose riders were black. Student
and faculty volunteers from Alabama State University stayed up all night to
distribute thirty-five thousand flyers denouncing the arrest of Rosa Parks
and urging support for the boycott.
In the Dexter Avenue church’s twenty-six-year-old pastor, Martin Luther
King Jr., the boycott movement found a brave and charismatic leader whose
singular voice became a trumpet for an entire community. Born in Atlanta,
the grandson of a slave and the son of a prominent minister, King was intel-
ligent and courageous. He also was a speaker of celestial eloquence and pas-
sion. After graduating from Morehouse College in Atlanta, he attended
divinity school, earned a doctorate in philosophy from Boston University, and
accepted a call to preach in Montgomery. King inspired the civil rights move-
ment with a compelling plea for nonviolent disobedience derived from his
reading of the Gospels, the writings of Henry David Thoreau, and the heroic
example of the pacifist leader Mahatma Gandhi in India. “We must use the
weapon of love,” King told his supporters. “We must realize so many people
are taught to hate us that they are not totally responsible for their hate.” The
minister-activist shared the frustration at being “intimidated, humiliated,
and oppressed because of the sheer fact that we are Negroes.” But there comes
a time “when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of
oppression.” To his antagonists, the self-controlled King said, “We will soon
wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and in winning our freedom we will
so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process.”
The Montgomery bus boycott achieved remarkable solidarity. For 381
days, African Americans, women and men, used car pools, black-owned
taxis, hitchhiked, or simply walked. White supporters provided rides. A few
boycotters rode horses or mules to work. Such an unprecedented mass
protest infuriated many whites. Civic leaders staunchly opposed the bus
boycott. Police harassed and ticketed black car pools, and white thugs
attacked walkers. Ku Klux Klan members bombed houses owned by King
and other boycott leaders; they also burned black churches. King was
arrested twice. In trying to calm an angry crowd of blacks eager for revenge
against their white tormentors, King urged restraint: “Don’t get panicky.
Don’t get your weapons. We want to love our enemies.”
 The Early Years of the Civil Rights Movement • 1279

Montgomery, Alabama
Martin Luther King Jr., here facing arrest for leading a civil rights march, advocated
nonviolent resistance to racial segregation.

On December 20, 1956, the Montgomery boycotters finally won a federal

case they had initiated against racial segregation on public buses. The
Supreme Court affirmed that “the separate but equal doctrine can no longer
be safely followed as a correct statement of the law.” The next day, King and
other African Americans boarded the buses. The success of the staunchly paci-
fist bus boycott revealed that well-coordinated, nonviolent black activism
could trigger major changes in public policy. The successful bus boycott led
thousands of African Americans to replace resignation with hope; action sup-
planted passivity. The boycott also catapulted King into the national spotlight.
To keep alive the spirit of the boycott and spread the civil rights move-
ment beyond Alabama, King and a group of associates met in Atlanta in
1957 to organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
Several days later, King found an unexploded dynamite bomb on his front
porch. Two hours later he addressed his congregation: “I’m not afraid of
anybody this morning. Tell Montgomery they can keep shooting and I’m
going to stand up to them; tell Montgomery they can keep bombing and I’m
going to stand up to them. If I had to die tomorrow morning I would die
1280 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

happy because I’ve been to the mountain top and I’ve seen the promised
land and it’s going to be here in Montgomery.”

T H E C I V I L R I G H T S AC T S O F 1957 A N D 1960 President Eisen-

hower’s timidity in the field of race relations appeared again when he was
asked to protect the right of African Americans to vote. In 1956, hoping to
exploit divisions between northern and southern Democrats and to reclaim
some of the black vote for the Republicans, congressional leaders agreed to
support what became the Civil Rights Act of 1957. The first civil rights law
passed since 1875, it finally got through the Senate, after a year’s delay, with
the help of majority leader Lyndon B. Johnson, a Texas Democrat who won
southern acceptance by watering down the proposed legislation. Eisenhower
reassured Johnson that the final version represented “the mildest civil rights
bill possible.” The Civil Rights Act established the Civil Rights Commission
and a new Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department intended to pre-
vent interference with the right to vote. Yet by 1959 the Civil Rights Act had
not added a single southern black to the voting rolls. Neither did the Civil
Rights Act of 1960, which provided for federal courts to register African
Americans to vote in districts where there was a “pattern and practice” of
discrimination. This bill, too, lacked teeth and depended upon vigorous
presidential enforcement to achieve any tangible results.

D E S E G R E G AT I O N I N L I T T L E R O C K A few weeks after the Civil

Rights Act of 1957 was passed, Arkansas governor Orval Faubus called out
the National Guard to prevent nine black students (six females and three
males) from entering Little Rock’s Central High School under a federal court
order. The National Guard commander’s orders were explicit: “No niggers in
the building.” A federal judge ordered Governor Faubus to withdraw the
National Guard. When Elizabeth Eckford, a fifteen-year-old African Ameri-
can student, tried to enter the school, just a few blocks from the state capitol,
jeering white students shrieked, “Lynch her! Lynch her!” Local authorities
removed the students from the school in an effort to protect them from
harm. The mayor frantically called the White House asking for federal
troops to quell the violence. At that point, President Eisenhower reluctantly
dispatched a thousand paratroopers to Little Rock to protect the black
students as they entered the school. “For the first time in my life,” said
15-year-old Minnijean Brown, “I feel like an American citizen.” The soldiers
stayed in Little Rock through the school year. “Sending in the troops was the
hardest decision I had had to make since D-Day,” Eisenhower recalled.
Diehard southern segregationists lashed out at the president’s actions. Senator
Richard Russell of Georgia said the paratroopers were behaving like “Hitler’s
 The Early Years of the Civil Rights Movement • 1281

“Lynch her!”
Fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Eckford endures the hostile screams of future classmates
as she enters Central High School.

storm troops.” Eisenhower was quick to explain that his use of federal troops
had little to do with “the integration or segregation question” and every-
thing to do with maintaining law and order. It was the first time since
the 1870s that federal troops were sent to the South to protect the rights of
African Americans. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had earlier criticized
Eisenhower’s tepid support of civil rights, now told the president that the
“overwhelming majority of southerners, Negro and white, stand behind
your resolute action to restore law and order in Little Rock.”
In the summer of 1958, Govenor Faubus decided to close the Little Rock
high schools rather than allow racial integration, and court proceedings
dragged on into 1959 before the schools could be reopened. In that year,
resistance to integration in Virginia collapsed when both state and federal
courts struck down state laws that had cut off funds to integrated public
schools. Thereafter, massive resistance to racial integration was confined
mostly to the Deep South, where five states—from South Carolina west
through Louisiana—still opposed even token integration. The demagogic
Orval Faubus went on to serve six terms as governor of Arkansas.
1282 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

FOREIGN POLICY IN THE 1950S

The commitment of the Truman administration to “contain” commu-

nism was focused on the Soviet threat to western Europe. During the 1950s,
the Eisenhower administration expanded America’s objective from protect-
ing a divided Europe to combating Communist tyranny around the globe.
“Freedom,” Eisenhower said in his 1953 inaugural address, “is pitted against
slavery; lightness against dark.” To the Eisenhower administration, merely
“containing” communism was no longer enough: the explicit objective
became a “policy of boldness” designed to “roll back” communism around
the world. Unfortunately, the confrontational rhetoric about “rolling back”
communism forced U.S. policy into an ever-widening global commitment to
resist all Soviet initiatives, no matter how localized, in regions where the
communists enjoyed geopolitical advantages. Privately, Eisenhower acknowl-
edged that world communism was not a monolithic force always directed by
the Soviets, but in public he talked tough, in part because of the expectations
of right-wing Republicans whose support he needed. The result was often an
incoherent diplomacy made up of bellicose rhetoric and cautious action.
The Eisenhower administration discovered that the complexities of world
affairs and the realities of Soviet and Communist Chinese power made the
commitment to manage the destiny of the world unrealistic—and costly.

C O N C LU D I N G A N A R M I S T I C E To break the stalemate in the Korean

peace talks, Eisenhower took the bold step in mid-May 1953 of intensifying the
aerial bombardment of North Korea. Then the president let it be known that he
would use nuclear weapons if a truce were not forthcoming. Whether for that
reason or others, negotiations moved quickly toward an armistice agreement on
July 26, 1953, affirming the established border between the two Koreas just
above the 38th parallel. Other factors bringing about the Korean armistice were
China’s rising military losses in the conflict and the spirit of uncertainty and
caution felt by the Soviet Communists after the death of Joseph Stalin on
March 5, 1953, six weeks after Eisenhower’s inauguration. After the war ended,
North Korea became one of the world’s weirdest dictatorships, while South
Korea became a success story of democratic capitalism. Almost 34,000 U.S.
troops had been killed in the Korean fighting. Yet once the Korean War ended,
no more American soldiers would die in combat during the remainder of Eisen-
hower’s two presidential terms, a record unmatched by any of his successors.

The architect of the Eisen-

D U L L E S A N D M A S S I V E R E TA L I AT I O N
hower administration’s efforts to “roll back” communism was Secretary of
State John Foster Dulles. The son of a minister, Dulles, in the words of the
 Foreign Policy in the 1950s • 1283

British ambassador, resembled the sixteenth-century zealots of the wars of

religion who “saw the world as an arena in which the forces of good and evil
were continuously at war.” Like Woodrow Wilson before him, Dulles was a
pompous, self-righteous, confrontational, and humorless statesman, a man
of immense energy and intelligence who believed that the United States was
“born with a sense of destiny and mission” to lead the world. His British
counterparts, however, were not impressed with Dulles’s sermonizing
speeches. They liked to say, “Dull, duller, Dulles.”
The foreign-policy planks of the 1952 Republican platform, which Dulles
wrote, showed both the moralist and the tactician at work. The Democratic
policy of “containing” communism was both “immoral” and passive, Dulles
insisted. Americans should instead work toward the “liberation” of the “cap-
tive peoples” of Eastern Europe and China from atheistic communism.
George F. Kennan, the leading Soviet analyst in the State Department, dis-
missed such rhetoric as lunacy, whereupon Dulles fired him. Eisenhower was
quick to explain that the new “liberation” doctrine would not involve mili-
tary force. He would promote the removal of Communist control “by every
peaceful means, but only by peaceful means.” Eisenhower repeatedly insisted
that “there is no alternative to peace.” His disavowal of force led critics to
question whether the new “liberation” policy was truly any different from
Truman’s containment doctrine. As the editors of The Economist noted,
“Unhappily, ‘liberation’ applied to eastern Europe—and Asia—means either
the risk of war or it means nothing.”
Dulles and Eisenhower knew that the United States could not win a ground
war against the Soviet Union or Communist China, both of whose “Red”
armies had millions more soldiers than did the United States. Nor could the
administration afford—politically or financially—to sustain military expen-
ditures at the levels required by the Korean War. So in an effort to get “more
bang for the buck,” as the secretary of defense bluntly admitted, Dulles and
Eisenhower crafted a new diplomatic/military strategy that would enable
them to reduce military spending. They were as committed to balancing the
budget as they were determined to “roll back” communism. And the only way to
balance the budget was to make drastic cuts to the Department of Defense. The
“New Look” strategy centered on the risky concept of “massive retaliation,”
using the threat of nuclear warfare (“massive retaliatory power”) to prevent
Communist aggression. As Dulles told an army general, why have an atomic
bomb if you don’t plan “to use it.” The massive retaliation strategy, Eisen-
hower, Dulles, and the military chiefs argued, would provide a “maximum
deterrent at bearable cost.” Vice President Richard Nixon explained the new
strategy as a means of focusing resources on the primary threat—the Soviet
Union. “Rather than let the Communists nibble us to death all over the world
1284 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

in little wars, we would rely in the

future primarily on our massive
mobile retaliatory power . . .
against the major source of
aggression.” During the mid-
1950s, the Department of Defense
enacted significant troop cuts
coupled with increased expendi-
tures on nuclear weapon delivery
systems—long-range bombers
and missiles. The new strategy,
however, only prompted the
Soviets to mimic the emphasis
on stockpiling more nuclear
weapons, pursuing what they
called “more rubble for the ruble.”
“Don’t Be Afraid—I Can Always Pull You Both nations embarked upon a
Back.” nuclear arms race that proved
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles costly and incendiary.
pushes a reluctant America to the brink of Dulles’s pledge to liberate
war.
the nations of eastern Europe
under Soviet control had unfortunate consequences—for the “captive peo-
ples.” In 1953, when East Germans rebelled against Soviet control, and in
1956, when Hungarians rose up against Soviet occupation troops, they
painfully discovered that the United States would do nothing to assist them.
Soviet troops and tanks crushed the brave but outmanned rebels.
The notion of “massive retaliation” also had ominous weaknesses. As
leading army generals complained, it locked the United States into an all-or-
nothing response to world crises. By the mid-1950s, both the United States
and the Soviet Union had developed hydrogen bombs, which were 750 times
as powerful as the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. A single
hydrogen bomb would have a devastating global ecological impact, yet war
planners envisioned using hundreds of them. “The necessary art,” Dulles
explained, was “the ability to get to the verge without getting into war. . . . If
you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost.” Dulles’s new policy of nuclear
brinksmanship frightened America’s allies as much as it did the Communist
nations. The British prime minister Winston Churchill said that the con-
frontational Dulles was a bull who carried “his china closet with him.” Over
time, the notion that the United States would risk a nuclear disaster in
response to localized regional conflicts had little credibility.
 Foreign Interventions • 1285

F O R E I G N I N T E RV E N T I O N S

At the same time that Eisenhower and Dulles were promoting “libera-
tion” and “massive retaliation” in their public statements, they were using
covert operations orchestrated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),
created in 1947 and headed by Dulles’s younger brother Allen Welsh Dulles,
to influence the political dynamics of countries around the world.

T H E C I A A N D T H E C O L D WA R The anti-colonial movements

unleashed by the Second World War placed the United States in the awk-
ward position of watching independence movements around the globe rebel
against British and French rule. In Iran in 1951, a newly elected prime minis-
ter, European-educated Mohammed Mossadegh, organized a nationalist
movement that won overwhelming control of the Iranian parliament and
then, in October 1952, severed all diplomatic relations with Great Britain.
The British, concerned about the loss of their oil-related investments in a
nation that then possessed the world’s largest known oil reserves, asked the
Eisenhower administration to help undermine the Mossadegh regime. The
president was receptive, stressing that “we cannot ignore the tremendous
importance of 675,000 barrels of oil a day” coming from Iran.
At the behest of the British, Eisenhower approved a CIA-plan called Opera-
tion Ajax. It was designed, in the words of Allen Dulles, to “bring about the fall
of Mossadegh.” To create unrest in Iran, the CIA bribed Iranian army officers,
paid Iranians to riot in the streets, issued anti-Mossadegh propaganda, and
hired mercenaries to arrest Mossadegh, who was then convicted of high trea-
son, imprisoned for three years, and then put under house arrest until his
death in 1967. In return for access to Iranian oil, the American government
thereafter provided massive support for the Shah of Iran’s authoritarian
regime, thereby creating a legacy of hatred among Iranians that would cause
major problems later.
The success of the CIA-engineered coup in Iran emboldened Eisenhower
to authorize other covert operations to undermine “unfriendly” government
regimes in other parts of the world. In 1954, the target was Guatemala, a des-
perately poor Central American country led by Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guz-
man, the former defense minister. Arbenz’s decision to take over U.S.-owned
property and industries in Guatemala convinced Secretary of State John
Foster Dulles that Guatemala was falling victim to “international commu-
nism.” Dulles persuaded Eisenhower to approve a covert CIA operation to
organize a ragtag Guatemalan army in Honduras. On June 18, 1954, aided by
CIA-piloted warplanes, the 150 paid “liberators” crossed the border into
1286 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

Guatemala and forced Arbenz Guzman into exile in Mexico. The United
States then installed a new ruler in Guatemala who created a police state and
eliminated all political opposition.
The CIA operations in Iran and Guatemala revealed that the United States
had become so enmeshed in cold war ideological warfare that it was secretly
overthrowing elected governments around the world to ensure that they did
not join the Soviet bloc. A classified report assessing the CIA’s covert opera-
tions concluded in 1954 that “There are no rules” in the cold war. “Hitherto
acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply.” The illegal CIA opera-
tions in Iran and Guatemala succeeded in toppling rulers, but in doing so
they destabilized the two countries, creating long-term problems in the
Middle East and Central America.

I N D O C H I N A : T H E B A C KG R O U N D T O WA R It was during the

Eisenhower administration that the United States became enmeshed in the
complex geopolitics of Southeast Asia. Indochina, created by French imperi-
alists in the nineteenth century out of the old kingdoms of Cambodia, Laos,
and Vietnam, offered a distinctive case of anti-colonial nationalism. During
the Second World War, after Japanese troops occupied the region, they con-
tinued to use French bureaucrats and
opposed the Vietnamese nationalists.
Chief among the nationalists were
members of the Viet Minh (League
for the Independence of Vietnam),
the resistance movement which fell
under the influence of Communists
led by wispy Ho Chi Minh (“bringer
of light”), a seasoned revolutionary
and passionate nationalist. Thin
and ascetic, a chain-smoking, mild-
mannered, and soft-spoken leader of
genius, he was obsessed by a single
goal: independence for his country.
At the end of the war against Japan,
the Viet Minh controlled part of
northern Vietnam, and, on Septem-
ber 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed
Ho Chi Minh
a Democratic Republic of Vietnam,
A seasoned revolutionary, Ho Chi
with its capital in Hanoi.
Minh cultivated a humble, proletarian
image of himself as Uncle Ho, a man The French, like the Americans later,
of the people. underestimated the determination of
 Foreign Interventions • 1287

Vietnamese nationalists to gain their independence. In 1946, the First

Indochina War began when Ho’s followers forcibly resisted French efforts to
restore their colonial regime. French forces quickly regained control of the
cities while the Viet Minh controlled the countryside. In 1949, having set up
puppet rulers in Laos and Cambodia, the French reinstated former emperor
Bao Dai as the head of quasi-independent Vietnam. The Viet Minh move-
ment thereafter became more dependent upon Communist China and the
Soviet Union for financial support and military supplies.
In 1950, with the outbreak of fighting in Korea, the struggle in Vietnam
became a major battleground in the cold war. When the Korean War ended, the
United States continued its efforts to bolster French control of Vietnam. By the
end of 1953, the Eisenhower administration was paying nearly 80 percent of
the cost of the French military effort in Indochina; the United States had found
itself at the “brink” of military intervention. In December 1953, some twelve
thousand French soldiers parachuted into Dien Bien Phu, a cluster of villages
in a valley ringed by mountains in northern Vietnam near the Laotian border.
The French plan, which Eisenhower deemed foolish, was to use the well-
fortified base to lure Viet Minh guerrillas into the open and overwhelm them
with superior firepower. But the plan backfired in March 1954 when the
French found themselves surrounded by fifty thousand Viet Minh fighters.
As the weeks passed, the French government pleaded with the United
States to launch an air strike to relieve the pressure on Dien Bien Phu, which
a French journalist called “Hell in a very small place.” The National Security
Council—Dulles, Nixon, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—
urged Eisenhower to use atomic bombs to aid the trapped French force.
Eisenhower snapped back: “You boys must be crazy. We can’t use those awful
things against Asians for the second time in less than ten years. My God!”
The president opposed U.S. intervention unless the British joined the effort.
When they refused, Eisenhower told the French that U.S. military action in
Vietnam was “politically impossible.” As Eisenhower stressed, “No one could
be more bitterly opposed to ever getting the U.S. involved in a hot war in
that region than I am.” On May 7, 1954, the Viet Minh fighters overwhelmed
the last French resistance at Dien Bien Phu. The catastrophic defeat at Dien
Bien Phu signaled the end of French colonial rule in Asia.
Six weeks later, a new French government promised to negotiate a com-
plete withdrawal from Indochina after nearly a hundred years of interrupted
colonial control. On July 20, representatives of France, Britain, the Soviet
Union, the People’s Republic of China, and the Viet Minh signed the Geneva
Accords. The complex agreement gave Laos and Cambodia their indepen-
dence and divided Vietnam in two at the 17th parallel. The accords gave the
Viet Minh Communists control in the North, where they imposed a totalitarian
1288 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

Dien Bien Phu

Captured French soldiers march through the battlefield after their surrender.

communist system at a cost of one hundred thousand executions; the French

would remain south of the line until nationwide elections in 1956 would
reunify all of Vietnam. American and South Vietnamese representatives
refused to sign the Geneva Accords, arguing that the treaties legitimized the
Communist victory.
In South Vietnam, power gravitated to a new premier imposed by the
French at American urging: Ngo Dinh Diem, a Catholic nationalist who had
opposed both the French and the Viet Minh. In 1954, Eisenhower offered to
assist Diem “in developing and maintaining a strong, viable state, capable of
resisting attempted subversion or aggression through military means.” In
return, the United States expected Diem to enact democratic reforms and
distribute land to peasants. American aid took the form of training the
South Vietnamese armed forces and police. Eisenhower remained opposed
to the use of U.S. combat troops, believing that military intervention would
bog down into a costly stalemate—as it eventually did.
Instead of instituting the promised political and economic reforms, how-
ever, the authoritarian Diem appointed his relatives to senior government
positions and suppressed his political opponents, offering little or no land
distribution and permitting widespread corruption. In 1956, he refused to
join in the elections to reunify Vietnam. Diem’s autocratic efforts to elimi-
 Foreign Interventions • 1289

U.S.S.R. SEA
Ulan Bator OF
OKHOTSK
M O N G O L I A
MANCHURIA
Vladivostok
NORTH SEA
0 500 1,000 Miles Peking KOREA OF
P’yongyang
JAPAN
0 500 1,000 Kilometers Seoul JAPAN
SOUTH Tokyo
KOREA
C H I N A BONIN
Shanghai ISLANDS
RYUKYU

PA
TACHEN
ISLANDS ISLANDS (Japan)

CI
INDIA MATSU I.
QUEMOY OKINAWA

FIC
ISLAND REPUBLIC
OF CHINA IWO JIMA
BURMA (TAIWAN)

OCE
(MYANMAR) Hanoi HONG PESCADORES
EAST LAOS KONG ISLANDS PHILIPPINE
PAKISTAN (G.B.)
MARIANA

AN
Vientiane NORTH VIETNAM
BAY Rangoon THAILAND SOUTH SEA ISLANDS
OF (Yangon) Bangkok CHINA Manila
BENGAL
SOUTH SEA
PHILIPPINES GUAM
VIETNAM (U.S.)
Saigon NORTH
BORNEO
CAMBODIA (SABAH)
BRUNEI
CAROLINE ISLANDS
M A L AY S I A (U.S. Trust)
Kuala Lumpur SARAWAK
SU

SINGAPORE
NEW GUINEA
M

BORNEO SULAWESI
AT

TRUST TERR.
(CELEBES)
R

WEST OF
A

INDIAN IRIAN NEW GUINEA

I N D O N E S I A To Indonesia (Aust.)
OCEAN Jakarta
JAVA
1963 TERR. OF
PAPUA
TIMOR (Aust.)
POSTWAR ALLIANCES: THE FAR EAST
CORAL
Nations having bilateral treaties
SEA
with the U.S.
Members of SEATO
Communist bloc A U S T R A L I A

How did the United States become increasingly involved in Vietnam? Why did the
installation of Ngo Dinh Diem by the French and the Americans backfire and gen-
erate more conflict in Vietnam? Why was the protection of Taiwan important to the
United States?
1290 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

nate all opposition played into the hands of the communists, who found
eager recruits among the discontented South Vietnamese. By 1957, guerrilla
forces known as the Viet Cong were launching attacks on the Diem govern-
ment, and in 1960 the resistance groups coalesced as the National Liberation
Front. As guerrilla warfare intensified in South Vietnam, the Eisenhower
administration viewed its only option was to “sink or swim with Diem.”
By the mid-1950s, cold war ideology had led American officials to pre-
sume that the United States must thwart every act of Communist insurgency
or aggression around the world. In 1954, Eisenhower used what he called the
“falling domino” theory to explain why the United States needed to repulse
Vietnamese communism: “You have a row of dominos set up, you knock
over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it
will go over very quickly.” If South Vietnam were to succumb to Communist
insurgency, he predicted, the rest of Southeast Asia would soon follow.
However, the domino analogy, used later by presidents Kennedy, Johnson,
and Nixon, was too simplistic, because it assumed that communism was a
monolithic global movement directed from Moscow that operated with the
chain-reaction properties of chemical reactions. Yet anti-colonial insurgen-
cies such as those in Southeast Asia might be animated by nationalist rather
than ideological motives. The domino analogy also meant that the United
States was coming to assume that it must police the world to ensure that the
dominoes, no matter how small, did not begin falling. As a consequence,
every worldwide insurgency mushroomed into strategic crises. But in Viet-
nam, Dulles’s tactic of brinksmanship had failed.

REELECTION AND FOREIGN CRISES

As Secretary of State John Foster Dulles tried to intimidate Commu-

nist governments by practicing nuclear brinksmanship, a new presiden-
tial campaign unfolded. Eisenhower retained widespread public support,
although the Democrats controlled Congress. Meanwhile, new crises in for-
eign and domestic affairs required him to take more decisive action than he
initially deemed prudent in order to “wage peace.”

A TURBULENT ELECTION YEAR In 1956, the Republicans eagerly

renominated Eisenhower and Nixon. The party platform endorsed what
Eisenhower called “modern Republicanism,” meaning balanced budgets,
reduced government intervention in the economy, and an internationalist
rather than an isolationist foreign policy. The Republicans promised “peace,
 Reelection and Foreign Crises • 1291

progress, and prosperity,” crowing that “everything’s booming but the guns.”
The Democrats turned again to Adlai Stevenson. During the last week of the
campaign, fighting erupted along the Suez Canal in Egypt and in the streets
of Budapest, Hungary. These two unrelated but simultaneous world events
caused a profound international crisis.

R E P R E S S I O N I N H U N G A RY During the 1950s, eastern Europeans

tried to take advantage of changes in Soviet leadership to seek greater indepen-
dence from Moscow. On October 23, 1956, fighting between Hungarian nation-
alists and Communist troops erupted in Budapest, after which Imre Nagy, a
moderate Communist, was installed as head of the government. But Nagy’s
announcement three days later that Hungary would withdraw from the War-
saw Pact (a military alliance linking the eastern European countries under Soviet
control) brought two hundred thousand Soviet troops and four thousand
tanks into Budapest. Although Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, a coarse
bully, was willing to relax relations with the Soviet-controlled eastern European
countries, he refused to allow them to break with the Soviet Union or abandon
their mutual defense obligations. The Soviets killed some forty thousand
Hungarian “freedom fighters” before installing a more compliant leader in
Hungary. They then hauled Nagy off to Moscow, where a firing squad exe-
cuted him in 1958. It was a tragic ending to an independence movement that
pleaded for the United States to back up its promise of “liberation” with force.

T H E S U E Z WA R The most fateful developments in the Middle East

turned on the rise of the Egyptian army officer Gamal Abdel Nasser after the
overthrow of King Farouk in 1952. Once in power, Nasser set out to become
the acknowledged leader of the entire Arab world. To do so, he promised to
destroy the new Israeli nation. Nasser, with Soviet support, also sought control
of the Suez Canal, the crucial international waterway in Egypt connecting the
Mediterranean and Red Seas. The canal had opened in 1869 as a joint French-
Egyptian venture, and from 1882 on, British troops posted along the canal
protected the British Empire’s maritime “lifeline” to India and other colonies.
The canal remained an essential artery of Western trade. When Nasser’s
nationalist regime pressed for the withdrawal of British forces from the Canal
Zone, Eisenhower and Dulles supported the demand; in 1954, an Anglo-
Egyptian treaty provided for British withdrawal within twenty months.
In 1955, Nasser, adept at playing both sides in the cold war, announced a
huge arms deal with the Soviet Union. The United States countered by offer-
ing to help Egypt finance a massive hydroelectric dam at Aswān on the Nile
River. In 1956, when Nasser increased trade with the Soviet bloc and recognized
 1292 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

the People’s Republic of China, Dulles abruptly canceled the offer to fund
the Aswān Dam. Unable to retaliate against the United States, Nasser seized
control of the Suez Canal Company and denied access to Israeli-bound
ships. The British and the French were furious. On October 29, 1956, Israeli,
British, and French forces invaded Egypt. Nasser responded by sinking all
forty international ships then in the Suez Canal. A few days later, Anglo-
French commandos and paratroopers took control of the canal.
The attack on Egypt by Britain, France, and Israel almost destroyed the
NATO alliance. Eisenhower saw the military action by the three American
allies as a revival of the “old-fashioned gunboat diplomacy” associated with
colonial imperialism: “How could we possibly support Britain and France,” he
demanded, “if in doing so we lose the whole Arab world.” Eisenhower adopted a

NORWAY FINLAND
NORTH SWEDEN POSTWAR ALLIANCES: EUROPE,
A

NORTH AFRICA, THE MIDDLE EAST

SE

SEA
IC
GREAT DENMARK BAL
T
Members of NATO
BRITAIN
IRELAND NETH. E. POLAND U.S.S.R. Members of METO
W. GER. Arab League
BEL. GER. C ZEC
ATLANTIC LUX. H. Communist bloc (Warsaw Pact)
OCEAN SWITZ. AUST. HUNG.
FRANCE ROMANIA
YUGOSLAVIA
CA

BLACK SEA
SP

ITALY BULGARIA
IAN

ALBANIA U.S.S.R.
PORT- SPAIN
SEA

TURKEY
UGAL (Also member of METO)
GREECE

N
ME
STA
TUNISIA DITE
CYPRUS SYRIA
RRAN
EAN SE LEBANON ANI
MOROCCO A
IRAQ IRAN
ISRAEL
GH
AF

Suez JORDAN
PE

ALGERIA Canal
KUWAIT
RS

LIBYA U.A.R. BAHRAIN

IA

N
(EGYPT) GU
QATAR LF
RE
ITANIA

SAUDI WEST
D

ARABIA PAKISTAN
SE

TRUCIAL MUSCAT
STATES
A
MAUR

AND OMAN
MALI NIGER
CHAD SUDAN YEMEN HADHRAMAUT
0 250 500 750 1,000 Miles ARABIAN
FRENCH TERR. OF
AFARS AND ISSAS
0 500 1,000 Kilometers SEA
ETHIOPIA SOMALIA

How did General Nasser try to play the United States and the Soviet Union against
each other? Why did the Israelis, French, and British attack Egypt? How was the
Suez War resolved?
 Reelection and Foreign Crises • 1293

bold stance. He demanded that the British and French forces withdraw from
the Suez Canal and that the Israelis evacuate the Sinai Peninsula—or face severe
economic sanctions. That the three aggressor nations grudgingly complied
with a cease-fire agreement on November 7 testified to Eisenhower’s strength,
influence, and savvy. Eisenhower’s superb handling of the Suez Crisis greatly
heightened American prestige abroad. At the United Nations, U.S. ambassador
Henry Cabot Lodge reported, “Never has there been such a tremendous acclaim
for the President’s policy. It has been absolutely spectacular.”
The two international crises in the fall of 1956—the Hungarian revolt and
the Suez War—led Adlai Stevenson to declare the administration’s foreign
policy “bankrupt.” Most voters, however, reasoned that the foreign turmoil
spelled a poor time to switch leaders, and they handed Eisenhower a land-
slide victory over Stevenson even more lopsided than the one in 1952. In
carrying Louisiana, Eisenhower became the first Republican to win a Deep
South state since Reconstruction; nationally, he carried all but seven states
and won the electoral vote by 457 to 73. Eisenhower’s decisive victory, how-
ever, failed to swing a congressional majority for his party in either house,
the first time events had transpired that way since the election of Zachary
Taylor in 1848.

REACTIONS TO SPUTNIK
On October 4, 1957, the Soviets
launched the first earth-orbiting
communications satellite, called
Sputnik 1. NBC News reported
that it was “the most important
story of the century.” Americans
panicked at the news. The Soviet
success in space dealt a severe
blow to the prestige of Ameri-
can science and technology. It
also changed the military bal-
ance of power. If the Soviets
were so advanced in rocketry,
many people reasoned, then
perhaps they could hit U.S. cities
with armed missiles. Democrats By the rocket’s red glare
charged that the Soviet feat had The Soviet success in space shocked
“humiliated” the United States; Americans and created concerns about a
they launched a congressional “missile gap.”
1294 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

investigation to assess the new Soviet threat to the nation’s security. “Sputnik
mania” led the United States to increase defense spending and establish a
crash program to enhance science education and military research. In 1958,
Congress created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) to coordinate research and development related to outer space.
Finally, in 1958, Congress, with Eisenhower’s endorsement, enacted the
National Defense Education Act (NDEA), which authorized massive federal
grants to colleges and universities to enhance education and research in
mathematics, science, and modern languages, as well as for student loans
and fellowships. The NDEA provided more financial aid to higher education
than any other previous legislation.

F E S T E R I N G P R O B L E M S A B R OA D

T H E E I S E N H OW E R D O C T R I N E In the aftermath of the Suez Crisis,

Eisenhower decided that the United States must replace Great Britain and
France as the guarantor of Western interests in the Middle East. In 1958,
Congress approved what came to be called the Eisenhower Doctrine, a reso-
lution that promised to extend economic and military aid to Arab nations
and to use armed force if necessary to assist any such nation against Com-
munist aggression. When Lebanon’s government appealed to the United
States to help fend off an insurgency, Eisenhower ordered five thousand
marines into Lebanon. In October 1958, once the situation had stabilized,
U.S. forces (up to fifteen thousand at one point) withdrew.

CRISIS IN BERLIN The unique problem of West Berlin, an island of

Western capitalism deep in Soviet-controlled East Germany, boiled over in
the late 1950s. After the Second World War, West Berlin served as a “show-
place” of Western democracy and prosperity, a listening post for Western
intelligence gathering, and a funnel through which news and propaganda
from the West penetrated what British leader Winston Churchill had labeled
the “iron curtain.” Although East Germany had sealed its western frontiers,
refugees could still pass from East to West Berlin. Each year, three hundred
thousand East Germans defected to the West through Berlin, most of them
young, well-educated professionals. On November 10, 1958, however, the
unpredictable Khrushchev, who called West Berlin “a bone in his throat,”
threatened to give East Germany control of East Berlin and the air lanes into
West Berlin. After the deadline he set, May 27, 1959, Western occupation
authorities would have to deal with the Soviet-controlled East German gov-
ernment, in effect recognizing it, or face the possibility of another blockade.
 Festering Problems Abroad • 1295

Eisenhower refused to budge from his

position on Berlin but sought a settle-
ment. There was little hope of resolv-
ing the conflicting views on Berlin
and German reunification, but the
negotiations distracted attention from
Khrushchev’s deadline of May 27: it
passed almost unnoticed. In Septem-
ber 1959, Khrushchev and Eisenhower
agreed that the time was ripe for a
summit meeting.
Nikita Khrushchev
THE U-2 SUMMIT The planned
The Soviet premier speaks on the
summit meeting blew up in Eisen- problem of Berlin, 1959.
hower’s face, however. On Sunday
morning, May 1, 1960, he learned that a Soviet rocket had brought down a
U.S. spy plane (called the U-2) flying at 70,000 feet some 1,200 miles inside
the Soviet border. Khrushchev, embarrassed by the ability of American spy
planes to traverse the Soviet Union, sprang a trap on Eisenhower. At first, the
Soviets announced only that the plane had been shot down. The U.S. gov-
ernment, not realizing that the Soviets had captured the downed pilot, tried
to cover up the spying mission. The State Department issued a fabricated
story that it was missing a weather plane over Turkey. Khrushchev then dis-
closed that the Soviets had veteran American pilot Francis Gary Powers
“alive and kicking” and also had the photographs he had taken of Soviet mil-
itary installations. On May 11, Eisenhower abandoned efforts to cover up
the incident, acknowledging that “we will now just have to endure the
storm.” Rather than blame others, Eisenhower took personal responsibility
for the aerial spying, explaining that such illegally obtained intelligence
information was crucial to national security. At a testy summit meeting in
Paris five days later, Khrushchev lambasted Eisenhower for forty-five min-
utes before walking out. The incident set back efforts between the two super-
powers to reduce cold war tensions in Berlin and worldwide. Later, in 1962,
Francis Gary Powers was exchanged for a captured Soviet spy.

CASTRO’S CUBA Amid all of Eisenhower’s crises in foreign affairs, the

greatest embarrassment was Fidel Castro’s new Communist regime in Cuba,
which came to power on January 1, 1959, after two years of guerrilla warfare
against the U.S.-supported dictator. Americans assumed that Castro’s revolu-
tion resulted from Soviet involvement, but Castro did not even acknowledge
that he was a Communist until he and his supporters took control of Havana.
1296 • THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE (CH. 30)

Fidel Castro
Castro (center) became Cuba’s Communist premier in 1959, follow-
ing three years of guerrilla warfare against the Batista regime. He
planned a social and agrarian revolution and opposed foreign control
of the Cuban economy.

He became a Communist because he was anti-American, not the reverse. To

be sure, once in power, Castro readily embraced Soviet support, leading a CIA
agent to predict that “We’re going to take care of Castro just like we took care
of Arbenz [in Guatemala].” The Soviets warned in response that any Ameri-
can intervention in Cuba would trigger a military response from them. One
of Eisenhower’s last acts as president, on January 3, 1961, was to suspend
diplomatic relations with Castro’s Cuba. The president also authorized the
CIA to begin secretly training a force of Cuban refugees to oust Castro. But
the final decision on the use of that anti-Castro invasion force would rest
with the next president, John F. Kennedy.

ASSESSING THE E I S E N H OW E R P R E S I D E N C Y

During President Eisenhower’s second term, Congress added Alaska

and Hawaii as the forty-ninth and fiftieth states (1959), while the nation
experienced in 1958 the worst economic slump since the Great Depression.
 Assessing the Eisenhower Presidency • 1297

Volatile issues such as civil rights, defense policy, and corrupt aides, includ-
ing White House Chief of Staff Sherman Adams, Eisenhower’s most trusted
and influential adviser, compounded the administration’s troubles. The
president’s desire to avoid contentious issues and maintain public goodwill
at times led him to value harmony and public popularity over justice. By
avoiding or postponing critical issues such as civil rights for all Americans,
he unwittingly bequeathed even more explosive issues for his successors.
One observer called the Eisenhower years “the time of the great postpone-
ment,” during which the president left domestic and foreign policies “about
where he found them in 1953.”
Opinion of Eisenhower’s presidency has improved with time, however.
After all, the former general was the only twentieth-century president to pre-
side over eight years of peace and prosperity. When he left office, his popular-
ity rankings were as high as they were when he had entered office. He had
ended the war in Korea, refused to intervene militarily in Indochina, and
maintained the peace in the face of combustible global tensions. If Eisen-
hower failed to end the cold war and in fact institutionalized global con-
frontation, he also recognized the limits of America’s power and applied it
only to low-risk situations. He was a man of unusually shrewd judgment and
firmness of purpose. Eisenhower understood the unintended consequences
of war and the limits of military power better than other presidents. For the
most part, he acted with poise, restraint, and intelligence in managing an
increasingly complex cold war that he predicted would last for decades. If
Eisenhower took few initiatives in addressing social and racial problems, he
did sustain the major reforms of the New Deal. If he tolerated unemployment
of as much as 7 percent, he saw to it that inflation remained minimal during
his two terms. Even Adlai Stevenson, defeated twice by Eisenhower, admitted
that Ike’s victory in 1952 had been good for the nation. Eisenhower presided
over a nation content with a leader whose essential virtue was prudence.
Eisenhower’s January 17, 1961, televised farewell address to the American
people focused on a topic never before addressed by a public official: the
threat posed to government integrity by “an immense military establish-
ment and a large arms industry.” As a much-celebrated former general,
Eisenhower highlighted—better than anyone else could have—the dangers
of a large “military-industrial complex” exerting “unwarranted influence” in
the halls of Congress and the White House. “The potential for the disastrous
rise of misplaced power exists and will persist,” he warned. Eisenhower con-
fessed that his greatest disappointment as he prepared to leave the White
House was that he could affirm only that “war has been avoided,” not that “a
lasting peace is in sight.” His successors were not as successful.
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Growth of U.S. Economy High levels of government spending, begun before

the war, continued during the postwar period. The GI Bill of Rights gave a boost
to home buying and helped many veterans attend college and thereby enter the
middle class. Unemployment was virtually nonexistent, and consumer demand
for homes, cars, and household goods that had been unavailable during the war
fueled the economy, as did buying on credit.
• Conformity in American Society After the Second World War, with the growth
of suburbs, corporations, and advertising, society appeared highly uniform, yet
pockets of poverty persisted, and minorities did not prosper to the extent that
white Americans did. Although popular culture reflected the affluence of the
white middle class, the art and literature of the period revealed an underlying
alienation.
• Eisenhower’s Dynamic Conservatism As president, Eisenhower expanded
Social Security coverage and launched ambitious public works programs, such
as the construction of the interstate highway system. He opposed massive
government spending and large budget deficits, however, so he cut spending on
an array of domestic programs and on national defense.
• Civil Rights Movement By the early 1950s, the NAACP was targeting state-
mandated segregation in public schools. In the most significant case, Brown v.
Board of Education, the Court nullified the “separate but equal” doctrine.
Whereas white southerners defended their old way of life, rallying to a call for
“Massive Resistance,” proponents of desegregation sought to achieve integration
through nonviolent means, as demonstrated in the Montgomery, Alabama, bus
boycott and the desegregation of a public high school in Little Rock, Arkansas.
• American Foreign Policy in the 1950s Eisenhower continued the policy of con-
tainment to stem the spread of communism. His first major foreign-policy
accomplishment in this respect was to end the fighting in Korea. To confront
Soviet aggression, Eisenhower relied on nuclear deterrence, which allowed for
reductions in conventional military forces and thus led to budgetary savings.
• Communism in Southeast Asia In Southeast Asia, Eisenhower believed that
the French should regain control of Indochina so it could slow the spread of
communism. But by 1957, after the defeat of the French and the division of the
country in half, the Eisenhower administration had no option but to “sink or
swim with the government of Ngo Dinh Diem” and the South Vietnamese.
 CHRONOLOGY

1944

1952
Congress passes the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act
(GI Bill of Rights)
Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is published
June 1953 Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are executed
July 1953 Armistice is reached in Korea
April–June 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings are televised
1954 Supreme Court issues ruling in Brown v. Board of Educa-
tion of Topeka, Kansas
July 1954 Geneva Accords adopted
December 1955 Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott begins
1956 In Suez War, Israel, Britain, and France attack Egypt
1956 Hungarian revolt against the Warsaw Pact is quickly
suppressed
1957 Federal troops ordered to protect students attempting to
integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas
1957 Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1
1957 Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is published
1957 Baby boom peaks
1960 U-2 incident reveals that the United States is flying spy
planes over the Soviet Union

KEY TERMS & NAMES

baby boom p. 1252 Massive Resistance p. 1277 brinksmanship p. 1284

Levittown p. 1254 Rosa Parks p. 1277 Ho Chi Minh p. 1286

Beats p. 1265 Martin Luther King Jr. Dien Bien Phu p. 1287
p. 1278
Brown v. Board of Viet Cong p. 1290
Education of Topeka, John Foster Dulles p. 1282
Kansas p. 1276 Fidel Castro p. 1295
massive retaliation p. 1283

31
NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS
AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN
THE 1960s

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• What were the goals of John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier program,

and how successful was it?
• What was the aim of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society program,
and how successful was it?
• What were the achievements of the civil rights movement by 1968?
• Why did the United States become increasingly involved in Vietnam?
• Why and how did Kennedy attempt to combat communism in
Cuba?

F or those pundits who considered the social and political cli-

mate of the fifties dull, the following decade would provide
a striking contrast. The sixties were years of extraordinary
social turbulence and insurgent liberalism in public affairs—as well as sud-
den tragedy and prolonged trauma. Many social ills that had been festering
for decades suddenly forced their way onto the national agenda. At the same
time, the deeply entrenched assumptions of the cold war directed against
communism led the nation into the longest, most controversial, and least
successful war in its history.

THE NEW FRONTIER

K E N N E D Y V E R S U S N I XO NIn 1960, there was little awareness of

such dramatic change on the horizon. The presidential election of that year
featured two candidates—Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy—with
 The New Frontier • 1301

very different personalities and backgrounds. Although better known than

Kennedy because of his eight years as Eisenhower’s vice president, Nixon
had developed the reputation of a cunning chameleon, the “Tricky Dick”
who concealed his duplicity behind a series of masks. “Nixon doesn’t know
who he is,” Kennedy told an aide, “and so each time he makes a speech he has
to decide which Nixon he is, and that will be very exhausting.”
But Nixon could not be so easily dismissed. He possessed a shrewd intelli-
gence and a compulsive love for combative politics. Born in suburban Los
Angeles in 1913, he grew up in a working-class Quaker family that struggled
to make ends meet. In 1946, having completed law school and a wartime
stint in the navy, Nixon jumped into the political arena as a Republican and
won election to Congress. Four years later he became the junior senator
from California.
Nixon arrived in Washington eager to reverse the tide of New Deal liber-
alism. As a campaigner, he unleashed scurrilous personal attacks on his
opponents, employing half-truths, lies, and rumors, and he shrewdly manip-
ulated the growing anti-Communist hysteria. Yet Nixon became a respected
member of Congress, and by 1950 he was the most requested Republican
speaker in the country. The reward for his rapid rise to political stardom was
the vice-presidential nomination in 1952, which led to successive terms as
the partner of the popular Eisenhower and ensured his nomination for pres-
ident in 1960.
John F. Kennedy lacked Nixon’s political experience but boasted an
abundance of assets, including a record of heroism in the Second World
War, a glamorous wife and two adorable children, a bright, agile mind and a
Harvard education, a rich, powerful Roman Catholic family, a handsome face,
movie-star charisma, and a robust outlook. Yet the forty-three-year-old candi-
date had not distinguished himself in the House or the Senate. His political
rise owed not so much to his abilities or his accomplishments as to the effec-
tive public relations campaign engineered by his ambitious father, Joseph
Kennedy, a self-made tycoon.
During his campaign for the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination,
the youthful Kennedy had shown that he had the energy and wit to match
his grace and ambition, even though he suffered from lifelong health prob-
lems: Addison’s disease (a debilitating disorder of the adrenal glands), recur-
rent blood disorders, venereal disease, chronic back pain, and fierce fevers.
He took powerful prescription medicines daily, sometimes hourly. Like
Franklin D. Roosevelt, he and his aides and family members masked his
physical ailments—as well as his reckless sexual forays—from the public.
By the time of the Democratic Convention in 1960, the relentless Kennedy
had traveled over 65,000 miles, visited 25 states, and made over 350 speeches.
1302 • NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S (CH. 31)

In his acceptance speech, he featured the stirring, muscular rhetoric that

would stamp the rest of his campaign and his presidency: “We stand today on
the edge of a New Frontier—the frontier of unknown opportunities and
perils—a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats.” Kennedy and his staff fas-
tened upon the frontier metaphor as the label for their domestic program
because Americans had always been courageous adventurers, eager to con-
quer and exploit new frontiers. Kennedy promised to use his administration
to “get the country moving again.”
Three events shaped the presidential campaign that fall. First, as the
only Catholic to run for the presidency since Alfred E. Smith in 1928,
Kennedy strove to dispel the impression that his religion was a major polit-
ical liability, especially among southern Protestants. In a speech before the
Greater Houston Ministerial Association in 1960, he stressed that “the sepa-
ration of church and state is absolute” and “no Catholic prelate would
tell the President—should he be a Catholic—how to act and no Protestant
minister should tell his parishioners for whom to vote.” The religious
question thereafter drew little public attention; Kennedy’s candor had
neutralized it.
Second, the 1960 election elevated the role of images over substance. Both
campaigns hired sophisticated marketing specialists to shape the media cov-
erage of the candidates. Television played a crucial role. Nixon violated one
of the cardinal rules of politics when he agreed to debate his less prominent
opponent on television. During the first of four debates, few significant pol-
icy differences surfaced, allowing viewers to shape their opinions more on
matters of appearance and style. Some 70 million people watched this first-
ever televised debate. They saw an obviously uncomfortable Nixon, still
weak from a recent illness, perspiring heavily and looking pale, haggard,
uneasy, and even sinister before the camera. Kennedy, on the other hand,
appeared tanned and calm, projected a cool poise, and offered crisp answers
that made him seem equal, if not superior, in his fitness for the nation’s
highest office. Kennedy’s popularity immediately shot up in the polls. In the
words of a bemused southern senator, Kennedy combined “the best qualities
of Elvis Presley and Franklin D. Roosevelt.”
Still, the momentum created by the first debate was not enough to ensure
a Kennedy victory. The third key event in the campaign involved the deepen-
ing controversy over civil rights. Democratic strategists knew that in order
to offset the loss of conservative white southern Democrats suspicious of
Kennedy’s Catholicism and strong civil rights positions, they had to increase
the registration of minority voters and generate a high turnout among
African Americans.
 The New Frontier • 1303

Kennedy-Nixon debates
John Kennedy’s poise and precision in the debates with Richard Nixon impressed
viewers and voters.

Perhaps the most crucial incident of the campaign occurred when Martin
Luther King Jr. and some fifty civil rights demonstrators were arrested in
Atlanta for “trespassing” in an all-white restaurant. Although the other
demonstrators were soon released, King was sentenced to four months in
prison, ostensibly because of an earlier traffic violation. Robert F. Kennedy,
the candidate’s younger brother and campaign manager, phoned the judge
handling King’s case, imploring him with the argument “that if he was a
decent American, he would let King out of jail by sundown.” King was soon
released on bail, and the Kennedy campaign seized full advantage of the out-
come, distributing some 2 million pamphlets in African American neigh-
borhoods extolling Kennedy’s efforts on behalf of Dr. King.
When the votes were counted, Kennedy and his running mate, Senator
Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, had won the closest presidential election since
1888. The winning margin was only 118,574 votes out of more than 68 mil-
lion cast. Kennedy’s wide lead in the electoral vote, 303 to 219, belied the
close vote in several key states. Nixon had in fact carried more states than
Kennedy, sweeping most of the West and holding four of the six southern
states that Eisenhower had carried in 1956. Nixon claimed that he lost
because “I spent too much time . . . on substance and too little time on
1304 • NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S (CH. 31)

WA
9 NH 4
MT ND ME
4 VT 3 5
OR 4 MN
6 ID 11
4 SD WI MI NY MA 16
WY 4 12 20 45
3 RI 4
IA PA CT 8
NV NE 10
6 OH 32 NJ 16
3 UT IL IN 25 WV
CA 4 CO 27 13 DE 3
32 6 KS MO VA MD 9
8 12
8 13 KY 10
NC
AZ OK TN 11 14
NM
4 4 7 1 AR SC
8 AL GA 8
MS 6 5 12
TX 8
24 LA
10
FL
10
HI
3

THE ELECTION OF 1960 Electoral Vote Popular Vote

AK John F. Kennedy 303 34,200,000
3 (Democrat)
Richard M. Nixon 219 34,100,000
(Republican)
Harry F. Byrd 15

How did the election of 1960 represent a sea change in American presidential poli-
tics? What three events shaped the campaign? How did John F. Kennedy win the
election in spite of winning fewer states than Richard M. Nixon?

appearance.” Kennedy’s majority was built on victories in southern New

England, the populous mid-Atlantic states, and key states in the South where
African American voters provided the critical margin of victory. Yet omi-
nous rumblings of discontent appeared in the once-solid Democratic South,
as all eight of Mississippi’s electors and six of Alabama’s eleven (as well as
one elector from Oklahoma) defied the national ticket and voted for Vir-
ginia senator Harry F. Byrd, the arch segregationist.

John F. Kennedy was the

A V I G O R O U S N E W A D M I N I S T R AT I O N
youngest person ever elected president, and he was determined to surround
himself with the “best and the brightest” minds from across America,
experts who would provide new ideas and fresh thinking—and inject a
tough, pragmatic, and vigorous outlook into government affairs. Adlai E.
 The New Frontier • 1305

Stevenson was favored by liberal Democrats for the post of secretary of state,
but Kennedy chose Dean Rusk, a career diplomat. Stevenson received the
post of ambassador to the United Nations. Robert McNamara, one of the
whiz kids who had reorganized the Ford Motor Company, was asked to
bring his managerial magic to bear on the Department of Defense. C. Doug-
las Dillon, a Republican banker, was made secretary of the Treasury in an
effort to reassure conservative business executives. When critics attacked the
appointment of Kennedy’s thirty-five-year-old brother Robert as attorney
general, who had never practiced law, the president quipped, “I don’t see
what’s wrong with giving Bobby a little experience before he goes into law
practice.” Harvard professor McGeorge Bundy, whom Kennedy called “the
second smartest man I know,” was made special assistant for national secu-
rity affairs, lending additional credence to the impression that foreign policy
would remain under tight White House control.
The inaugural ceremonies set the tone of elegance and youthful vigor that
would come to be called the Kennedy style. In his lean, crisp address, Presi-
dent Kennedy dazzled listeners with uplifting rhetoric provided by talented
speechwriters. He issued an idealistic call to action. “Let the word go forth
from this time and place,” he proclaimed. “Let every nation know, whether it
wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any
hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and suc-
cess of liberty. And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can
do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” Spines tingled; the glit-
tering atmosphere and inspiring language of the inauguration seemed to her-
ald an era of fresh promise, courageous action, and youthful energy.

THE KENNEDY RECORD Despite his idealistic rhetoric, Kennedy

called himself a realist or “an idealist without illusions,” and he had a diffi-
cult time launching his New Frontier domestic program. Elected by a razor-
thin margin, he did not enjoy a popular mandate. “Great innovations,”
Kennedy said, quoting Thomas Jefferson, “should not be forced on slender
majorities.” The new president preferred dealing with foreign policy rather
than domestic issues. He struggled to shepherd legislation through a Con-
gress controlled by conservative southern Democrats who repeatedly blocked
his efforts to increase federal aid to education, provide health insurance for
the aged, and create a department of urban affairs. When Kennedy finally
followed the advice of his advisers in 1963 and proposed a drastic tax cut,
Congress blocked that as well. During 1962, Kennedy admitted that his first
year had been a “disaster”: the social, political, and international “problems
are more difficult than I imagined them to be. . . . It is much easier to make
the speeches than it is to finally make the judgments.”
1306 • NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S (CH. 31)

Administration proposals did nevertheless win some notable victories in

Congress. Legislators readily approved broad Alliance for Progress programs
to help Latin America. They also endorsed the celebrated Peace Corps, cre-
ated in 1961 to recruit idealistic volunteers who would provide educational
and technical services abroad. Kennedy’s greatest legislative accomplishment,
however, may have been the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which eventually
led to tariff cuts averaging 35 percent on goods traded between the United
States and the European Economic Community (the Common Market).
In the field of domestic social legislation, the Kennedy administration
persuaded Congress to pass a Housing Act that earmarked nearly $5 billion
for urban renewal over four years; an increase in the minimum wage and its
application to more than 3 million additional workers; the Area Redevelop-
ment Act of 1961, which provided nearly $400 million in loans and grants to
“distressed areas”; an increase in Social Security benefits; and additional
funds for sewage-treatment plants. Kennedy also won support for an accel-
erated space exploration program with the goal of landing astronauts on the
moon before the end of the decade.

T H E WA R R E N C O U R T Under Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Supreme

Court continued to be a decisive influence on domestic life during the sixties.
In 1962, the Court ruled that a school prayer adopted by the New York State
Board of Regents violated the constitutional prohibition against an estab-
lished religion. In Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), the Court required that every
felony defendant be provided a lawyer regardless of the defendant’s ability to
pay. In 1964 the Court ruled in Escobedo v. Illinois that a person accused of a
crime must also be allowed to consult a lawyer before being interrogated by
police. Two years later, in Miranda v. Arizona, the Warren Court issued per-
haps its most bitterly criticized ruling when it ordered that an accused person
in police custody be informed of certain basic rights: the right to remain
silent; the right to know that anything said can be used against the individual
in court; and the right to have a defense attorney present during interroga-
tion. In addition, the Court established rules for police to follow in informing
suspects of their legal rights before questioning could begin.

E X PA N S I O N OF THE C I V I L R I G H TS M OV E M E N T

The most important development in domestic life during the sixties

occurred in civil rights. Like Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy entered
the White House reluctant to challenge conservative southern Democrats on
 Expansion of the Civil Rights Movement • 1307

the race issue. While committed to racial equality in theory, he balked at

making civil rights a priority of his presidency because it was such an explosive
issue, especially in the South. In fact, President Kennedy appointed segrega-
tionists as federal judges in the South as a gesture of appreciation for the role
of southern Democrats in ensuring his narrow election victory. Neither he nor
his brother Robert (“Bobby”), the president’s closest adviser, embraced civil
rights as a compelling cause that transcended political considerations. Both
brothers had to be dragged unwillingly into active support for the civil rights
movement. Despite a few dramatic gestures of support toward African Ameri-
can leaders, President Kennedy only belatedly grasped the moral and emotional
significance of the most important reform movement of the decade. Like
Franklin D. Roosevelt, he celebrated racial equality but did little to promote it.
For the most part, he viewed the grassroots civil rights movement led by Martin
Luther King Jr. as an irritant. (Jackie Kennedy dismissed King as a “phony.”)

S I T- I N S A N D F R E E D O M R I D E S After the Montgomery bus boycott

of 1955–1956, King’s philosophy of “militant nonviolence” inspired others to
challenge the deeply entrenched patterns of racial segregation in the South. At
the same time, lawsuits to desegregate the public schools got thousands of par-
ents and young people involved. The momentum generated the first genuine
mass movement in African American history when four well-dressed, polite
black students enrolled at North Carolina A&T College sat down and ordered
coffee and doughnuts at Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North
Carolina, on February 1, 1960. The clerk refused to serve them because only
whites could sit at the counter; blacks had to eat standing up or take their food
outside. The Greensboro Four, as they were called, waited forty-five minutes
and then returned the next day with two dozen more students. They returned
every day thereafter for a week, patiently and quietly tolerating being jeered,
cuffed, and spat upon by hooligans. By then, hundreds of rival protesters ral-
lied outside. Meanwhile, the “sit-in” movement had spread to six more towns
in the state, and within two months, similar sit-in demonstrations—involving
blacks and whites, men and women, young and old—had occurred in fifty-
four cities in thirteen states. By the end of July 1960, officials in Greensboro
lifted the whites-only policy at the Woolworth’s lunch counter. And the civil
rights movement had found a new voice among courageous young activists
and an effective new tactic: nonviolent direct action against segregation.
A few weeks later, in April 1960, some two hundred student activists,
black and white, converged in Raleigh, North Carolina, to form the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Their goal was to ratchet up
the effort to dismantle segregation. The sit-ins, which began at restaurants,
1308 • NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S (CH. 31)

Sit-in at Woolworth’s lunch counter, Greensboro, North Carolina

Four of the protesters, students at North Carolina A&T College, were (from left)
Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Billy Smith, and Clarence Henderson.

were broadened to include “kneel-ins” at all-white churches and “wade-ins”

at segregated public swimming pools. Most of the civil rights activists prac-
ticed King’s concept of nonviolent interracial protest. They refused to retali-
ate, even when struck with clubs, poked with cattle prods, or subjected to
vicious verbal abuse. The conservative white editor of the Richmond News
Leader conceded his admiration for their courage:

Here were the colored students, in coats, white shirts, ties, and one of them
was reading Goethe, and one was taking notes from a biology text. And
here, on the sidewalk, was a gang of white boys come to heckle, a ragtail
rabble, slack-jawed, black-jacketed, grinning fit to kill, and some of them,
God save the mark, were waving the proud and honored flag of the
Southern States in the last war fought by gentlemen.

During the year after the Greensboro sit-ins, over 3,600 black and white
activists spent time in jail. In many communities they were pelted with
rocks, burned with cigarettes, and subjected to unending verbal abuse.
 Expansion of the Civil Rights Movement • 1309

In 1961 leaders of the civil rights movement adopted a powerful new tac-
tic directed at segregation in public transportation: buses and trains. Their
larger goal was to force the Kennedy administration to engage the cause of
civil rights in the Democratic South. On May 4, the New York–based Con-
gress of Racial Equality (CORE), led by James Farmer, sent a courageous
group of eighteen black and white activists, including three women, on two
buses from Washington, D.C., through the Deep South. The freedom riders,
as they were called, wanted to test a federal court ruling that had banned seg-
regation on buses and trains and in terminals. Farmer warned Attorney
General Robert F. Kennedy that the bus riders would encounter violence as
they headed south.
The warning was needed, for on May 14, a mob of white racists in rural
Alabama surrounded the Greyhound bus carrying white and black freedom
riders. After throwing a firebomb into the bus, angry whites barricaded the
bus’s door. “Burn them alive,” one of them yelled. “Fry the damned niggers.”
After the gas tank exploded, the riders were able to escape the burning bus,
only to be attacked by whites using fists, pipes, and bats. The surly crowd
also assaulted U.S. Justice Department observers. A few hours later, freedom
riders on another bus, many of them SNCC members, were beaten with
pipes, chains, and clubs after they entered whites-only waiting rooms at the
bus terminal in Birmingham.
But the demonstrators persisted in the face of mob brutality and police
indifference, and their brave efforts drew growing national attention. Pres-
ident Kennedy and his brother Bobby, however, were not inspired by
the courageous freedom riders. They viewed the civil rights bus rides as
unnecessarily provocative publicity stunts. The Kennedy brothers were
“fed up with the Freedom Riders.” Preoccupied with a crisis in Berlin, they
ordered an aide to tell the civil rights leaders to “call it off.” The freedom
riders, whom the Kennedys dismissed as “publicity seekers” and whom
white critics disparaged as “outside agitators,” were in fact the vanguard of
a civil rights movement determined to win over the hearts and minds of
the American public. Finally, under pressure from Bobby Kennedy, the
federal Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) ordered in September
1961 that whites-only waiting areas in interstate transportation facilities
be integrated.
The freedom rides were a turning point in the civil rights movement.
Widespread media coverage showed the nation that the nonviolent pro-
testers were prepared to die for their rights rather than continue to submit
to the assault on their dignity. Future Congressman John L. Lewis, one of
the original bus riders and the son of a sharecropper, recalled the benefits
of being a freedom rider on buses and in jail cells: “We had moments there
1310 • NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S (CH. 31)

to learn, to teach each other

the way of nonviolence, the
way of love, the way of peace.
The Freedom Ride created an
unbelievable sense: Yes, we
will make it. Yes, we will sur-
vive. And that nothing, but
nothing, was going to stop this
movement.”

F E D E R A L I N T E RV E N T I O N
The Freedom Rides revealed that
African Americans—especially
young African Americans—
were tired of waiting for the
segregationist South to abide by
federal laws and to align with
American values. With each
passing month, more southern
blacks were willing to confront
the deeply embedded racist
Freedom Riders political and social structure.
Two activists are escorted by armed National In 1962, James Meredith, an
Guardsmen on a bus to Jackson, Mississippi. African American student whose
grandfather had been a slave,
tried to enroll at the all-white University of Mississippi at Oxford (“Ole
Miss”). Ross Barnett, the governor of Mississippi, who believed that God
made “the Negro different to punish him,” ignored a court order by refusing
to allow Meredith to register for classes. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy
then dispatched federal marshals to enforce the law. When the marshals were
assaulted by a white mob, federal troops (all white) intervened. The presence
of soldiers ignited a night of rioting that left two deaths and dozens of
injuries. But once the violence subsided, James Meredith was registered at
Ole Miss a few days later.
In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. defied the wishes of the Kennedy brothers
by launching a series of demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, a state
presided over by a governor—George Wallace—whose inauguration vow had
been a pledge of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation for-
ever!” King knew that a peaceful demonstration in Birmingham would likely
provoke violence, but victory there would “break the back of segregation all
 Expansion of the Civil Rights Movement • 1311

over the nation.” The Birmingham police commissioner, Eugene “Bull” Con-
nor, served as the perfect foil for King’s tactic of nonviolent civil disobedi-
ence. As King and other marchers demonstrated against the city’s continuing
segregationist practices, Connor’s police used dogs, tear gas, electric cattle
prods, and fire hoses on the protesters while millions of outraged Americans
watched the confrontations on television.
King was arrested and jailed. While incarcerated, he wrote his now-
famous “Letter from Birmingham City Jail,” a stirring defense of the nonvio-
lent strategy that became a classic document of the civil rights movement.
“One who breaks an unjust law,” he stressed, “must do so openly, lovingly,
and with a willingness to accept the penalty.” In his letter, King signaled a
shift in his strategy for social change. Heretofore he had emphasized the
need to educate southern whites about the injustice of segregation and other
patterns of discrimination. Now he focused more on gaining federal enforce-
ment of the law and new legislation by provoking racists to display their
violent hatred in public. As King admitted in his letter, he sought through
organized nonviolent protest to “create such a crisis and foster such a

Birmingham, Alabama, May 1963

Eugene “Bull” Connor’s police unleash dogs on civil rights demonstrators.
1312 • NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S (CH. 31)

tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is

forced to confront the issue.” This concept of confrontational civil disobedi-
ence outraged J. Edgar Hoover, the powerful head of the FBI, who labeled
King “the most dangerous Negro . . . in this nation.” Hoover’s hatred for King
became an obsession. With Attorney General Kennedy’s blessing, he ordered
agents to follow King and to monitor his private telephone conversations.
Hoover also had agents plant listening devices in King’s motel rooms and
circulate scandalous rumors to discredit him.
But King’s actions and sacrifices prevailed when Birmingham officials
finally agreed to end their segregationist practices. The sublime courage
that King and many other grassroots protesters displayed helped mobilize
national support for their integrationist objectives. (In 1964, King would be
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.) Nudged by his brother Robert, President
Kennedy finally decided that enforcement of existing statutes was not
enough; new legislation was needed to ensure civil rights for all. In 1963, he
told the nation that racial discrimination “has no place in American life or
law.” He then endorsed an ambitious federal civil rights bill intended to end
discrimination in public places, desegregate public schools, and protect
African American voters. But southern Democrats quickly blocked the bill
in Congress. As Kennedy told King, “This is a very serious fight. We’re in
this up to the neck. The worst trouble would be to lose the fight in Con-
gress. . . . A good many programs I care about may go down the drain as a
result of this [bill]—We may all go down the drain . . . so we are putting a
lot on the line.”
Throughout the Deep South, white traditionalists defied efforts at racial
integration. In the fall of 1963, Alabama governor George Wallace dramati-
cally stood in the doorway of a building at the University of Alabama to block
the enrollment of African American students, but he stepped aside in the face
of insistent federal marshals. That night, President Kennedy for the first time
highlighted the moral issue facing the nation: “If an American, because his
skin is black, cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who
among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in
his place? Who among us would be content with the counsels of patience and
delay?” Later the same night, an African American civil rights activist, Medgar
Evers, was shot to death as he returned to his home in Jackson, Mississippi.
Civil rights had become the nation’s most acute social issue.
The civil rights movement gained great visibility and national support on
August 28, 1963, when over two hundred thousand blacks and whites
marched down the Mall in Washington, D.C., toward the Lincoln Memorial,
singing “We Shall Overcome,” “We Shall Never Turn Back,” “Oh Freedom,”
and other defiant songs rooted in old spirituals. The March on Washington
 Expansion of the Civil Rights Movement • 1313

for Jobs and Freedom was the largest civil rights demonstration in history,
and it garnered widespread media attention. Standing in front of Lincoln’s
famous statue, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered one of the century’s most
memorable speeches:

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and

frustrations of the moment I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted
in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true
meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men
are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day . . . the sons of former slaves and the sons of
former slaveowners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.

Such racial harmony had not yet arrived, however. Two weeks later,
a bomb exploded in a Birmingham church, killing four black girls. Yet King’s
dream—shared and promoted by thousands of other activists—survived.
The intransigence and violence that civil rights workers encountered won
converts to their cause across the nation. Moreover, corporate and civic leaders

“I Have a Dream,” August 28, 1963

Protesters in the March on Washington make their way to the Lincoln Memorial,
where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his now-famous speech.
1314 • NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S (CH. 31)

in large southern cities promoted civil rights advances in large part because
the continuing protests threatened economic development. Fast-growing
Atlanta, for example, described itself as “the city too busy to hate.”

FOREIGN FRONTIERS

At the same time that the Kennedy administration was becoming

increasingly embroiled in the civil rights movement, it was also wrestling
with significant international issues. Kennedy had assumed the presidency
at the peak of the cold war, and he fashioned himself a macho cold warrior.
The cold war, he said, was a “struggle for supremacy between two conflicting
ideologies: freedom under God versus ruthless, godless tyranny.” Kennedy
was determined to take the offensive against Soviet communism by acceler-
ating the nuclear arms race and creating an elite army unit called the Special
Forces (Green Berets) capable of dealing with communist insurgencies around
the world. He and his aides believed that Dwight D. Eisenhower had not
been aggressive enough with the Soviets. Where Eisenhower had been cau-
tious and conciliatory, Kennedy was determined to be bold and confronta-
tional. The undersecretary of state complained that the Kennedys and their
top advisers were “looking for a chance to prove their muscle.”

E A R LY S E T B A C K S John F. Kennedy’s record in foreign relations, like

that in domestic affairs, was mixed, but more spectacularly so. As a senator, he
had blasted Eisenhower for allowing Fidel Castro to take over Cuba. Upon
taking office, Kennedy learned that a secret CIA operation approved by Presi-
dent Eisenhower was training 1,500 anti-Castro Cubans in Guatemala for an
invasion of their homeland at the same time that the CIA was working with
Mafia crime bosses in the United States to arrange for the assassination of
Castro. Based on their assumption that the president would authorize the use
of U.S. military forces if the Cuban exiles ran into trouble, the Joint Chiefs of
Staff assured the inexperienced Kennedy that the invasion plan (Operation
Trinidad) was theoretically feasible; CIA analysts predicted that the invasion
would inspire Cubans to rebel against Castro and his Communist regime.
In reality, the covert operation had little chance of succeeding and was an
explicit violation of international law. Secretary of State Rusk urged the pres-
ident to cancel the dubious operation, but Kennedy willfully ignored such
advice and approved the ill-fated invasion. When the ragtag force, led by an
American, landed at the Bay of Pigs on the southern shore of Cuba on April
17, 1961, it was brutally subdued in two days; more than 1,100 men were
 Foreign Frontiers • 1315

captured. Four U.S. pilots were killed. Kennedy refused desperate requests
from the anti-Castro invaders for the U.S. military support they had been
promised. A New York Times columnist lamented that Americans “looked like
fools to our friends, rascals to our enemies, and incompetents to the rest.”
Kennedy called the bungled Bay of Pigs invasion a “colossal mistake.” It was,
he confessed to Richard Nixon, “the worst experience of my life. How could I
have been so stupid?” The planners had underestimated Castro’s popularity
and his ability to react to the surprise attack. The invasion also suffered from
poor communication, inaccurate maps, faulty equipment, and ineffective
leadership. Former president Eisenhower characterized Kennedy’s role in the
botched invasion as a “Profile in Timidity and Indecision,” a sarcastic refer-
ence to Kennedy’s book Profiles in Courage (1956). Kennedy responded to the
Bay of Pigs fiasco by firing the CIA director and the CIA officer who coordi-
nated the invasion, but the incident greatly damaged the new president’s
international reputation.
Two months after the Bay of Pigs debacle, Kennedy met Soviet premier
Nikita Khrushchev at a summit conference in Vienna. Kennedy resolved
to show the blustering Soviet leader that he “could be as tough as he
[Khrushchev] is.” The volatile Khrushchev had decided after the Bay of Pigs
disaster that young Kennedy was incompetent and could be intimidated.
“This man is very inexperienced, even immature,” Khrushchev told his
interpreter. So he bullied and browbeat Kennedy and threatened to limit
American access to Berlin, the divided city located one hundred miles within
Communist East Germany. Kennedy was stunned by the Soviet leader’s ver-
bal assault. The browbeaten president told a journalist that Khrushchev “just
beat the hell out of me.”
Khrushchev described West Berlin as a “bone in his throat.” Since 1945,
some 2.8 million East Germans, a sixth of the Communist nation’s popula-
tion, had escaped to West Berlin. The flood of escapees, most of them under
the age of forty-five, made a mockery of Communist claims that their ideo-
logical system provided a better life for Germans. The stream of exiles cross-
ing over also sapped the strength of the floundering East German economy.
Upon his return home from the Vienna summit with Khrushchev,
Kennedy demonstrated his resolve to protect West Berlin by calling up Army
Reserve and National Guard units. The Soviets responded on August 13,
1961, by erecting the twenty-seven-mile-long Berlin Wall, which isolated
U.S.-supported West Berlin and prevented all movement between the two
parts of the city. Behind the concrete wall, topped with barbed wire, the
Communists built minefields and watchtowers manned by soldiers with
orders to shoot anyone trying to escape to the West. Never before had a wall
1316 • NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S (CH. 31)

The Berlin Wall

Two West Berliners communicate with family members (visible in the open window
on the upper right side of the apartment building) on the East Berlin side of the
newly constructed Berlin Wall. The wall physically divided the city and served as a
wedge between the United States and the Soviet Union.

been built around a city to keep people from leaving. The Berlin Wall demon-
strated the Soviets’ willingness to challenge American resolve in Europe, and it
became another intractable barrier to improved relations between East and
West. Kennedy told his aides that the Communist-constructed wall was “not a
very nice solution, but the wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.” In response to
Khrushchev’s blustering, Kennedy and Secretary of Defense McNamara
embarked upon the most intense arms race in world history, increasing the
number of nuclear missiles fivefold and growing the armed forces by three
hundred thousand men.

THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS A year later, in the fall of 1962,

Khrushchev and the Soviets posed another challenge, this time only ninety
miles off the coast of Florida. Khrushchev, who had brutally suppressed the
Hungarian revolt in 1956, interpreted Kennedy’s unwillingness to commit
the forces necessary to overthrow Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs as a failure
of will. So the Soviet leader decided to install missiles with nuclear warheads
in Cuba, assuming that Kennedy would not act if the Americans discovered
 Foreign Frontiers • 1317

what was going on. Khrushchev wanted to protect Cuba from another
American-backed invasion, which Castro believed to be imminent, and to
redress the strategic imbalance caused by the presence of U.S. missiles in
Turkey aimed at the Soviet Union. Khrushchev relished the idea of throwing
“a hedgehog at Uncle Sam’s pants.”
On October 14, 1962, U.S. intelligence analysts discovered evidence in
photos taken by U-2 spy planes that Soviet missile sites were being con-
structed in Cuba. Kennedy was furious. While looking at the photos through
a magnifying glass, his brother Robert, the attorney general, unleashed a
string of expletives: “Oh s—t! s—t! s—t! Those sons of bitches Russians!”
The president and his advisers decided that the forty Soviet missiles in Cuba
represented a real threat to American security. Kennedy also worried that
acquiescence to a Soviet military presence in Cuba would weaken the credi-
bility of the American nuclear deterrent among Europeans and demoralize
anti-Castro movements in Latin America. At the same time, the installation
of Soviet missiles served Khrushchev’s purpose of demonstrating his tough-
ness to Chinese and Soviet critics of his earlier advocacy of peaceful coexis-
tence. But he misjudged the American response.
From the beginning, Kennedy decided that the Soviet missiles had to be
removed, even though the Soviet actions violated no law or treaty; the only

The Cuban missile crisis

Photographs taken from a U.S. surveillance plane on October 14, 1962, revealed
both missile launchers and missile shelters near San Cristóbal, Cuba.
1318 • NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S (CH. 31)

question was how. As the air force chief of staff told Kennedy, “You’re in a
pretty bad fix, Mr. President.” In a grueling series of secret meetings, the
Executive Committee of the National Security Council narrowed the options
to a choice between a “surgical” air strike and a naval blockade of Cuba.
President Kennedy wisely opted for a blockade, which was carefully dis-
guised by the euphemism quarantine, since a blockade was technically an
act of war. A blockade offered the advantage of forcing the Soviets to shoot
first, if matters came to that, and left open the options of stronger action.
Thus, Monday, October 22, began one of the most perilous weeks in world
history. That evening the president delivered a speech of extraordinary gravity
to the American people, revealing that the Soviets were constructing missile
sites in Cuba and that the U.S. Navy was establishing a quarantine of the island
nation. He urged the Soviets to “move the world back from the abyss of
destruction.” The United States and the Soviet Union now headed toward their
closest encounter with nuclear war. Both nations put their military forces on
high alert. World financial markets collapsed, and Americans rushed to buy
canned food and bottled water to use in case of a nuclear attack. The possibil-
ity of nuclear war was so real that White House aides ordered all wives of cabi-
net officers (all of whom were male) to leave Washington, D.C. Jacqueline
Kennedy refused to leave the president, telling him, “I just want to be with you,
and I want to die with you, and the children do, too—than live without you.”
Tensions grew as Khrushchev charged that Kennedy had pushed
humankind “toward the abyss of a world nuclear-missile war.” Soviet ships,
he declared, would ignore the quarantine. But on Wednesday, October 24,
five Soviet ships, presumably with missiles aboard, stopped short of the
quarantine line. Two days later, the Soviets offered to withdraw the missiles
in return for a public pledge by the United States not to invade Cuba. Secre-
tary of State Dean Rusk replied that the administration was interested in
such a solution but stressed to a newscaster, “Remember, when you report
this, [to say] that eyeball to eyeball, they [the Soviets] blinked first.”
That evening, Kennedy received two messages from Khrushchev, the first
repeating the original offer and the second demanding the removal of Amer-
ican missiles from Turkey. The two messages probably reflected divided
counsels in the Kremlin. Ironically, Kennedy had already ordered removal of
the outmoded missiles from Turkey, but he refused now to act under the
gun. Instead, he followed his brother Robert’s suggestion that he respond
favorably to the first letter and ignore the second. On Sunday, October 28,
Khrushchev agreed to remove the Soviet missiles from Cuba. The Chinese
Communists as well as Soviet hard-liners were furious at Khrushchev for
backing down. Within a year, the Soviet leader would be driven from power.
 Foreign Frontiers • 1319

In the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis, tensions between the United
States and the Soviet Union subsided, relaxed in part by several symbolic
steps: an agreement to sell the Soviet Union surplus American wheat, the
installation of a “hot-line” telephone between Washington and Moscow to
provide instant contact between the heads of government, and the removal
of obsolete American missiles from Turkey, Italy, and Britain. On June 10,
1963, President Kennedy revealed that direct discussions with the Soviets
would soon begin, and he called upon Americans to reexamine their atti-
tudes toward peace, the Soviet Union, and the cold war. Those discussions
resulted in a treaty with the Soviet Union and Britain to end nuclear
weapons tests in the atmosphere, oceans, and outer space. The treaty, ratified
in September 1963, was an important symbolic and substantive move
toward détente (warmer relations). As Kennedy put it, “A journey of a thou-
sand miles begins with one step.”

KENNEDY AND VIETNAM As tensions with the Soviet Union eased,

a complex crisis was emerging in Southeast Asia. Events there were moving
toward what would become the greatest American foreign-policy calamity
of the century. During John F. Kennedy’s “Thousand Days” as president, the
turmoil of Indochina never preoccupied public attention for any extended
period, but it dominated international diplomatic debates from the time the
administration entered office.
The small landlocked kingdom of Laos, along with neighboring Cambo-
dia to the south, had been declared neutral in the cold war by the Geneva
Accords of 1954, but thereafter Laos had fallen into a complex struggle for
power between the Communist Pathet Lao insurgents and the inept Royal
Laotian Army. There matters stood when Eisenhower left office, and he told
Kennedy that “you might have to go in there and fight it out.” After a lengthy
consideration of alternatives, Kennedy and his advisers decided to promote
a neutral coalition government in Laos that would include Pathet Lao repre-
sentatives yet prevent a Pathet Lao victory and would avoid U.S. military
involvement. The Soviets, who were extending aid to the Pathet Lao, indi-
cated a readiness to negotiate, and in 1961 talks began in Geneva. After
more than a year of tangled negotiations, all parties agreed to a neutral
coalition government. Kennedy told his aides, “If we have to fight in South-
east Asia, let’s fight in Vietnam.” American and Soviet aid to the opposing
Laotian factions was supposed to end, but both countries in fact continued
covert operations while North Vietnam kept open the Ho Chi Minh Trail
through eastern Laos, which it used to supply its Viet Cong (VC) allies in
South Vietnam.
1320 • NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S (CH. 31)

Ngo Dinh Diem

The Vietnamese premier in 1962, celebrating the anniversary of Vietnam’s indepen-
dence from colonial rule.

The situation in South Vietnam worsened thereafter under the leadership

of Premier Ngo Dinh Diem, a Catholic aristocrat. At the time, the problem
was less the scattered Communist guerrilla attacks than Diem’s failure to
deliver promised social and economic reforms and his inability to rally popu-
lar support. His repressive tactics, directed not only against Communists but
also against the Buddhist majority and other critics, played into the hands of
his enemies. Kennedy continued to dispatch more military “advisers” in the
hope of stabilizing the situation: when he took office, there had been two
thousand U.S. troops in Vietnam; by the end of 1963, there were sixteen thou-
sand, all of whom were classified as advisers rather than combatants.
By 1963, Kennedy was receiving sharply divergent reports from South
Vietnam. U.S. military analysts expressed confidence in the Army of the
Republic of Vietnam. On-site journalists, however, predicted civil turmoil as
long as Diem remained in power. By midyear, growing Buddhist demonstra-
tions against Diem ignited widespread discontent. The spectacle of Buddhist
monks setting themselves on fire and killing themselves in protest against
government tyranny stunned Americans. By the fall of 1963, the Kennedy
administration had decided that the autocratic Diem had to go. On Novem-
ber 1 dissident generals seized the South Vietnamese government and mur-
dered Diem. But the rebel generals provided no more political stability than
had earlier regimes, and successive coups set the fragile country spinning
from one military leader to another. South Vietnam had become a morass of
corruption and violence.
 Foreign Frontiers • 1321

K E N N E D Y ’ S A S S A S S I N AT I O N
By the fall of 1963, President Kennedy
had grown perplexed by the instability in Vietnam. In September, he
declared of the South Vietnamese: “In the final analysis it’s their war. They’re
the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them as advisers but they
have to win it.” The following month he announced the administration’s
intention to withdraw U.S. forces from South Vietnam by the end of 1965.
What Kennedy would have done thereafter has remained a matter of endless
controversy, endless because it is unanswerable, and unanswerable because
on November 22, 1963, while riding in an open car through Dallas, Texas,
Kennedy was shot in the neck and head by Lee Harvey Oswald. A twenty-
four-year-old ex-marine drifter, Oswald had become so infatuated with
communism that he had traveled to the Soviet Union and worked for twenty
months in a failed effort to defect and become a Soviet citizen. After return-
ing to the United States, he worked in the Texas School Book Depository,
from which the shots were fired at Kennedy.
Oswald’s motives remain unknown. Although a federal commission
appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) and headed by Chief Justice
Earl Warren concluded that Oswald acted alone, debate still swirls around vari-
ous conspiracy theories. Two days after the assassination, Jack Ruby, a Dallas
nightclub owner dying of cancer, murdered Oswald as he was being trans-
ported to a court hearing in handcuffs. Film footage of both the assassination
of Kennedy and the killing of Oswald ran repeatedly on television; the medium
that had catapulted Kennedy’s rise to the presidency now captured his death
and the moving funeral at Arlington National Cemetery. Kennedy’s assassina-
tion enshrined the young president in the public imagination as a martyred
leader cut down in the prime of his life. His short-lived but drama-filled presi-
dency had flamed up and out like a comet hitting the earth’s atmosphere.
Over the years, the wave of sympathy for the murdered president and his
family has led many people to exaggerate Kennedy’s accomplishments and
overlook his failings. His approval of the amateurish Bay of Pigs invasion
and his grudging support of the civil rights movement punctured his mar-
tyred image. Although many of his loyal aides stressed that Kennedy would
never have approved the massive escalation of American military involve-
ment in Vietnam, the evidence is not clear on the subject. Finally, any assess-
ment of Kennedy’s presidency must take into account his reckless sexual
behavior. On the night of his inauguration, in January 1961, after his wife
Jacqueline had gone to sleep, the new president began the first in a series of
brazen affairs in the White House, first with a prostitute, then a White House
intern, and months later with Judith Campbell, the mistress of Sam Giancana,
1322 • NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S (CH. 31)

the Mafia boss in Chicago who was working with the CIA to assassinate
Fidel Castro. Such boorish behavior with questionable people left the reck-
less president vulnerable to blackmail—or worse.

L Y N D O N B. J O H N S O N AND THE G R E AT S O C I E T Y

Texan Lyndon B. Johnson took the presidential oath of office on board

the plane that brought John F. Kennedy’s body back to Washington from
Dallas. Fifty-five years old, he had spent twenty-six years on the Washington
scene and had served nearly a decade as the masterful Democratic leader in
the Senate, where he had displayed the greatest gift for using power—coarse
or delicate, blatant or subtle, cynical or maudlin—since Franklin Roosevelt.
LBJ was a ruthless genius at backroom legislative maneuvering, blessed with
a canny gift for compromise and manipulation not seen in the Congress
since Henry Clay during the 1840s.
Johnson was one of America’s most complex, conficted, and compelling
presidents. He brought to the White House a marked change of style from
Kennedy. A self-made, self-centered man, tall and robust, who had worked

Presidential assassination
John F. Kennedy’s vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson, takes the presidential oath
aboard Air Force One before its return from Dallas with Jacqueline Kennedy (right),
the presidential party, and the body of the assassinated president.
 Lyndon B. Johnson and the Great Society • 1323

his way out of an impoverished rural Texas environment to become one of

Washington’s most powerful figures, Johnson had none of the Kennedy ele-
gance. He was a bundle of conflicting elements: earthy, idealistic, domineer-
ing, insecure, gregarious, dishonest, cruel, visceral, and compassionate (the
mutual hatred between him and Bobby Kennedy was toxic). His primary
aide and press secretary called Johnson a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality. He
could be “magnificent, inspiring” at one minute and an “insufferable bastard”
the next. At times he could be an angel of compassion and a progressive
statesman, and at other times he could display immense personal cruelty
and breathtaking cynicism. Johnson was a creature of passion and excess.
His ego was as huge as his ambition; he insisted on being the center of atten-
tion wherever he went. Like another southern president, Andrew Johnson,
he harbored a sense of being the perpetual outsider despite his long experi-
ence with legislative power. And indeed he was so regarded by Kennedy
insiders. He, in turn, “detested” the way Kennedy and his aides had ignored
him as vice president.
Those who viewed Johnson as a stereotypical southern conservative failed
to appreciate his long-standing admiration for Franklin D. Roosevelt, the
depth of his concern for the poor, and his commitment to the cause of civil
rights. “I’m going to be the best friend the Negro ever had,” he told a mem-
ber of the White House staff. In foreign affairs, however, he was, like
Woodrow Wilson, a novice. Johnson wanted to be the greatest American
president, the one who did the most good for the most people. And he would
let nothing stand in his way. In the end, however, the grandiose Johnson
promised far more than he could accomplish, raising false hopes and stoking
fiery resentments.

P O L I T I C S A N D P OV E RT Y Lyndon Johnson was a chain smoker

addicted to hard work and driven by a crushing ambition for greatness.
Impatient and demanding, blessed and cursed with a staggering amount of
energy, he required his staff to work day and night. He even conducted busi-
ness with aides or visitors while using the bathroom. Domestic policy was
Johnson’s first priority. Amid the national grief after the assassination, as
Americans were weeping in the streets and the world was on the edge of
uncertainty, he knew that he would never again have such popular support.
So he rushed to take advantage of the fleeting national unity provided by the
tragedy in Dallas to launch programs that would have a transformational
impact on American life. The logjam in Congress that had blocked John F.
Kennedy’s legislative efforts broke under Johnson’s forceful leadership, and a
torrent of legislation poured through. LBJ knew both the complex rules by
1324 • NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S (CH. 31)

which Congress operated and all of the key players—of both parties. He
knew the right buttons to push to get things done—by hook or by crook.
Johnson put at the top of his agenda Kennedy’s stalled measures for tax
reductions and civil rights. In 1962, Kennedy had announced a then-unusual
plan to jump-start the sluggish economy: a tax cut to stimulate consumer
spending. Congressional Republicans opposed the idea because it would
increase the federal budget deficit, and polls showed that public opinion was
also skeptical. So Kennedy had postponed the proposed tax cut for a year. It
was still bogged down in Congress when the president was assassinated, but
Johnson shepherded it through. The Revenue Act of 1964 did provide a
needed boost to the economy.
Likewise, the landmark Civil Rights Act that Kennedy had presented to
Congress in 1963 became law in 1964 through Johnson’s aggressive leader-
ship and legislative savvy. It outlawed racial segregation in public facilities
such as bus terminals, restaurants, theaters, and hotels. It also gave new pow-
ers to the federal government to bring lawsuits against organizations or
businesses that violated constitutional rights, and it established the Equal
Employment Opportunities Commission to ensure equal opportunities for
people applying for jobs, regardless of race or gender. The civil rights bill
passed the House in February 1964. In the Senate, however, southern legisla-
tors launched a filibuster that lasted two months. When worried aides warned
the president of the risks of opposing the powerful Southern Democrats,
Johnson replied: “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?” Johnson finally
prevailed, and the bill became law on July 2. But the new president knew that
it had come at a political price. On the night after signing the bill, Johnson
told an aide that “we have just delivered the South to the Republican Party
for a long time to come.”
In addition to fulfilling Kennedy’s major promises, Johnson launched an
ambitious legislative program of his own. In his 1964 State of the Union
address, he added to his must-do list a bold new idea that bore the Johnson
brand: “This Administration today, here and now, declares unconditional
war on poverty in America.” The particulars of this “war on poverty” were
to come later, the product of a task force that was at work before Johnson
took office.
Americans had “rediscovered” poverty in 1962 when the social critic
Michael Harrington published a powerful exposé titled The Other America.
Harrington argued that more than 40 million people were mired in an invisi-
ble “culture of poverty” with a standard of living and way of life quite differ-
ent from that envisioned in the American Dream. In such a culture of
poverty, being poor was not simply a matter of low income; rather, prolonged
 Lyndon B. Johnson and the Great Society • 1325

The Civil Rights Act of 1964

President Johnson reaches to shake hands with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after pre-
senting the civil rights leader with one of the pens used to sign the Civil Rights Act
of 1964.

poverty created a subculture whose residents were unlikely to escape from

it. Poverty led to poor housing conditions, which in turn led to poor health,
poor attendance at school or work, alcohol and drug abuse, unwanted preg-
nancies, single-parent families, and so on. Unlike the upwardly mobile immi-
grant poor at the beginning of the century, the modern poor lacked hope.
Harrington revealed that poverty was much more extensive and more tena-
cious in the United States than people realized because much of it was hidden
from view in isolated rural areas or inner-city slums often unseen by more
prosperous Americans. He urged the United States to launch a “comprehen-
sive assault on poverty.”
President Kennedy had read Harrington’s book and had asked his advisers
in the fall of 1963, just before his assassination, to investigate the poverty
problem and suggest solutions. Upon taking office as president, President
Johnson announced that he wanted an anti-poverty package that was “big
and bold, that would hit the nation with real impact.” Money for the program
1326 • NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S (CH. 31)

would come from the tax revenues generated by corporate profits made pos-
sible by the tax reduction of 1964, which had led to one of the longest sus-
tained economic booms in history.
The Johnson administration’s war on poverty was embodied in an economic-
opportunity bill passed in August 1964 that incorporated a wide range of
programs designed to help the poor help themselves by providing a “hand
up, not a hand out”: a Job Corps for inner-city youths aged sixteen to
twenty-one, a Head Start program for disadvantaged preschoolers, work-
study programs for college students with financial need, grants to farmers
and rural businesses, loans to employers willing to hire the chronically
unemployed, the Volunteers in Service to America (a domestic Peace Corps),
and the Community Action Program, which would allow the poor “maxi-
mum feasible participation” in directing neighborhood improvement pro-
grams designed for their benefit. Speaking at Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1964,
Johnson called for a “Great Society” resting on “abundance and liberty for
all. The Great Society demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to
which we are fully committed in our time.”

THE ELECTION OF 1964 Johnson’s well-intentioned but hastily

conceived war on poverty and his Great Society social programs provoked a
Republican counterattack. Over the years, Republicans had come to fear that
their party had fallen into the hands of an “eastern establishment” that had
given in to the same internationalism and big-government policies that lib-
eral Democrats promoted. Ever since 1940, so the theory went, the party had
nominated “me-too” candidates who merely promised to run more effi-
ciently the programs that Democrats designed. Offer the Republican voters
“a choice, not an echo,” they reasoned, and a true conservative majority
would assert itself.
By 1960, Arizona senator Barry Goldwater, a millionaire department-
store magnate, had emerged as the straight-talking leader of the Republican
right. In his book The Conscience of a Conservative (1960), Goldwater pro-
posed the abolition of the income tax and a drastic reduction in federal enti-
tlement programs. Almost from the time of Kennedy’s victory in 1960,
a movement to draft Goldwater as president had begun, mobilizing right-
wing activists to capture party caucuses and contest primaries. In 1964, they
swept the all-important California primary, thereby enabling them to con-
trol the Republican Convention when it gathered in San Francisco. “I would
remind you,” Goldwater told the delegates, “that extremism in the defense of
liberty is no vice.” He later explained that his objective was “to reduce the
size of government. Not to pass laws but repeal them.”
 Lyndon B. Johnson and the Great Society • 1327

Barry Goldwater later claimed in his memoirs that he had no chance to

win the presidency in 1964: “I just wanted the conservatives to have a real
voice in the country.” His campaign certainly confirmed that prediction, for
candidate Goldwater displayed a gift for frightening voters. He urged whole-
sale bombing of North Vietnam and left the impression of being trigger-
happy. He savaged Johnson’s war on poverty and the entire New Deal tradition.
At times he was foolishly candid. In Tennessee he proposed the sale of the
Tennessee Valley Authority, a series of hydroelectric dams and recreational
lakes; in St. Petersburg, Florida, a major retirement community, he ques-
tioned the value of Social Security. He also opposed the nuclear test ban
and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. To Republican campaign buttons that claimed
“In your heart, you know he’s right,” Democrats responded, “In your guts,
you know he’s nuts.”
Johnson, on the other hand, portrayed himself as a responsible centrist. He
chose as his running mate Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, a prominent
liberal senator who had long promoted civil rights. In contrast to Goldwater’s
bellicose rhetoric on Vietnam, Johnson pledged, “We are not about to send

Barry Goldwater
Many voters feared that the Republican presidential candidate in 1964, Senator
Barry Goldwater, was trigger-happy. In this cartoon, Goldwater wields in one hand
his book The Conscience of a Conservative and in the other a hydrogen bomb.
1328 • NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S (CH. 31)

American boys nine or ten thousand miles from home to do what Asian boys
ought to be doing for themselves.”
The result was a landslide. Johnson polled 61 percent of the total vote;
Goldwater carried only Arizona and five states in the Deep South, where race
remained the salient issue. Vermont went Democratic for the first time ever
in a presidential election. Johnson won the electoral vote by a whopping 486
to 52. In the Senate the Democrats increased their majority by two (68 to 32)
and in the House by thirty-seven (295 to 140), but Goldwater’s success in the
Deep South continued that traditionally Democratic region’s shift to the
Republican party, whose conservative wing was riding a wave of grassroots
momentum that would transform the landscape of American politics over
the next half century. Goldwater’s quixotic campaign failed to win the elec-
tion, but it proved to be a turning point in the development of the national
conservative movement. The Goldwater campaign inspired a young genera-
tion of conservative activists and the formation of conservative organizations,
such as Young Americans for Freedom, that would eventually transform the
dynamics of American politics.

L A N D M A R K L E G I S L AT I O N Lyndon Johnson knew that the mandate

provided by his lopsided victory could quickly erode; he shrewdly told his
aides, “Every day I’m in office, I’m going to lose votes. I’m going to alienate
somebody. . . . We’ve got to get this legislation fast. You’ve got to get it during
my honeymoon.” In 1965, Johnson flooded the new Congress with Great
Society legislation that, he promised, would end poverty, revitalize decaying
central cities, provide every young American with the chance to attend col-
lege, protect the health of the elderly, enhance the nation’s cultural life, clean
up the air and water, and make the highways safer and prettier.
The scope of Johnson’s legislative program was unparalleled since Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s Hundred Days, in part because of the nation’s humming prosper-
ity. “This country,” Johnson proclaimed, “is rich enough to do anything it has
the guts to do and the vision to do and the will to do.” Priority went to federal
health insurance and aid to education, proposals that had languished since
President Truman had proposed them in 1945. For twenty years, the steadfast
opposition of the physicians making up the American Medical Association
(AMA) had stalled a comprehensive national medical-insurance program.
But now that Johnson had the votes, the AMA joined Republicans in support-
ing a bill providing medical insurance coverage for those over age sixty-five.
The act that finally emerged went well beyond the original proposal. It cre-
ated not just a Medicare program for the aged but also a Medicaid program of
 Lyndon B. Johnson and the Great Society • 1329

federal grants to states to help cover medical payments for the indigent. Pres-
ident Johnson signed the bill on July 30, 1965, in Independence, Missouri,
with eighty-one-year-old Harry Truman looking on.
Five days after he submitted his Medicare program, Johnson sent to Con-
gress a massive program of federal aid to elementary and secondary schools.
Such proposals had been ignored since the forties, blocked alternately by
issues of segregation and issues of separation of church and state. The Civil
Rights Act of 1964 had laid the first issue to rest, legally at least. Now Con-
gress devised a means of extending aid to “poverty-impacted” school dis-
tricts regardless of their public or religious character.
The momentum generated by these measures had already begun to carry
others along, and that process continued through the following year. Before
the Eighty-ninth Congress adjourned, it had established a record in the pas-
sage of landmark legislation unequaled since the time of the New Deal. Alto-
gether, the tide of Great Society legislation had carried 435 bills through the
Congress. Among them was the Appalachian Regional Development Act of
1966, which allocated $1 billion for programs in remote mountain areas that
had long been pockets of desperate poverty. The Housing and Urban Devel-
opment Act of 1965 provided for construction of 240,000 public-housing
units and $3 billion for renewal of blighted urban areas. Funds for rent sup-
plements for low-income families followed in 1966, and in that year a new
Department of Housing and Urban Development appeared, headed by Robert C.
Weaver, the first African American cabinet member. Lyndon Johnson had, in
the words of one Washington reporter, “brought to harvest a generation’s
backlog of ideas and social legislation.”

T H E I M M I G R AT I O N A C T Little noticed in the stream of legislation

flowing from Congress was a major new immigration bill that had originated
in the Kennedy White House. President Johnson signed the Immigration and
Nationality Services Act of 1965 in a ceremony held on Liberty Island in New
York harbor. In his speech he stressed that the new law would redress the
wrong done to those “from southern and eastern Europe” and the “develop-
ing continents” of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It would do so by abolish-
ing the discriminatory quotas based upon national origin that had governed
immigration policy since the twenties. The new law treated all nationalities
and races equally. In place of national quotas, it created hemispheric ceilings
on visas issued: 170,000 for persons from outside the Western Hemisphere,
120,000 for persons from within. It also stipulated that no more than 20,000
people could come from any one country each year. The new act allowed the
1330 • NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S (CH. 31)

entry of immediate family members of American residents without limit.

During the sixties, Asians and Latin Americans became the largest contingent
of new Americans.

A S S E S S I N G T H E G R E AT S O C I E T YLyndon B. Johnson was an acci-

dental president, brought to the White House by the assassination of John F.
Kennedy. He knew as he took the oath of office that the nation was gripped
in a mood of despair and uncertainty. As he told the nation in his first public
address, the bereaving United States needed to “do away with uncertainty
and doubt.” Johnson was determined to convey vision and aspiration, courage,
confidence, and compassion—as well as a demonstrated capacity to lead.
Invoking Kennedy’s own phrases, the new president said, “Let us begin. Let
us continue.” He understood that timidity in troubled times would not
work. He sought to give the people a sense of forward movement and show
them that he could overcome their fears of a divided America and create a
“Great Society” whereby Americans would be “more concerned with the
quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.”

Great Society initiatives

President Johnson listens to Tom Fletcher, a father of eight children, describe some
of the economic problems in his hometown.
 From Civil Rights to Black Power • 1331

The Great Society failed to achieve its grandiose goals, but it did include
several successes. The guarantee of civil rights and voting rights remains
protected. Medicare and Medicaid have become two of the most appreciated
(and expensive) government programs. As a result of Johnson’s efforts, con-
sumer rights now have federal advocates and protections. The Highway
Safety Act and the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act (both 1966)
established safety standards for highway design and automobile manufac-
turers, and the scholarships provided for college students under the Higher
Education Act (1965) were quite popular. Many of the Great Society initia-
tives aimed at improving the health, nutrition, and education of poor Amer-
icans, young and old, made some headway. So, too, did federal efforts to
clean up air and water pollution.
Several of Johnson’s most ambitious programs, however, were ill con-
ceived, others were vastly underfunded, and many were mismanaged. As
Joseph Califano, one of Johnson’s senior aides, confessed: “Did we legislate
too much? Were mistakes made? Plenty of them.” Medicare, for example,
removed incentives for hospitals to control costs, so medical bills skyrock-
eted. The Great Society helped reduce the number of people living in
poverty, but it did so largely by providing federal welfare payments to indi-
viduals, not by finding people productive jobs. The war on poverty ended
up being as disappointing as the war in Vietnam. Often funds appropriated
for a program never made it through the tangled bureaucracy to the needy.
Widely publicized cases of welfare fraud became a powerful weapon in the
hands of those who were opposed to liberal social programs. By 1966, middle-
class resentment over the cost and waste of the Great Society programs had
generated a conservative backlash that fueled a Republican resurgence at
the polls. By then, however, the Great Society had transformed public
expectations of the power and role of the federal government—for good
and for ill.

FROM CIVIL RIGHTS TO B L AC K P OW E R

During late 1963 and throughout 1964, the civil rights movement
grew in scope, visibility, and power. But government-sanctioned racism
remained entrenched in the Deep South. Blacks continued to be excluded
from the political process. For example, in 1963 only 6.7 percent of Missis-
sippi blacks were registered to vote, the lowest percentage in the nation.
White officials in the South systematically kept African Americans from
1332 • NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S (CH. 31)

voting through a variety of means: charging them expensive poll taxes, forcing
them to take difficult literacy tests, making the application process inconve-
nient, and intimidating them through the use of arson, beatings, and lynchings.

FREEDOM SUMMER In early 1964, Harvard-educated Robert “Bob”

Moses, a black New Yorker who served as field secretary of the Student Non-
violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) office in Mississippi, the nation’s
most rural and poorest state, decided it would take “an army” to penetrate
the state’s longstanding effort to deny voting rights to blacks. So he set about
recruiting such an army of idealistic volunteers who would live with rural
blacks, teach them in “freedom schools,” and help people register to vote.
Building upon the energy generated by the March on Washington, Moses
recruited a thousand volunteers, most of them white college students, many
of whom were Jewish, to participate in what came to be called “Freedom
Summer.” Mississippi’s white leaders resented Moses’s efforts. They prepared
for “the nigger-communist
invasion” by doubling the state
police force and stockpiling
tear gas, electric cattle prods,
and shotguns. The prominent
writer Eudora Welty reported
from her hometown of Jackson
that “this summer all hell is
going to break loose.”
In mid-June, the volunteer
activists converged at an Ohio
college to learn about southern
racial history, nonviolence, and
the likely abuses they would
suffer from white racists. On
the final evening of the training
session, Robert Moses pleaded
with anyone who felt uncertain
about their undertaking to go
home; several of them did. The
Robert “Bob” Moses next day, the volunteers boarded
buses and headed south, fan-
Moses mobilized a thousand volunteer
activists to educate and empower blacks across ning across the rural state to
the South during his “Freedom Summer.” hamlets named Harmony and
 From Civil Rights to Black Power • 1333

Holly Springs as well as cities such as Hattiesburg and Jackson. They lived
with rural blacks (many of whom had never had a white person enter their
home) and fanned out to teach children math, writing, and history and tutor
blacks about the complicated process of voter registration.
Forty-six-year-old Fannie Lou Hamer was one of the local blacks who
worked with the SNCC volunteers during Freedom Summer. The youngest
of twenty children, she had spent most of her life working on local cotton
plantations. Freedom Summer opened her eyes to new possibilities. Like so
many other African Americans involved in the civil rights movement, she
converted her deep Christian faith into a sword of redemption. During the
summer of 1963, she led gatherings in freedom songs and excelled as a lay
preacher. “God is not pleased with all the murdering and all the brutality and
all the killing,” she told one group. “God is not pleased that the Negro chil-
dren in the state of Mississippi [are] suffering from malnutrition. God is not
pleased that we have to go raggedy and work from ten to eleven hours for
three lousy dollars.”
In response to the activities of Freedom Summer, the Ku Klux Klan, local
police, and other white racists assaulted and arrested the volunteers and
murdered several of them. Hamer was brutally beaten by jail guards in
Winona. Yet Freedom Summer was successful in refocusing the civil rights
movement on political rights. The number of blacks registered to vote
inched up.

Early in 1965, Martin Luther King Jr.

C I V I L R I G H T S L E G I S L AT I O N
organized an effort to enroll the 3 million African Americans in the South
who were not registered to vote. In Selma, Alabama, civil rights protesters
began a march to Montgomery, the state capital, about forty miles away,
only to be dispersed by five hundred state troopers. A federal judge agreed
to allow the march to continue, and President Johnson provided troops for
protection. By March 25, when the now twenty-five thousand demonstra-
tors reached Montgomery, the original capital of the Confederacy, segrega-
tionists greeted them by flying Confederate flags. Undaunted by the hostile
reception, King delivered a rousing address from the steps of the state
capitol.
Several days earlier, President Johnson had urged Congress to “overcome
the crippling legacy of bigotry and intolerance” by passing stronger laws
protecting voting rights. He concluded by slowly intoning the words of the
civil rights movement’s hymn: “And we shall overcome.” The resulting Vot-
ing Rights Act of 1965 ensured all citizens the right to vote. It authorized the
1334 • NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S (CH. 31)

attorney general to dispatch federal examiners to register voters. In states or

counties where fewer than half the adults had voted in 1964, the act sus-
pended literacy tests and other devices commonly used to defraud citizens of
the vote. By the end of the year, some 250,000 African Americans were newly
registered.

B L AC K P OW E R Amid this success, however, the civil rights movement

began to fragment. On August 11, 1965, less than a week after the passage
of the Voting Rights Act, Watts, the largest black ghetto in Los Angeles,
exploded in a frenzy of rioting and looting. When the uprising ended, thirty-
four were dead, almost four thousand rioters were in jail, and property dam-
age exceeded $35 million. Chicago and Cleveland, along with forty other
American cities, experienced similar race riots in the summer of 1966. The
following summer, Newark and Detroit burst into flames. Between 1965 and
1968, there were nearly three hundred racial uprisings that shattered the
peace of urban America and undermined Johnson’s much-vaunted war on
poverty.
In retrospect, it was predictable that the civil rights movement would shift
its focus from the rural South to the plight of urban blacks nationwide. By
the mid-sixties, about 70 percent of the nation’s African Americans were liv-
ing in metropolitan areas, most in central-city ghettos that the postwar pros-
perity had bypassed. At the same time, a disproportionate number of blacks
were serving in an increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam. As those military
veterans returned, they often grew disgruntled at what they came back to. “I
had left one war and came back and got into another one,” said Reginald
“Malik” Edwards, a black Vietnam veteran. Once home, he enlisted in
another war, this time fighting for the Black Panthers.
It seemed clear, in retrospect, that the nonviolent tactics that had worked
in the South would not work as readily in large cities across the nation. “It
may be,” wrote a contributor to Esquire magazine, “that looting, rioting and
burning . . . are really nothing more than radical forms of urban renewal, a
response not only to the frustrations of the ghetto but the collapse of all
ordinary modes of change, as if a body despairing of the indifference of doc-
tors sought to rip a cancer out of itself.” A special Commission on Civil Dis-
orders noted that the urban upheavals of the mid-sixties were initiated by
blacks themselves; whites, by contrast, had started earlier riots, which had
then prompted black counterattacks. Now blacks visited violence and destruc-
tion upon themselves in an effort to destroy what they could not stomach and
what civil rights legislation seemed unable to change. As a Gil Scott-Heron, a
black musician, sang: “We are tired of praying and marching and thinking
 From Civil Rights to Black Power • 1335

and learning/Brothers want to start cutting and shooting and stealing and
burning.”
By 1966, “black power” had become an imprecise but riveting rallying cry
for young militants. When Stokely Carmichael, a twenty-five-year-old grad-
uate of Howard University, became head of SNCC in 1966, he made the sep-
aratist philosophy of black power the official objective of the organization
and ousted whites from the organization. “When you talk of black power,”
Carmichael shouted, “you talk of bringing this country to its knees, of build-
ing a movement that will smash everything Western civilization has created.”
H. Rap Brown, who succeeded Carmichael as head of SNCC in 1967, was
even more outspoken and incendiary. He urged blacks to “get you some
guns” and “kill the honkies.” Carmichael, meanwhile, had moved on to the
Black Panther party, a group of urban revolutionaries founded in Oakland,
California, in 1966. Headed by Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, and Eldridge
Cleaver, the provocative, armed Black Panthers initially terrified the public
but eventually fragmented in spasms of violence.

MALCOLM X The most articulate spokesman for black power was

Malcolm X (formerly Malcolm Little, the X denoting his lost African sur-
name). Born in 1925, tall and austere Malcolm had spent his childhood in
Lansing, Michigan, where his family home was burned to the ground by
white racists. His parents, Earl and Louise Little, were supporters of Marcus
Garvey’s controversial crusade for black nationalism. Earl frequently beat
his wife and seven children, but he died violently when Malcolm was six,
leaving the family in extreme poverty, dependent on local relief agencies for
survival. When Malcolm was fourteen, his mother was confined to a mental
hospital. He then moved to Boston to live with Ella, his older half sister, who
was repeatedly arrested for minor crimes. Malcolm then took what he later
called a “destructive detour.” He quit school during ninth grade and began to
display what would become a lifelong ability to reinvent himself. By age
nineteen, known as Detroit Red, he had become a thief, drug dealer, gambler,
and pimp. Between the ages of twenty and twenty-seven he was incarcerated
in Massachusetts prisons, which ironically brought salvation.
While incarcerated, Malcolm developed a passion for reading and learn-
ing, enrolling in correspondence courses. “Where else but in a prison,” he
later wrote, “could I have attacked my ignorance by being able to study
intensely sometimes as much as fifteen hours a day.” He also had a spiritual
awakening. Malcolm joined a small Chicago-based sect called the Nation of
Islam (NOI), whose members were often called Black Muslims. The organi-
zation had little to do with Islam and everything to do with its domineering
1336 • NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S (CH. 31)

leader, Elijah Muhammad, and the cult-like devotion he required. Muham-

mad, a Georgian, characterized whites as “devils” and espoused black nation-
alism, racial pride, self-respect, and self-discipline. By 1953, a year after leaving
prison, Malcolm X was a full-time NOI minister famous for his angry but
electrifying speeches decrying white racism and black passivity, as well as his
abilities as a grassroots community organizer. “We have a common oppressor,
a common exploiter,” he told black audiences. “. . . He’s an enemy to all of us.”
Largely because of Malcolm’s charisma as well as his confrontational lan-
guage and threats of violence, the NOI grew from a few hundred members in
1952 to tens of thousands by 1960.
Malcolm X dismissed the mainstream civil rights leaders such as Martin
Luther King Jr. as being “nothing but modern Uncle Toms” who “keep you
and me in check, keep us under control, keep us passive and peaceful and
nonviolent.” He sought to appeal less to white America’s moral conscience
than to its fear of social revolution. While Dr. King’s followers sang “We Shall
Overcome,” Malcolm X’s supporters responded with “We Shall Overrun.” His
militant candor inspired thousands of blacks who had never identified with
Martin Luther King’s philosophy of non-violent civil disobedience. “Yes, I’m
an extremist,” Malcolm acknowledged in 1964. “The black race in the United
States is in extremely bad shape. You show me a black man who isn’t an
extremist and I’ll show you one who
needs psychiatric attention.”
By March 1964, Malcolm had bro-
ken with Elijah Muhammad, toured
Africa and the Middle East urging
governments there to take the com-
plaints of African Americans to the
United Nations, embraced the Mus-
lim faith, and founded an organiza-
tion committed to the establishment
of alliances between African Ameri-
cans and the people of color around
the world. More than most black
leaders, Malcolm X experienced and
expressed the turbulent emotions
and frustrations of the African Amer-
Malcolm X ican poor and working class. After the
Malcolm X was the black power move- publication of his acclaimed Autobi-
ment’s most influential spokesman. ography in 1964, Malcolm became a
 From Civil Rights to Black Power • 1337

symbol of the international human rights movement. But his conflict

with Elijah Muhammad proved fatal; assassins representing a rival faction
of Black Muslims gunned down 39-year-old Malcolm X in Manhattan
while he was speaking at Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom on February 21,
1965. With him went the most effective voice for urban black militancy
since Marcus Garvey in the twenties. What made the assassination of Mal-
colm X especially tragic was that he had just months before begun to
abandon his strident anti-white rhetoric and preach a biracial message of
social change.
Although widely publicized and highly visible, the black power move-
ment never attracted more than a small minority of mostly young African
Americans. Only about 15 percent of American blacks labeled themselves
separatists. The preponderant majority continued to identify with the phi-
losophy of nonviolent, Christian-centered integration promoted by Martin
Luther King Jr. and with organizations such as the NAACP. King dismissed
black separatism and the promotion of violent social change by reminding
his followers that “we can’t win violently.”
Despite its hyperbole, violence, and few adherents, the black power phi-
losophy had two positive effects upon the civil rights movement. First, it
motivated African Americans to take greater pride in their racial heritage.
As Malcolm X often pointed out, prolonged slavery and institutionalized
racism had eroded the self-esteem of many blacks. “The worst crime the
white man has committed,” he declared, “has been to teach us to hate our-
selves.” He and others helped blacks appreciate their African roots and their
American accomplishments. In fact, it was Malcolm X who insisted that
blacks call themselves African Americans as a symbol of pride in their roots
and as a spur to learn more about their history as a people. As the popular
singer James Brown urged, “Say it loud—I’m black and I’m proud.”
Second, the assertiveness of black power advocates forced Martin Luther
King and other mainstream black leaders and organizations to focus atten-
tion on the plight of poor inner-city blacks. Legal access to restaurants,
schools, and other public accommodations, King pointed out, meant little to
people mired in a degrading culture of urban poverty. They needed jobs and
decent housing as much as they needed legal rights. To this end, King began
to emphasize the economic plight of the black urban underclass. The time
had come for radical measures “to provide jobs and income for the poor.”
Yet as King and others sought to heighten the war on poverty at home, the
escalating conflict in Vietnam (LBJ called it “that bitch of a war”) was con-
suming more and more of America’s resources and energies.
1338 • NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S (CH. 31)

T H E T R AG E DY OF VIETNAM

As racial violence erupted in America’s cities, the war in Vietnam

reached new levels of intensity and destruction. In November 1963, when
President Kennedy was assassinated, there were sixteen thousand U.S.
military “advisers” in South Vietnam. Lyndon B. Johnson inherited from
Kennedy and Eisenhower a long-standing commitment to prevent a Com-
munist takeover in Indochina as well as a reluctance on the part of American
presidents to assume primary responsibility for fighting the Viet Cong (the
Communist-led guerrillas in South Vietnam) and their North Vietnamese
allies. Beginning with Harry S. Truman, one president after another had
done just enough to avoid being charged with having “lost” Vietnam to com-
munism. Johnson initially sought to do the same, fearing that any other
course of action would undermine his political influence and jeopardize his
Great Society programs in Congress. But this path took the United States
deeper into an expanding military commitment in Southeast Asia. Early on,
Johnson doubted that the poverty-stricken, peasant-based Vietnam was worth
military involvement. In May 1964, he told his national security adviser,
McGeorge Bundy, that he had
spent a sleepless night worrying
about Vietnam: “It looks to me
like we are getting into another
Korea. . . . I don’t think we can
fight them 10,000 miles away
from home. . . . I don’t think it’s
worth fighting for. And I don’t
think we can get out. It’s just
the biggest damned mess that I
ever saw.”
Yet Johnson’s fear of appear-
ing weak abroad was stronger
than his misgivings and fore-
bodings. By the end of 1965,
there were 184,000 U.S. troops,
“How Deep Do You Figure We’ll Get
well trained for the wrong war, in
Involved, Sir?” Vietnam; in 1966, there were
Although U.S. soldiers were first sent to Viet- 385,000; and by 1969, at the
nam as noncombatant advisers, they soon height of the American pres-
found themselves involved in a quagmire of ence, 542,000. By the time the
fighting. last troops left, in March 1973,
 The Tragedy of Vietnam • 1339

some 58,000 Americans had died and another 300,000 had been wounded.
The massive, prolonged war had cost taxpayers $150 billion and siphoned
funding from many Great Society programs; it had produced 570,000 draft
“dodgers” and 563,000 less-than-honorable military discharges, toppled
Johnson’s administration, and divided the nation as no event in history had
since the Civil War.

E S C A L AT I O N The official sanction for military “escalation” in South-

east Asia—a Defense Department term favored in the Vietnam era—was
the Tonkin Gulf resolution, voted by Congress on August 7, 1964, after
merely thirty minutes of discussion. On that day, Johnson told a national
television audience that on August 2 and 4, North Vietnamese vessels had
attacked two U.S. destroyers, the Maddox and the C. Turner Joy, in the Gulf
of Tonkin, off the coast of North Vietnam. Johnson described the attack,
called the Gulf of Tonkin incident, as unprovoked. In truth, the destroyers
had been monitoring South Vietnamese attacks against two North Viet-
namese islands—attacks planned by American advisers. The Tonkin Gulf
resolution authorized the president to “take all necessary measures to repel
any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent fur-
ther aggression.” Only Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon and Senator Ernest
Gruening of Alaska voted against the resolution, which Johnson thereafter
interpreted as equivalent to a congressional declaration of war.
Soon after his landslide victory over Goldwater in November 1964, John-
son, while still plagued by private doubts, made the crucial decisions that
committed the United States to a full-scale war in Vietnam for the next four
years. On February 5, 1965, Viet Cong (VC) guerrillas killed 8 and wounded
126 Americans at Pleiku, in South Vietnam. More attacks later that week led
Johnson to order Operation Rolling Thunder, the first sustained bombing of
North Vietnam, which was intended to stop the flow of soldiers and supplies
into the south. Six months later an extensive study concluded that the mas-
sive bombing was astonishingly ineffective; it had not slowed the supplies
pouring down the Ho Chi Minh Trail from North Vietnam through Laos
and into South Vietnam. Johnson’s solution was to keep applying more
pressure.
In March 1965, the new U.S. commander in Vietnam, General William C.
Westmoreland, greeted the first installment of combat troops. By the summer,
American forces were engaged in “search-and-destroy” operations throughout
South Vietnam. As combat operations increased, so did casualties, announced
each week on the nightly television news, along with the “body count” of alleged
Viet Cong dead. “Westy’s war,” although fought with helicopter gunships,
1340 • NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S (CH. 31)

ed C H I N A

R
Riv
er

NORTH
VIETNAM
Dien Bien Phu Hanoi Haiphong

GUL F OF
HAI-NAN
TONK IN
.
Mekon gR
Vinh
LAOS
Demarcation Line
Vientiane of 1954
SOUTH
Ho CHINA
Hue SEA
Udon Thani Ch
i Da Nang
Min Chu Lai
T H A IL A N D
Me

My Lai
kon

hT
ai Quang Ngai
g

Ri
r
l
ve

Kon Tum
r

Ubon Ratchathani An Khe

Pleiku Qui Nhon
Ta Khli
SOUTH
VIETNAM
CAMBODIA
Bangkok Nha Trang
Cam Ranh Bay

Bien Hoa
Phnom Penh
Saigon
Tan Son Nhut
GUL F SO UT H
OF Can Tho CHI NA
THA IL A ND SEA

VIETNAM, 1966
0 100 200 Miles
Major U.S. military bases
0 100 200 Kilometers

Why was there an American military presence in Viet-

nam? What was the Ho Chi Minh Trail? What was the
Tet offensive?

chemical defoliants, and napalm, became like the trench warfare of World War
I—a war of attrition. “We will not be defeated,” Johnson told the nation in
April. “We will not grow tired. We will not withdraw.” The containment doc-
trine would now face its greatest test.
 The Tragedy of Vietnam • 1341

THE CONTEXT FOR POLICY President Johnson’s decision to “Amer-

icanize” the Vietnam War, so ill-starred in retrospect, was consistent with the
foreign-policy principles pursued by all presidents after the Second World
War. The version of the theory intended to “contain” communism articulated
in the Truman Doctrine, endorsed by Eisenhower throughout the fifties, and
reaffirmed by Kennedy, pledged U.S. opposition to the advance of commu-
nism anywhere in the world. “Why are we in Vietnam?” Johnson asked
rhetorically at Johns Hopkins University in 1965. “We are there because we
have a promise to keep. . . . To leave Vietnam to its fate would shake the confi-
dence of all these people in the value of American commitment.” Secretary of
State Dean Rusk frequently repeated this rationale, warning that the rest of
Southeast Asia would fall “like dominoes” to communism if American forces
withdrew from Vietnam. Military intervention was thus a logical culmination
of the assumptions that were widely shared by the foreign-policy establish-
ment and the leaders of both political parties since the early days of the
cold war.
At the same time, Johnson and his advisers presumed that military
involvement in Vietnam must not reach levels that would cause the Chinese
or Soviets to intervene directly. And that meant, in effect, that a complete
military victory was never possible. The goal of the United States was not to
win the war in any traditional sense but to prevent the North Vietnamese
and the Viet Cong from winning and, eventually, to force a negotiated set-
tlement with the North Vietnamese. This meant that the United States
would have to maintain a military presence as long as the enemy retained
the will to fight.
As it turned out, American support for the war eroded faster than the will
of the North Vietnamese leaders to tolerate devastating casualties and mas-
sive destruction. Systematic opposition to the war on college campuses
began in 1965 with teach-ins at the University of Michigan. The following
year, Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, chairman of the Senate For-
eign Relations Committee, began congressional investigations into Ameri-
can policy in Vietnam. George F. Kennan, the author of the containment
doctrine in 1946-47, told Senator Fulbright’s committee that the doctrine
was appropriate for Europe but not for Southeast Asia. And a respected gen-
eral testified that General Westmoreland’s military strategy had no chance of
achieving victory. By 1967, anti-war demonstrations were attracting massive
support. Nightly television accounts of the fighting—Vietnam was the first
war to receive extended television coverage and hence was dubbed the living-
room war—called into question the official optimism. By May 1967, even
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was wavering: “The picture of the
1342 • NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S (CH. 31)

world’s greatest superpower killing or injuring 1,000 noncombatants a week,

while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue
whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one.” Yet Johnson dismissed
the anti-war protesters as “chickenshit.”
In a war of political will, North Vietnam had the advantage. Johnson and
his advisers grievously underestimated the tenacity of the North Vietnamese
commitment to unify Vietnam and expel American forces. While the United
States fought a limited war for limited objectives, the Vietnamese Commu-
nists fought an all-out war for their very survival. Just as General Westmore-
land was assuring Johnson and the public that the war effort in early 1968
was on the verge of gaining the upper hand, the Communists organized
widespread assaults that jolted American confidence and resolve.

THE TURNING POINT On January 31, 1968, the first day of the Viet-
namese New Year (Tet), the Viet Cong defied a holiday truce to launch fero-
cious assaults on American and South Vietnamese forces throughout South
Vietnam. A squad of VC commandos besieged the U.S. embassy in Saigon;
others attacked General Westmoreland’s headquarters. VC units temporarily
occupied the grounds of the U.S. embassy in Saigon, the capital of South Viet-
nam. After VC guerrillas took control of Hue, the ancient cultural capital of
Vietnam, American forces launched a total effort to retake the historic city. As
an army officer explained afterwards, “We had to destroy the city to save it.”
General Westmoreland proclaimed the Tet offensive a major defeat for
the Viet Cong, and most students of military strategy later agreed with him.
While VC casualties were enormous, however, the impact of the surprise
attacks on the American public was more telling. The scope and intensity of
the offensive contradicted upbeat claims by U.S. commanders and LBJ that
the war was going well. Time and Newsweek magazines soon ran anti-war
editorials urging withdrawal. Even the conservative Wall Street Journal con-
cluded after the Tet Offensive that “the whole Vietnam effort may be
doomed.” Polls showed that Johnson’s popularity had declined to 35 percent.
Civil rights leaders and social activists felt betrayed as they saw federal funds
earmarked for the war on poverty gobbled up by the expanding war. In 1968,
the United States was spending $322,000 on every Communist killed in Viet-
nam; the poverty programs at home received only $53 per person. As Martin
Luther King Jr. pointed out, “the bombs in Vietnam explode at home—they
destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.” He repeatedly
pointed out that the amount being spent to kill each Vietnamese Commu-
nist was greater than the amount spent by the federal government on assist-
ing an American living in poverty.
 The Tragedy of Vietnam • 1343

During 1968, a despondent President Johnson grew increasingly embit-

tered and isolated. He suffered from depression and bouts of paranoia. It
had at last become painfully evident to him that the Vietnam War was a
never-ending stalemate that was fragmenting the nation and undermining
the Great Society programs. Clark Clifford, Johnson’s new secretary of
defense, reported to the president that a task force of military and civilian
leaders saw no prospect for a military victory. Robert F. Kennedy, now a sen-
ator from New York, was considering a run for the presidency in order to
challenge Johnson’s Vietnam policy. Senator Eugene McCarthy of Min-
nesota, a devout Catholic and a poet, had already decided to oppose Johnson
in the Democratic primaries. With anti-war students rallying to his “Dump
Johnson” candidacy, McCarthy polled a stunning 42 percent of the vote to
Johnson’s 48 percent in New Hampshire’s March primary. It was a remark-
able showing for a little-known senator. Each presidential primary now
promised to become a referendum on Johnson’s Vietnam policy. The war
in Vietnam had become President Johnson’s war; as more and more voters
soured on the fighting, he saw his public support evaporate. In Wisconsin,

The Tet offensive

Many Vietnamese were driven from their homes during the bloody street battles of
the 1968 Tet offensive. Here, following a lull in the fighting, civilians carrying a
white flag approach U.S. Marines.
1344 • NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S (CH. 31)

scene of the next Democratic

primary, the president’s political
advisers forecast a humiliating
defeat.
On March 31, Johnson made a
dramatic decision. He appeared
on national television to
announce a limited halt to the
bombing of North Vietnam and
fresh initiatives for a negotiated
cease-fire. Then he added a
stunning postscript: “I shall not
seek, and I will not accept, the
nomination of my party for
another term as your Presi-
dent.” It was a humiliating end
to a grandiose presidency.
Johnson and Vietnam
Although U.S. troops would
The Vietnam War sapped the spirit of Lyn-
remain in Vietnam for five
don B. Johnson, who decided not to run for
reelection in 1968. more years and the casualties
would continue, the quest for
military victory had ended. Now the question was how the most powerful
nation in the world could extricate itself from Vietnam with a minimum of
damage to its prestige and its South Vietnamese allies.

SIXTIES CRESCENDO

A T R AU M AT I C Y E A R Change moved at a fearful pace throughout the

sixties, but 1968 was the most turbulent and the most traumatic year of all.
On April 4, only four days after Johnson’s withdrawal from the presidential
race, a white racist named James Earl Ray assassinated Martin Luther King
Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee. King’s death set off an outpouring of grief among
whites and blacks and ignited riots in over sixty cities.
Two months later, on June 5, a young Jordanian named Sirhan Sirhan
shot and killed forty-two-year-old Senator Robert F. Kennedy just after he
had defeated Eugene McCarthy in the California Democratic primary.
Political reporter David Halberstam of the New York Times thought back
to the assassinations of John Kennedy and Malcolm X, then to the violent
end of Martin Luther King, the most influential African American leader
 Sixties Crescendo • 1345

of the twentieth century, and then to Robert Kennedy, the heir to leader-
ship of the Kennedy clan. “We could make a calendar of the decade,”
Halberstam wrote, “by marking where we were at the hours of those vio-
lent deaths.”

C H I C A G O A N D M I A M I In the summer of 1968, the social unrest roil-

ing the nation morphed into political melodrama at the disruptive, divisive,
and violent Democratic National Convention. In August, delegates gathered
inside a Chicago convention hall to nominate Lyndon B. Johnson’s faithful
vice president, Hubert H. Humphrey. Outside, almost twenty thousand
police officers and national guardsmen and a mob of television reporters
stood watch over a gathering of eclectic protesters herded together miles
away in a public park. Chicago’s gruff Democratic mayor Richard J. Daley
warned that he would not tolerate disruptions in his city. Nonetheless, riots
broke out and were televised nationwide. As police used tear gas and billy
clubs to pummel anti-war demonstrators, others chanted, “The whole world
is watching.” (See pages 1354–56 for further details.)
The Democratic party’s liberal tradition was clearly in disarray, a fact that
gave heart to the Republicans, who gathered in Miami Beach to nominate
Richard Nixon. Only six years earlier, after he had lost the California guber-
natorial race, Nixon had vowed never again to run for public office. But by
1968 he had changed his mind and had become a spokesman for the values
of “middle America.” Nixon and the Republicans offered a vision of stability
and order that appealed to a majority of Americans—soon to be called the
silent majority.
In 1968, George Wallace, the Democratic governor of Alabama who had
made his reputation as an outspoken defender of segregation, ran on the
American Independent party ticket. Wallace moderated his position on the
race issue but appealed even more candidly than Nixon to voters’ concerns
about rioting anti-war protesters, the mushrooming welfare system, and the
growth of the federal government. Wallace’s reactionary candidacy gener-
ated considerable appeal outside his native South, especially among white
working-class communities, where resentment of Johnson’s Great Society
liberalism flourished. Although never a possible winner, Wallace hoped to
deny Humphrey or Nixon an electoral majority and thereby throw the
choice into the House of Representatives, which would have provided an
appropriate climax to a chaotic year.

N I XO N A G A I NIt did not happen that way. Richard Nixon enjoyed an

enormous lead in the polls, which narrowed as the election approached.
1346 • NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S (CH. 31)

The 1968 election

Richard Nixon (left) and running mate Spiro Agnew (right).

Wallace’s campaign was hurt by his outspoken running mate, retired air
force general Curtis LeMay, who favored expanding the war in Vietnam and
using nuclear weapons. In October 1968, Hubert Humphrey infuriated
Johnson when he announced that, if elected, he would stop bombing North
Vietnam “as an acceptable risk for peace.”
Nixon and Governor Spiro Agnew of Maryland, his acid-tongued running
mate, eked out a narrow victory of about 500,000 votes, a margin of about 1
percentage point. The electoral vote was more decisive, 301 to 191. George
Wallace received 10 million votes, 13.5 percent of the total. It was the best
showing by a third-party candidate since Robert M. La Follette ran on the
Progressive party ticket in 1924. All but one of Wallace’s 46 electoral votes
were from the Deep South. Nixon swept all but four of the states west of the
Mississippi. Humphrey’s support came almost exclusively from the North-
east. Nixon’s victory celebration was tempered by the fact that the Republi-
cans did not gain control of the House or the Senate. He would be the first
 Sixties Crescendo • 1347

WA
9 NH 4
MT ND ME
4 VT 3 4
OR 4 MN
6 ID 10
4 SD WI MI NY MA 14
WY 4 12 21 43
3 RI 4
IA PA CT 8
NV NE 9
5 OH 29 NJ 17
3 UT IL IN 26 WV
CA 4 CO 26 13 DE 3
40 6 KS MO VA MD 10
7 12
7 12 KY 9 DC 3
NC
AZ OK TN 11 1 12
NM AR SC
5 4 8
6
MS AL GA 8
7 10 12
TX
25 LA
10
FL
14
HI
4

THE ELECTION OF 1968 Electoral Vote Popular Vote

Richard M. Nixon 301 31,700,000
AK (Republican)
3
Hubert H. Humphrey 191 31,200,000
(Democrat)
George Wallace 46 10,000,000
(American Independent)

How did the riots at the Chicago Democratic Convention affect the 1968 presi-
dential campaign? What does the electoral map reveal about the support base for
each of the three major candidates? How was Nixon able to win enough electoral
votes in such a close, three-way presidential race? What was Wallace’s appeal to
10 million voters?

president since 1853 to assume office without his party controlling at least
one house of Congress.
So at the end of a turbulent year, near the end of a traumatic decade, a
nation on the verge of violent chaos looked to Richard Nixon to provide
what he had promised in the campaign: “peace with honor” in Vietnam and
a middle ground on which a majority of Americans, silent or otherwise,
could come together.
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Kennedy’s New Frontier President Kennedy promised “new frontiers” in

domestic policy, but without a clear Democratic majority in Congress he was
unable to increase federal aid to education, provide health insurance for the
aged, create a cabinet-level department of urban affairs, or expand civil rights.
He championed tariff cuts, however, and an expanded space program.
• Johnson’s Great Society President Johnson was committed to social reform,
including civil rights. He forced the Civil Rights Act through Congress in 1964
and declared a “war” on poverty. Under the Great Society, welfare was expanded,
Medicare and Medicaid were created, more grants for college students were
established, and racial quotas for immigration were abolished. These programs
were expensive and, coupled with the soaring costs of the war in Vietnam, neces-
sitated tax increases, which were unpopular.
• Civil Rights’ Achievements By the sixties, significant numbers of African
Americans and whites were staging nonviolent sit-ins. In 1961, “freedom riders”
attempted to integrate buses, trains, and bus and train stations in the South. The
high point of the early phase of the civil rights movement was the 1963 March on
Washington for Jobs and Freedom, at which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his
famous “I Have a Dream” speech. In 1964, President Johnson signed the far-reaching
Civil Rights Act. In 1965, King set in motion a massive drive to enroll the 3 million
southern African Americans who were not registered to vote. Later that year,
Johnson persuaded Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act. The legislation did
little to ameliorate the poverty of inner-city blacks or stem the violence that swept
northern cities in the hot summers of the late sixties. By 1968, nonviolent
resistance had given way to the more militant black power movement.
• Escalation in Vietnam The United States supported the government of South
Vietnam even though it failed to deliver promised reforms, win the support of
its citizens, or defeat the Communist insurgents, the Viet Cong. Kennedy
increased America’s commitment by sending 16,000 advisers, and Johnson went
further, deploying combat troops. A turning point in the war was the Viet
Cong’s Tet offensive, which served to rally anti-war sentiment.
• Communist Cuba In early 1961, Kennedy inherited a CIA plot to topple the
regime of Fidel Castro, the premier of Cuba. Kennedy naïvely agreed to the plot,
whereby some 1,500 anti-Castro Cubans landed at Cuba’s Bay of Pigs. The plot-
ters failed to inspire a revolution, and most were quickly captured. Kennedy’s
seeming weakness in the face of Soviet aggression led the Russian premier,
Nikita Khrushchev, to believe that the Soviets could install ballistic missiles in
Cuba without American opposition. In October 1962 in a tense standoff,
Kennedy ordered a blockade of Cuba and succeeded in forcing Khrushchev to
withdraw the missiles.
 CHRONOLOGY

1960

1961
1961
Students in Greensboro, North Carolina, stage a sit-in to
demand service at a “whites-only” lunch counter
Bay of Pigs fiasco
Soviets erect the Berlin Wall
October 1962 Cuban missile crisis
August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
November 1963 John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas
1964 Congress passes the Civil Rights Act
August 1964 Congress passes the Tonkin Gulf resolution
1965 Malcolm X is assassinated by a rival group of black Muslims
1965 Riots break out in the African American community of
Watts, California
January 1968 Viet Cong stages the Tet offensive
April 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated
June 1968 Robert Kennedy is assassinated

KEY TERMS & NAMES

John F. Kennedy p. 1301 March on Washington Malcolm X p. 1335
p. 1312
New Frontier p. 1302 black power movement
Cuban missile crisis p. 1319 p. 1337
Lyndon B. Johnson p. 1303
Great Society p. 1328 Tonkin Gulf resolution
Miranda v. Arizona p. 1306 p. 1339
Civil Rights Act of 1964
freedom riders p. 1309 p. 1329 Tet offensive p. 1342
James Meredith p. 1310

32
REBELLION AND
REACTION: THE
AND 1970s
1960s

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• What characterized the social rebellion and struggles for civil

rights in the 1960s and 1970s?
• How did the war in Vietnam end?
• What was Watergate, and why did it lead to Nixon’s resignation?
• Why did President Ford issue a pardon to Richard M. Nixon?
• What was “stagflation”?

A s Richard M. Nixon entered the White House in early 1969,

he took charge of a nation whose social fabric was in tatters.
Everywhere, it seemed, conventional institutions and notions
of authority were under attack. The traumatic events of 1968 were like a
knife blade splitting past and future, then and now. They revealed how
deeply divided society had become and how difficult a task Nixon faced in
carrying out his pledge to restore social harmony. In the end, the stability he
promised proved elusive. His controversial policies and his combative tem-
perament heightened rather than reduced societal tensions. Ironically, many
of the same forces that had enabled the complacent prosperity of the
fifties—the baby boom, the cold war, and the burgeoning consumer
culture—helped generate the social upheaval of the sixties and seventies. It
was one of the most turbulent periods in American history—exciting, threat-
ening, explosive, and transforming.
 The Roots of Rebellion • 1351

THE ROOTS OF REBELLION

YO U T H R E VO LT By the early sixties, the baby boomers were maturing.

Now young adults, they differed from their elders in that they had experi-
enced neither economic depression nor a major war during their lifetimes.
In record numbers they were attending colleges and universities: enrollment
quadrupled between 1945 and 1970. Many universities had become gigantic
institutions dependent upon huge research contracts from corporations and
the federal government. As these “multiversities” grew larger and more
bureaucratic, they unwittingly invited resistance from a generation of stu-
dents wary of what President Dwight D. Eisenhower had labeled the military-
industrial complex.
The Greensboro sit-ins in 1960 not only precipitated a decade of civil
rights activism but also signaled an end to the complacency that had
enveloped many college campuses and much of social life during the fifties.
The sit-ins, marches, protests, ideals, and sacrifices associated with the civil
rights movement inspired other groups—women, Native Americans, His-
panics, and gays—to demand justice, freedom, and equality as well.
During 1960–1961, white students joined African Americans in the sit-in
movement. They and many others were also inspired by President John F.
Kennedy’s direct appeals to their youthful idealism. Thousands enrolled in
the Peace Corps and VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), while others
continued to participate in civil rights demonstrations. But as criticism of
escalating military involvement in Vietnam mounted, more and more young
people grew disillusioned with the government. During the mid-sixties, a
full-fledged youth revolt erupted across the nation. The youth revolt grew
out of several impulses: to challenge authority; to change the world; and to
indulge in pleasures of all sorts. As a popular song by Steppenwolf declared
in 1968, “Like a true nature child/We were born, born to be wild/We have
climbed so high/Never want to die.” During the sixties and seventies, rebel-
lious young people flowed into two distinct yet frequently overlapping
movements: the New Left and the counterculture.

THE NEW LEFT The explicitly political strain of the youth revolt origi-
nated when Tom Hayden and Al Haber, two University of Michigan students,
formed Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1960, an organization
very much influenced by the tactics and ideals of the civil rights movement.
In 1962, Hayden and Haber convened a meeting of sixty upstart activists at
Port Huron, Michigan, all of whom shared a desire to remake the United
States into a more democratic society. Hayden drafted for the group an
1352 • REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S (CH. 32)

impassioned manifesto that became known as the Port Huron Statement.

It begins: “We are the people of this generation, bred in at least moderate
comfort, housed in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we
inherit.” Hayden then called for political reforms, racial equality, and work-
ers’ rights. Inspired by the example of African American activism in the
South, Hayden declared that college students had the power to restore “par-
ticipatory democracy” by wresting “control of the educational process from
the administrative bureaucracy” and then forging links with other dissident
movements. He and others adopted the term New Left to distinguish their
efforts at grassroots democracy from those of the Old Left of the thirties,
which had espoused an orthodox Marxism.
In the fall of 1964, students at the University of California at Berkeley took
Hayden’s program to heart. Several of them had returned to the campus after
spending the summer working with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC) voter-registration project in Mississippi, where three
volunteers had been killed, and nearly a thousand arrested. Their idealism
and activism had been pricked by their participation in Freedom Summer,
and they were eager to bring changes to campus life as they enrolled for the
fall semester. When the UC Berkeley chancellor announced that political

The free-speech movement

Mario Savio, a founder of the free-speech movement, speaks at a rally at the Univer-
sity of California at Berkeley.
 The Roots of Rebellion • 1353

demonstrations would no longer be allowed on campus, several hundred stu-

dents staged a sit-in. Thousands more joined in. After a tense thirty-two-hour
standoff the administration relented. Student groups then formed the
free-speech movement (FSM).
Led by Mario Savio, a philosophy major and compelling public speaker
who had participated in Freedom Summer in Mississippi, the FSM initially
protested on behalf of students’ rights. But it quickly mounted a more gen-
eral criticism of the university and what Savio called the “depersonalized,
unresponsive bureaucracy” smothering American life. In 1964, Savio led
hundreds of students into UC Berkeley’s administration building and orga-
nized a sit-in. In the early-morning hours, six hundred policemen, dis-
patched by the governor, arrested the protesters. But their example lived on.
The goals and tactics of the FSM and SDS spread to colleges across the
country. Issues large and small became the target of student protest: unpop-
ular faculty tenure decisions, mandatory ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training
Corps) programs, dress codes, curfews, and dormitory regulations.
Escalating U.S. military involvement in Vietnam soon changed the stu-
dents’ agenda. With the dramatic expansion of the war after 1965, millions
of young men faced the grim prospect of being drafted to fight in an increas-
ingly unpopular conflict. In fact, however, the Vietnam War, like virtually
every other, was primarily a poor man’s fight. Deferments enabled college
students to postpone military service until they received their degree or
reached the age of twenty-four; in 1965–1966, college students made up only
2 percent of all military inductees. In 1966, however, the Selective Service
System made undergraduates eligible for the draft.
As the war dragged on and opposition mounted, 200,000 young men
ignored their draft notices, and some 4,000 of them served prison sentences.
Another 56,000 men qualified for conscientious objector status during the
Vietnam War, compared with only 7,600 during the Korean conflict. Still
others left the country altogether—several thousand fled to Canada or
Sweden—to avoid military service. The most popular way to escape the draft
was to flunk the physical examination. Whatever the preferred method,
many students succeeded in avoiding military service. Of the 1,200 men in
the Harvard senior class of 1970, only 56 served in the military, and just 2 of
those went to Vietnam.
Still, the threat of being drafted generated widespread protests, on and off
campuses. In the spring of 1967, 500,000 war protesters of all ages converged
on New York City’s Central Park, where the most popular chant was “Hey, hey,
LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” Dozens of young men ceremoniously
burned their draft cards, thereby igniting the so-called resistance phase of the
1354 • REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S (CH. 32)

anti-war movement. Thereafter, a coalition of resistance groups around the

country sponsored draft-card-burning rallies that led to numerous arrests.
Meanwhile, some SDS leaders were growing even more militant. Inspired
by the rhetoric and violence of black power spokesmen such as Stokely
Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, and Huey P. Newton, Tom Hayden abandoned his
earlier commitment to passive civil disobedience. Rap Brown told Hayden
and other white radicals to “take up a gun and go shoot the enemy.” As the
SDS became more militant, it grew more centralized and authoritarian. Capi-
talist imperialism replaced university bureaucracy as the primary foe.
Throughout 1967 and 1968, the anti-war movement grew more volatile as
inner-city ghettos were exploding in flames fanned by racial injustice. Frus-
tration over deeply entrenched patterns of discrimination in employment
and housing and staggering rates of joblessness among inner-city African
American youths provoked chaotic violence in scores of urban ghettos.
“There was a sense everywhere, in 1968,” the journalist Garry Wills wrote,
“that things were giving way. That man had not only lost control of his his-
tory, but might never regain it.”
During the eventful spring of 1968—when Lyndon B. Johnson announced
that he would not run for reelection and Martin Luther King Jr. was
assassinated—campus unrest enveloped the country. Over two hundred
major demonstrations took place. The turmoil reached a climax with the dis-
ruption of Columbia University in New York City, where Mark Rudd, the
campus SDS leader, joined other student radicals in occupying the presi-
dent’s office and classroom buildings. They also kidnapped a dean—all in
protest of the university’s connection to a war research institute and Colum-
bia’s recent decision to displace an African American neighborhood in order
to build a new gymnasium. Rudd explained that he and the other rebels were
practicing “confrontation politics.” During the next week, more buildings
were occupied, faculty and administrative offices were ransacked, and classes
were canceled. University officials finally called in the New York City police. In
the process of arresting the protesters, officers injured innocent bystanders.
Such excessive force outraged many unaligned students, who then staged a
strike that shut down the university for the remainder of the semester. The
riotous events at Columbia inspired similar clashes among students, adminis-
trators, and police at Harvard, Cornell, and San Francisco State.
At the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the polarization
of society reached a bizarre climax. Inside the tightly guarded convention
hall, Democrats nominated Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey to succeed
LBJ while on Chicago’s streets the whole spectrum of antiwar dissenters gath-
ered, from the earnest supporters of Senator Eugene McCarthy to the nihilis-
tic Yippies, members of the new Youth International party. Abbie Hoffman,
 The Roots of Rebellion • 1355

Students for a Democratic Society take over Columbia University

Mark Rudd, leader of SDS at Columbia University, talking to representatives of the
media during student protests of university policies, April 1968.

one of the Yippie leaders, explained that their “conception of revolution is

that it’s fun.” The Yippies distributed a leaflet at the convention calling for the
immediate legalization of marijuana as well as all psychedelic drugs, student-
run schools, unregulated sex, and the abolition of money. They also hurled
taunts, rocks, and urine-filled plastic bags at the police.
The outlandish behavior of the Yippies and the other demonstrators pro-
voked an equally outlandish response by Chicago’s Mayor Richard J. Daley
and his army of city police. As a horrified television audience watched, many
police officers went berserk, clubbing and gassing demonstrators as well as
bystanders caught up in the melee. They also indiscriminately arrested pro-
testers and bystanders. The chaotic spectacle lasted three days and seriously
damaged Humphrey’s candidacy. The televised Chicago riots also angered
middle-class Americans, many of whom wondered: “Is America coming
apart?” At the same time, the violence in Chicago fragmented the anti-war
movement. Those groups committed to nonviolent protest, while castigat-
ing the reactionary policies of Mayor Daley and the police, felt betrayed by
the actions of the Yippies and other anarchists.
In 1968, the SDS fractured into rival factions, the most extreme of which
called itself the Weather Underground, a name derived from a lyric by the
songwriter Bob Dylan: “You don’t need a weather man to know which way
1356 • REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S (CH. 32)

the wind blows.” The Weather-

men, said one of their leaders,
were “against everything that’s
‘good and decent,’ in honky
America. We will burn and loot
and destroy.” These hardened
young activists embarked on a
campaign of violence and dis-
ruption, firebombing university
buildings and killing innocent
people—as well as several of
their own by accident. Most of
the Weathermen were arrested,
and the rest went underground.
By 1971, the New Left was dead
Upheaval in Chicago as a political movement. In large
The violence that accompanied the 1968 measure it had committed sui-
Democratic National Convention in Chicago cide by abandoning the pacifist
seared the nation. principles that had originally
inspired participants and given
the movement moral legitimacy. The larger anti-war movement also began to
fade. There would be a new wave of student protests against the Nixon adminis-
tration in 1970–1971, but thereafter campus unrest virtually disappeared as
Nixon’s decision to end the military draft defused the resistance movement.
If the social mood was changing during the early seventies, a large segment
of the public continued the quest for social justice. The burgeoning environ-
mental movement attested to the continuity of sixties idealism. A New York
Times survey of college campuses in 1969 revealed that many students were
refocusing their attention from protesting the war to protecting the environ-
ment. This new ecological awareness would blossom in the seventies into one
of the most compelling items on the nation’s social agenda.

T H E C O U N T E R C U LT U R E The numbing events of 1968 led other disaf-

fected young activists to abandon politics in favor of the counterculture. Long
hair on men and women, blue jeans, tie-dyed shirts, sandals, mind-altering
drugs, rock music, and experimental living arrangements were more impor-
tant than revolutionary ideology to the “hippies,” the direct descendants of the
Beats of the fifties. The countercultural hippies were primarily middle-class
whites alienated by the Vietnam War, racism, political corruption, parental
demands, runaway technology, and a crass corporate mentality that
equated the good life with material goods. In their view a complacent
 The Roots of Rebellion • 1357

materialism had settled over urban and suburban life. But the hippies were not
attracted to organized political action or militant protests. Instead, they
embraced the tactics promoted by the zany Harvard professor Timothy Leary:
“Tune in, turn on, drop out.”
For some, the counterculture entailed the embrace of Asian mysticism.
For many, it meant the daily use of hallucinogenic drugs. Collective living in
urban enclaves such as San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, New York’s
East Village, and Atlanta’s Fourteenth Street was the rage for a time among
hippies, until conditions grew so crowded, violent, and depressing that resi-
dents migrated elsewhere. Rural communes also attracted bourgeois rebels.
During the sixties and early seventies, thousands of inexperienced romantics
flocked to the countryside, eager to liberate themselves from parental and
institutional restraints, live in harmony with nature, and coexist in an
atmosphere of love and openness. The participants in the back-to-the-land
movement, as it became known, were seeking a path to more authentic liv-
ing that would deepen their sense of self while pursuing a simple life of self-
sufficiency. They equated the good life with living close to nature and in
conformity with its ecological imperatives and environmental limits.
Huge outdoor concerts were a popular source of community among the
counterculture. The largest of these was the sprawling Woodstock Music
and Art Fair (“Aquarian Exposition”). In mid-August 1969 some four hun-
dred thousand young people converged on a six-hundred-acre farm near the
tiny rural town of Bethel, New York. The promoters had not expected such a
massive crowd; the hippie concertgoers created a fifty-mile traffic jam. For
three days, the assembled flower children reveled in good music, rivers of
mud, cheap marijuana, and casual sex. The New York Times predicted a
“social catastrophe in the making,” but instead there was remarkable coop-
eration among the citizens of “Woodstock Nation.” Drug use was rampant,
but there was little crime and virtually no violence. “Everyone swam nude in
the lake,” a journalist reported. The country had never “seen a society so free
of repression.” One young man, when asked why he had come to the festival,
said, “there’s gonna be a lot a ballin’.” Another declared that “people are
finally getting together.” A sloping pasture provided a natural amphitheater
for the open-air stage. The music was nonstop for three days and often mag-
ical. Among the many performers were the Grateful Dead; the Who; Jeffer-
son Airplane; Blood, Sweat, and Tears; Richie Havens; Joan Baez; Arlo
Guthrie; Janis Joplin; Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young; Country Joe and the
Fish; Sly and the Family Stone; Santana; and Jimi Hendrix.
But the carefree spirit of the Woodstock festival was short-lived. It did not
produce the peaceful revolution its sponsors had promised. Just four months
later, when other concert promoters tried to replicate the “Woodstock
1358 • REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S (CH. 32)

Woodstock
The Woodstock music festival drew nearly half a million people to a farm in Bethel,
New York. The concert was billed as three days of “peace, music, . . . and love.”

Nation” experience at Altamont Speedway, forty miles east of San Francisco,

the counterculture encountered the criminal culture. The Rolling Stones
hired the Hells Angels motorcycle gang to provide “security” for their show.
During the band’s performance of “Under My Thumb,” drunken white
motorcyclists beat to death an eighteen-year-old African American man
wielding a gun in front of the stage. Three other spectators were accidentally
killed that night; much of the vitality and innocence of the counterculture
died with them. After 1969, the hippie phenomenon began to wane as the
counterculture had become counterproductive.

F E M I N I S M The seductive ideal of liberation spawned during the sixties

helped accelerate a powerful women’s rights crusade. Like the New Left, the
new feminism drew much of its inspiration and many of its tactics from the
civil rights movement. Its aim was to challenge the conventional cult of
female domesticity that had prevailed since the fifties.
Betty Friedan, a forty-two-year-old mother of three from Peoria, Illinois,
led the mainstream of the women’s movement. Her influential book, The
Feminine Mystique (1963), helped launch the new phase of female protest on
 The Roots of Rebellion • 1359

a national level. During the fifties, Friedan, a Smith College graduate, raised
three children in a New York suburb. Still politically active but now socially
domestic, she mothered her children, pampered her husband, “read Vogue
under the hair dryer” in the beauty salon, and occasionally did some free-
lance writing. In 1957 she conducted a poll of her fellow Smith alumnae and
discovered that despite the prevailing rhetoric about the happy suburban
housewife, many well-educated women were in fact miserable; they wanted
much more out of life. This revelation led to more research, which culmi-
nated in the publication of The Feminine Mystique.
Women, Friedan wrote, had actually lost ground during the years after the
Second World War, when many left wartime employment and settled down in
suburbia as full-time wives and mothers. A propaganda campaign engineered
by advertisers and women’s magazines encouraged them to do so by creating
the “feminine mystique” of blissful domesticity. Women, Friedan claimed,
“were being duped into believing homemaking was their natural destiny.”
This notion that women were “gaily content in a world of bedroom, kitchen,
sex, babies, and home” served to imprison them, however. In Friedan’s view
the middle-class home had become “a comfortable concentration camp”
where women suffocated and stagnated in an atmosphere of mindless mate-
rialism, daytime television “soap operas,” and neighborhood gossip.
The Feminine Mystique, an immediate best seller, inspired many affluent,
well-educated women who felt trapped in their domestic doldrums. More-
over, Friedan discovered that there
were far more women working outside
the home than the pervasive “feminine
mystique” suggested. Many of these
working women were frustrated by
the demands of holding “two full-time
jobs instead of just one—underpaid
clerical worker and unpaid house-
keeper.” Perhaps most important,
Friedan helped to transform the femi-
nist movement from the clear-cut
demands of suffrage and equal pay to
the less-defined but more fulfilling
realm of empowerment—at home, in
schools, in offices, and in politics.
In 1966, Friedan and other activists
founded the National Organization for Betty Friedan
Women (NOW). NOW initially sought Author of The Feminine Mystique.
1360 • REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S (CH. 32)

to end gender discrimination in the workplace and went on to spearhead

efforts to legalize abortion and obtain federal and state support for child-care
centers. The membership of NOW soared from one thousand in 1967 to forty
thousand in 1974.
In the early seventies, members of Congress, the Supreme Court, and
NOW advanced the cause of gender equality. Under Title IX of the Educa-
tional Amendments of 1972, colleges were required to institute “affirmative-
action” programs to ensure equal opportunities for women in admissions
and athletics. Also in 1972, Congress overwhelmingly approved an equal-
rights amendment (ERA) to the federal constitution, which had been bot-
tled up in a House committee since the twenties. In 1973, the Supreme
Court, in Roe v. Wade, struck down state laws forbidding abortions during
the first three months of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the all-male educational
bastions, including Yale and Princeton, led a movement for coeducation that
swept the country. “If the 1960s belonged to blacks,” said one feminist, “the
next ten years are ours.” People began referring to the seventies as the “She
Decade.”
During the late sixties, a new wave of younger feminists emerged who
challenged everything from women’s economic, political, and legal status to
the sexual double standards for men and women. The new generation of
feminists was more militant than the older, more moderate generation that
had established NOW. The goals of the women’s liberation movement, said
Susan Brownmiller, a self-described “radical feminist” who was also a vet-
eran of the civil rights struggles, were to “go beyond a simple concept of
equality. NOW’s emphasis on legislative change left the radicals cold.” She
dismissed Friedan as “hopelessly bourgeois” in her preoccupation with con-
ventional marriage and her rampant homophobia. Overthrowing the
embedded structures and premises of centuries-old patriarchy, Brownmiller
and others believed, required transforming every aspect of society: sexual
relations, child rearing, entertainment, domestic duties, business, and the
arts. Radical feminists formed provocative groups such as the Redstockings,
WITCH (Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell), and the
New York Radical Women.
Radical liberationists took direct action, such as picketing the 1968 Miss
America Pageant, burning copies of Playboy and other men’s magazines, toss-
ing their bras into “freedom cans,” and assaulting gender-based discrimina-
tion in all of its forms. For her part, Friedan warned young activists not to be
seduced by the “bra-burning, anti-man” feminists who were pushing her
aside. Whether young or old, conventional or radical, the women’s movement
focused on several basic issues: gender discrimination in the workplace, equal
 The Roots of Rebellion • 1361

The “She Decade”

Linked by flower chains, NOW members demonstrate outside the White House for
the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.

pay for equal work, the availability of high-quality child care, and easier
access to abortions. Women in growing numbers also began winning elected
offices at the local, state, and national levels. In 1960, some 38 percent of
women were working outside the home; by 1980, 52 percent were doing so.
By the end of the seventies, however, sharp disputes between moderate
and radical feminists had fractured the women’s movement in ways similar
to the fragmentation experienced by civil rights organizations. The move-
ment’s failure to broaden its appeal much beyond the confines of the white
middle class also caused reform efforts to stagnate. The ERA, which had
once seemed a straightforward assertion of equal opportunity (“Equality of
rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or
by any State on account of sex”), hit a roadblock in several state legislatures.
By 1982 it had died, several states short of passage. And the very success of
NOW’s efforts to liberalize local and state abortion laws generated a power-
ful backlash, especially among Roman Catholics and fundamentalist Protes-
tants, who mounted a potent “right-to-life” crusade against abortion that
helped ignite the conservative political resurgence in the seventies and
thereafter.
1362 • REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S (CH. 32)

Yet the success of the women’s movement endured long after the militant
rhetoric had evaporated. A growing presence in the labor force brought
women a greater share of economic and political influence. By 1976, over half
the married women and nine out of ten female college graduates were
employed outside the home, a development that one economist called “the
single most outstanding phenomenon of this century.” Women also enrolled
in graduate and professional schools in record numbers. Between 1969 and
1973, the number of women in law schools quadrupled, and the number of
female medical students doubled. Most career women, however, did not
regard themselves as “feminists”; they took jobs because they and their fami-
lies needed the money to achieve higher levels of material comfort. Whatever
their motives, women were changing traditional gender roles and childbearing
practices to accommodate the two-career family and the sexual revolution.

T H E S E X UA L R E VO L U T I O N A N D T H E P I L L The feminist move-

ment coincided with the so-called sexual revolution, a much-discussed
loosening of traditional restrictions on social behavior. Activists promoting
more permissive sexual attitudes staged rallies, formed organizations, engaged
in civil disobedience, filed suits against prevailing laws, and flouted social
norms. The publicity given to the sexual revolution exaggerated its scope
and depth, but the movement did help generate two major cultural changes:
society became more tolerant of premarital sex, and women became more
sexually active. Between 1960 and 1975, the number of college women
engaging in sexual intercourse doubled, from 27 percent to 50 percent.
Facilitating this change was a scientific breakthrough in contraception: the
birth-control pill, first approved by the Food and Drug Administration
in 1960.
The pill, as it came to be known, blocks ovulation by releasing synthetic
hormones into a woman’s body. Initially, birth-control pills were available
only to married couples, but that restriction soon ended. Access to the pill
gave women a much greater sense of sexual freedom than had any previous
contraceptive device. No longer was sex necessarily tied to procreation.
Although widespread use of the pill contributed to a rise in sexually trans-
mitted diseases, many women (and men) viewed it as a godsend. “When the
pill came out, it was a savior,” recalled Eleanor Smeal, president of the Femi-
nist Majority Foundation. “The whole country was waiting for it. I can’t even
describe to you how excited people were.”
The pill quickly became the most popular birth-control method. In 1960
the U.S. birth rate was 3.6 children per woman. By 1970 it had plummeted to
2.5 children, and since 1980 it has remained slightly below 2. Eight out of ten
women have taken birth-control pills at some time in their lives. Clare Boothe
 The Roots of Rebellion • 1363

Birth control
In an effort to spread the word about birth-control options, Planned Parenthood in
1967 displayed posters like this one in New York City buses.

Luce, a congresswoman, ambassador, journalist, and playwright, viewed the

advent of the pill as a key element in the broader women’s movement: “Mod-
ern woman is at last free as a man is free, to dispose of her own body, to earn
her living, to pursue the improvement of her mind, to try a successful career.”

H I S PA N I C R I G H T S The activism that animated the student revolt, the

civil rights movement, and the crusade for women’s rights soon spread to
various ethnic minority groups. Hispanic, a term used in the United States to
refer to people who trace their ancestry to Spanish-speaking Latin America
or Spain, came into increasing use after 1945 in conjunction with growing
efforts to promote economic and social justice. (Although frequently used as
a synonym for Hispanic, the term Latino technically refers only to people of
Latin American descent.) The labor shortages during the Second World War
had led defense industries to offer Hispanic Americans their first significant
access to skilled-labor jobs. And as was the case with African Americans, ser-
vice in the military during the war years helped to heighten an American
identity among Hispanic Americans and excite their desire for equal rights
and social opportunities.
1364 • REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S (CH. 32)

But equality was elusive. After the Second World War, Hispanic Americans
still faced widespread discrimination in hiring, housing, and education.
Poverty was widespread. In 1960, for example, the median income of a Mexican
American family was only 62 percent of the median income of a family in the
general population. Hispanic American activists during the fifties and sixties
mirrored the efforts of black civil rights leaders. They, too, denounced segre-
gation, promoted efforts to improve the quality of public education, and
struggled to increase Hispanic American political influence and economic
opportunities.
Unlike their African American counterparts, however, Hispanic leaders faced
an awkward dilemma: What should they do about the continuing stream of
undocumented Mexicans flowing across the border? Many Mexican Americans
argued that their hopes for economic advancement and social equality were put
at risk by the daily influx of undocumented Mexican laborers willing to accept
low-paying jobs. Mexican American leaders thus helped end the bracero pro-
gram in 1964 (which trucked in contract day laborers from Mexico during har-
vest season) and in 1962
formed the United Farm Work-
ers (UFW) to represent Mexi-
can American migrant workers.
The founder of the UFW was
the charismatic Cesar Chavez.
Born in 1927 in Yuma, Arizona,
the son of Mexican immigrants,
Chavez moved with his family
to California in 1939. There
they joined thousands of other
migrant farmworkers moving
from job to job, living in tents,
cars, or ramshackle cabins.
After serving in the navy during
the Second World War and
working as a migrant laborer,
Chavez began a prolonged
effort to organize migrant farm
workers. His fledgling United
United Farm Workers
Farm Workers association
Cesar Chavez (center) with organizers of the
grape boycott. In 1968, Chavez ended a three- gained national attention in
week fast by taking Communion and breaking 1965 when it organized a strike
bread with Senator Robert F. Kennedy. against the corporate grape
 The Roots of Rebellion • 1365

growers in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Chavez’s energy and Catholic piety,
his insistence upon nonviolent tactics and his reliance upon college-student
volunteers, his skillful alliance with organized labor and religious groups—all
combined to attract media interest and popular support.
Still, the grape strike itself brought no tangible gains. So Chavez organized
a nationwide consumer boycott of grapes. In 1970, the grape strike and the
consumer boycott brought twenty-six grape growers to the bargaining table.
They signed formal contracts recognizing the UFW, and soon migrant work-
ers throughout the West were benefiting from Chavez’s strenuous efforts on
their behalf. Wages increased, and working conditions improved. In 1975,
the California state legislature passed a bill that required growers to bargain
collectively with the elected representatives of the farm workers.
The chief strength of the Hispanic rights movement lay less in the duplica-
tion of civil rights strategies than in the rapid growth of the Hispanic American
population. In 1960, Hispanics in the United States numbered slightly more
than 3 million; by 1970 their numbers had increased to 9 million; and by 2012
they numbered well over 52 million, making them the nation’s largest minority
group. By 1980, aspiring presidential candidates were openly courting the His-
panic vote. The voting power of Hispanics and their concentration in states
with key electoral votes has helped give the Hispanic point of view signifi-
cant political clout.

NATIVE AMERICAN RIGHTS American Indians—many of whom had begun

calling themselves Native Americans—also emerged as a political force in the
late sixties. Two conditions combined to make Indian rights a priority: first,
many whites felt a persistent sense of guilt for the destructive policies of their
ancestors toward a people who had, after all, been here first; second, the plight
of the Native American minority was more desperate than that of any other
group in the country. Indian unemployment was ten times the national rate,
life expectancy was twenty years lower than the national average, and the sui-
cide rate was a whopping hundred times higher than the rate for whites.
Although President Lyndon B. Johnson recognized the poverty of the
Native Americans and attempted to funnel federal anti-poverty-program
funds into reservations, militants within the Indian community grew impa-
tient with the pace of change. They organized protests and demonstrations
against local, state, and federal agencies. In 1963 two Chippewas (or Ojibwas)
living in Minneapolis, George Mitchell and Dennis Banks, founded the Amer-
ican Indian Movement (AIM) to promote “red power.” The leaders of AIM
occupied Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay in 1969, claiming the site “by
right of discovery.” And in 1972, a sit-in at the Department of the Interior’s
1366 • REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S (CH. 32)

Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) in Washington, D.C., attracted national atten-

tion. The BIA was then—and still is—widely viewed as the worst-managed
federal agency. Instead of finding creative ways to promote tribal autonomy
and economic self-sufficiency, the BIA has served as a classic example of gov-
ernment inefficiency and paternalism gone awry.
In 1973, AIM led two hundred Sioux in the occupation of the tiny village of
Wounded Knee, South Dakota, where the Seventh Cavalry massacred a Sioux
village in 1890. Outraged by the light sentences given a group of local whites
who had killed a Sioux in 1972, the organizers also sought to draw attention to
the plight of the Indians living on the reservation there. Half of the families
were dependent upon government welfare checks, alcoholism was rampant,
and over 80 percent of the children had dropped out of school. After the mili-
tants took eleven hostages, federal marshals and FBI agents surrounded the
encampment. For ten weeks the two sides engaged in a tense standoff. When
AIM leaders tried to bring in food and supplies, a shoot-out resulted, with one
Indian killed and another wounded. Soon thereafter the tense confrontation
ended with a government promise to reexamine Indian treaty rights.
Indian protesters subsequently discovered a more effective tactic than
direct action and sit-ins: they went into federal courts armed with copies of

Wounded Knee
Instigating a standoff with the FBI, members of AIM and local Oglala Sioux occupied
the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in March 1973 in an effort to focus atten-
tion on poverty and rampant alcoholism among Indians on reservations.
 Nixon and Middle America • 1367

old treaties and demanded that those documents become the basis for resti-
tution. In Alaska, Maine, South Carolina, and Massachusetts they won sig-
nificant settlements that provided legal recognition of their tribal rights and
financial compensation at levels that upgraded the standard of living on sev-
eral reservations.

G AY R I G H T S The liberationist impulses of the sixties also encouraged

gays to organize and assert their right to equal treatment under the law.
Throughout the Sixties, gay men and lesbians continued to be treated with
disgust, cruelty, and violence. On Saturday night, June 28, 1969, New York
City vice police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in the heart of
Greenwich Village. The patrons bravely fought back, and the struggle spilled
into the streets. Hundreds of other, mostly young gays and their supporters
joined the fracas against the police. Raucous rioting lasted throughout the
weekend. When it ended, gays had forged a new sense of solidarity and a new
organization, the Gay Liberation Front. “Gay is good for all of us,” proclaimed
one of its members. “The artificial categories ‘heterosexual’ and ‘homosexual’
have been laid on us by a sexist society.”
As news of the Stonewall riots spread across the country, the gay rights
movement assumed national proportions. One of its main tactics was to
encourage gays to “come out,” to make public their sexual preferences. This
was by no means an easy decision, for gays faced social ostracism, physical
assault, exclusion from the military and civil service, and discrimination in
the workplace. Yet despite the risks, thousands of gays did come out. By
1973, almost eight hundred gay organizations had been formed across the
country, and every major city had a visible gay community and cultural life.
As was the case with the civil rights crusade and the women’s movement,
however, the campaign for gay rights soon suffered from internal divisions
and a conservative backlash. Gay activists engaged in fractious disputes over
tactics and objectives, and conservative moralists and Christian fundamen-
talists launched a nationwide counterattack. By the end of the seventies, the
gay movement had lost its initial momentum and was struggling to salvage
many of its hard-won gains.

N I XO N AND MIDDLE AMERICA

The social turmoil of the sixties—anti-war protesters, countercultural

rebellions, liberationist movements, street violence—spawned a reactionary
backlash that propelled Richard M. Nixon’s election victory in 1968. On
many levels, he was an unlikely president with a peculiar personality. The
1368 • REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S (CH. 32)

hardworking son of poor, unloving parents, he grew up under difficult cir-

cumstances in southern California during the Great Depression. Painfully
introverted, devoid of warmth or charm, he had few friends and admitted
that he hated “pressing the flesh.” Nixon was a loner all of his life who dis-
played violent mood swings punctuated by raging temper tantrums and
anti-Semitic outbursts. His classmates in law school nicknamed him “Gloomy
Gus.” As a journalist pointed out, even Nixon’s dog did not like being around
him. Nixon nursed bitter grudges and took politics personally. He was a
good hater who could be ruthless and vindictive in attacking his opponents.
A leading Republican, Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, characterized young
Congressman Nixon in the early fifties as a “little man in a big hurry” with “a
mean and vindictive streak.”
But Nixon also had extraordinary gifts: he was smart, shrewd, cunning,
and doggedly determined to succeed in politics. As the 1968 campaign began,
the former anti-Communist crusader now described himself as a “pragma-
tist” who was “a man for all factions” of the Republican party. He knew how
to get things done, although he did not worry much about the ethics of his
methods. He was nicknamed “Tricky Dick” for good reason. One of his aides
admitted that “we did often lie, mislead, deceive, try to use [the media], and
to con them.” Throughout his long public career, Nixon displayed remarkable
grit and resilience. As Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s national security adviser, who
later became secretary of state, acknowledged, “Can you imagine what this
man would have been like if somebody had loved him?”
The new president selected men for his cabinet and White House staff
who would carry out his orders with blind obedience. John Mitchell, the
gruff attorney general who had been a senior partner in Nixon’s New York
law firm, was the new president’s closest confidant. H. R. (Bob) Haldeman,
an imperious former advertising executive, served as Nixon’s chief of staff.
As the short-tempered Haldeman explained, “Every President needs a son of
a bitch, and I’m Nixon’s. I’m his buffer, I’m his bastard.” He was succeeded in
1973 by Colonel (later General) Alexander Haig, whom Nixon described as
“the meanest, toughest, most ambitious son of a bitch I ever knew.” John
Ehrlichman, a Seattle attorney and college schoolmate of Haldeman’s, served
as chief domestic-policy adviser.
Nixon tapped as secretary of state his old friend William Rogers, who had
served as attorney general under Dwight D. Eisenhower. But the president
had no intention of making Rogers the nation’s chief diplomat. Rogers’s
control over foreign policy was quickly preempted by Dr. Henry Kissinger, a
distinguished German-born Harvard political scientist who served as national
security adviser before becoming secretary of state in 1973. Kissinger came to
 Nixon and Middle America • 1369

dominate the Nixon administration’s diplomatic planning and emerged as

one of the most respected and internationally famous members of the White
House staff. Kissinger’s self-confidence was boundless; he did not suffer
fools gladly. Nixon often had to mediate the tensions between Rogers and
Kissinger, noting that Rogers considered Kissinger “Machiavellian, deceitful,
egotistical, arrogant, and insulting,” while Kissinger viewed Rogers as “vain,
emotional, unable to keep a secret, and hopelessly dominated by the State
Department bureaucracy.” Teamwork and collegiality were rare in the Nixon
administration.

N I XO N ’ S S O U T H E R N S T R AT E G Y Richard Nixon was no friend of

the civil rights movement, the youth revolt, or the counterculture. He had
been elected in 1968 as the representative of middle America, those middle-
class citizens fed up with the liberal politics and radical culture of the sixties.
Nixon explicitly appealed to the “silent majority” of predominantly white
working-class and middle-class citizens determined to regain control of a
society they feared was awash in permissiveness and anarchy. He promised
voters that he would return “law and order” to a fractious nation riven with
turmoil.
A major reason for Nixon’s election victories in 1968 and 1972 was
the effective “southern strategy” fashioned by his campaign staffers. Of all
the nation’s regions, the South had long been the most conservative. The
majority of southern white voters were pious and patriotic, fervently anti-
Communist, and skeptical of federal social welfare programs. For a century,
the “Solid South” had steadfastly voted for Democrats in national elections.
During the late sixties and seventies, however, a surging economy and wave
of population growth transformed the so-called Sunbelt states in the South
and the Southwest. The southern states had long been the nation’s poorest
and most backward-looking region, but that changed dramatically, in part
because of the rapid expansion of air conditioning in the hot, humid sun-
belt. By 1980, over 70 percent of southern homes were air-conditioned.
“General Electric” said a journalist, “has proved a more devastating invader
[of the South] than General [William T.] Sherman.” The Sunbelt’s warm cli-
mate, low cost of living, low taxes, conservative temperament, and promo-
tion of economic development attracted waves of businesses to relocate to
the region.
Between 1970 and 1990, the South’s population grew by 40 percent, more
than twice the national average. The New South promoted by Henry Grady
in the 1880s finally arrived in the form of fast-growing and increasingly cos-
mopolitan cities such as Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, Miami, New
1370 • REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S (CH. 32)

Orleans, and Richmond, all of which spawned affluent all-white suburbs

that were enclaves of Christian conservatism. At the same time, retirees from
across the nation migrated in large numbers to Florida, Texas, Arizona, and
southern California. The Sunbelt states were attractive to migrants not only
because of their mild climate and abundant natural resources; they also had
the lowest rates of taxation and labor union participation as well as the high-
est rates of economic growth. In the seventies, southern “redneck” culture
suddenly became chic, as people across the nation embraced NASCAR rac-
ing, cowboy boots, pickup trucks, and barbecue. As singer Charlie Daniels
sang in 1974, “The South’s Gonna Do It Again.”
Since the Second World War, the South, in part because of the seniority of
its long-serving Democratic senators and representatives, had been the great
beneficiary of steadily increasing federal expenditures on the military and the
aerospace industry. With each passing year, more and more northern busi-
nesses relocated to the southern states, leading journalists to label the nation’s
decaying industrial heartland—Michigan, New York, Ohio, Illinois, and
Pennsylvania—the “rustbelt” in contrast to the booming states in the sunbelt.
Journalists during the seventies excitedly described the “southernization of
American life.” The New York Times devoted a four-part series to the popular-
ity of the sunbelt: “All day and through the lonely night, the moving vans push
southward, the 14-wheeled boxcars of the highway, changing the demographic
face of America.” During the seventies, job growth in the South was seven
times as great as that of New York and Pennsylvania. Rapid population growth
brought the region more congressional seats and more electoral votes. Every
president elected between 1964 and 2008 had roots in the sunbelt.
The sunbelt spearheaded the backlash against sixties radicalism. Merle
Haggard, a country-and-western music star who was one of Nixon’s favorite
performers, captured the tone of the conservative backlash in a hit song titled
“Okie from Muskogee.” Haggard crooned: “I’m proud to be an Okie from
Muskogee, a place where even squares can have a ball.” Haggard’s description
of his Oklahoma town resonated with many listeners. “We don’t smoke mari-
juana in Muskogee. We don’t take our trips on LSD. We don’t burn our draft
cards down on Main Street. We like livin’ right and bein’ free.” Like Haggard,
his southern fans bristled at rising taxes, social welfare programs, and civil
rights activism. So did many retirees. The alienation of many blue-collar
whites from the liberalism of the Democratic party as well as the demo-
graphic changes transforming the sunbelt states created a welcome opportu-
nity for the Republican party to exploit, which Richard Nixon seized.
Nixon and his aides forged a new conservative coalition that included two
traditionally Democratic voting blocs: blue-collar ethnic voters in the North
 Nixon and Middle America • 1371

and white southerners. In the South, Nixon shrewdly played the race card: he
assured southern conservatives that he would appoint pro-southern justices
to the Supreme Court as part of a broader commitment to undermine fed-
eral enforcement of civil rights laws, including mandatory busing to achieve
racially integrated schools and affirmative-action programs designed to give
minorities priority in hiring decisions. Nixon also appealed to the economic
concerns of middle-class southern whites by promising lower tax rates and
less government regulation. Finally, Nixon specialized in hard-hitting, polar-
izing rhetoric, drawing vivid contrasts between the turmoil in the streets of
Chicago during the 1968 Democratic nominating convention and the “law-
and-order” theme of his own campaign.
Once in the White House, Nixon told an aide it was time to “get down to
the nut-cutting.” Conservatism was back, as the new president followed
through on his campaign pledges to southern conservatives. He changed his
personal residency from New York to Florida, appointed conservative Texas
Democrat John Connally to his cabinet, and announced that it was time for
the media and the cultural elite to “stop kicking the South around.” In his
1972 reelection campaign, Nixon carried every southern state by whopping
majorities. The transformation of the once “solid” Democratic South into
the predominantly Republican South was the greatest realignment in Amer-
ican politics since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election in 1932.
President Nixon, like many of the people he appointed to his staff and
cabinet, had a visceral personality. He hated the “liberal” media, expressed
contempt for the civil rights movement, set out to dismantle LBJ’s war on
poverty programs, appointed no African Americans to his cabinet, and
refused to meet with the Congressional Black Caucus. “We’ve had enough
social programs: forced integration, education, housing,” he told his chief of
staff. “People don’t want more [people] on welfare. They don’t want to help
the working poor, and our mood needs to be harder on this, not softer.”
In 1970, Nixon launched a concerted effort to block congressional renewal
of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and to delay implementation of court orders
requiring the desegregation of school districts in Mississippi. Sixty-five lawyers
in the Justice Department signed a letter of protest against the administra-
tion’s stance. The Democratic Congress then extended the Voting Rights Act
over Nixon’s veto. The Supreme Court, in the first decision made under the
new chief justice, Warren Burger—a Nixon appointee—mandated the inte-
gration of the Mississippi public schools. In Alexander v. Holmes County
Board of Education (1969), a unanimous Court ordered a quick end to segre-
gation. During Nixon’s first term and despite his wishes, more schools were
desegregated than in all the Kennedy-Johnson years combined.
1372 • REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S (CH. 32)

Nixon also failed in his

attempts to block desegregation
efforts in urban areas. The Burger
Court ruled unanimously in
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg
Board of Education (1971) that
school systems must bus stu-
dents out of their neighborhoods
if necessary to achieve racially
integrated schools. Protest over
desegregation now began to
erupt in the North, the Midwest,
Critics of integration and the Southwest as white fami-
lies in Boston, Denver, and other
Demonstrators at the Boston State House
protest forced integration of the school cities denounced the destruction
system, May 1973. of “the neighborhood school.”
Angry white parents in Pontiac,
Michigan, firebombed school buses. Racial violence was no longer a southern
issue.
Nixon asked the Democrat-controlled Congress to impose a moratorium
on all busing orders by the federal courts. The House of Representatives,
equally attuned to voter outrage at busing to achieve racial integration, went
along. But a Senate filibuster blocked the president’s anti-busing bill. Busing
opponents won a limited victory when the Supreme Court ruled, in Milliken v.
Bradley (1974), that desegregation plans in Detroit requiring the transfer of
students from the inner city to the suburbs were unconstitutional. This
landmark case, along with the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
(1978) decision, which restricted the use of college-admissions quotas to
achieve racial balance, marked the transition of desegregation from an issue
of simple justice to a more tangled thicket of conflicting group, individual,
and states’ rights.
To transfer greater responsibility from the federal government to the
states, President Nixon in 1972 pushed through Congress a five-year revenue-
sharing plan that would distribute $30 billion of federal revenues to the
states for use as they saw fit. But Nixon was less an ideologue than a shrewd
pragmatist. His domestic program was a hodgepodge of reactionary and
progressive initiatives. Nixon juggled opposing positions in an effort to
maintain public support. He was, said the journalist Tom Wicker, “at once
liberal and conservative, generous and begrudging, cynical and idealistic,
choleric and calm, resentful and forgiving.” Nixon also had to deal with a
 Nixon and Middle America • 1373

stern political fact: the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress dur-
ing his first term. Congress moved forward with significant new legislation
which Nixon signed: the right of eighteen-year-olds to vote in national elec-
tions (1970) and in all elections under the Twenty-sixth Amendment (1971);
increases in Social Security benefits indexed to the inflation rate and a rise in
food-stamp funding; the Occupational Safety and Health Act (1970) to
ensure safe workplaces; and the Federal Election Campaign Act (1971),
which modified the rules of campaign finance to reduce the role of corpo-
rate financial donations.

E N V I R O N M E N TA L P R O T E C T I O N Dramatic increases in the price of

oil and gasoline during the seventies fueled a major energy crisis in the
United States. People began to realize that natural resources were limited—
and increasingly expensive. “Although it’s positively un-American to think
so,” said one sociologist, “the environmental movement and energy shortage
have forced us all to accept a sense of our limits, to lower our expectations, to
seek prosperity through conservation rather than growth.” The widespread
recognition that America faced limits to economic growth spurred broad
support for environmental protection in the seventies.
The realization that cities and industrial development were damaging the
environment and altering the earth’s ecology was not new. Rachel Carson’s
pathbreaking book Silent Spring (1962) had sounded the warning years ear-
lier by graphically revealing how industries had been regularly dumping toxic
chemicals and pesticides into
waterways, doing incalculable
ecological damage. More immedi-
ately, two dramatic environmental
incidents in 1969 had captured
public attention and prompted
legislative action within the
Democratic-controlled Congress.
On January 28, 1969, an offshore
oil-drilling platform near Santa
Barbara, California ruptured.
Within a ten-day period, some
one hundred thousand barrels of
crude oil spilled into the channel
and onto the beaches of Santa Environmental awareness
Barbara County, fouling the An Earth Day demonstration dramatizing
coastline and killing thousands of the dangers of air pollution, April 1972.
1374 • REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S (CH. 32)

sea birds and marine animals—porpoises, elephant seals, and sea lions. Six
months later, in June, the Cuyahoga River in northeastern Ohio, near Cleve-
land, caught fire and burned for five days, its flames leaping fifty feet into the
air. It was not the first time that the heavily polluted river, clogged with efflu-
ent from oil refineries, chemical plants, utilities, and factories, had ignited,
but like the Santa Barbara oil spill, it became an important catalyst in the
raising of environmental awareness. The public outrage at the fiery river and
Pacific oil spill prompted numerous pieces of environmental legislation that
created the legal and regulatory framework for the modern environmental
movement.
Bowing to pressure from both parties, as well as to polls showing that
75 percent of voters supported stronger environmental protections, President
Nixon told an aide to “keep me out of trouble on environmental issues.” Ever
the pragmatic politician, the president recognized that the public mood had
shifted toward greater environmental protections. Nixon feared that if he
vetoed legislative efforts to improve environmental quality, the Congress
would overrule him, so he would not stand in the way. In late 1969 he reluc-
tantly signed the amended Endangered Species Preservation Act and the
National Environmental Policy Act. The latter became effective on January 1,
1970, the year that environmental groups established an annual Earth Day
celebration. In 1970, Nixon by executive order created two new federal envi-
ronmental agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). That same
year, he also signed the Clean Air Act to reduce air pollution on a national
level. Two years, later, however, Nixon vetoed a new clean water act, only to
see Congress override his effort. Nixon’s support for the environmental
movement, regardless of his motives, flabbergasted Republicans. Patrick
Buchanan, one of Nixon’s speechwriters, who later would run for president
himself, said “the President is no longer a credible custodian of the conserv-
ative political tradition of the GOP.”

E C O N O M I C M A L A I S E The major domestic development during the

Nixon years was a floundering economy. Overheated by the accumulated
expense of the Vietnam War, the annual inflation rate began to rise in 1967,
when it was at 3 percent. By 1973, it was at 9 percent; a year later it was at
12 percent, and it remained in double digits for most of the seventies. The
Dow Jones average of major industrial stocks fell by 36 percent between
1968 and 1970, its steepest decline in more than thirty years. Meanwhile
unemployment, at a low of 3.3 percent when Nixon took office, climbed to
6 percent by the end of 1970 and threatened to keep rising. Somehow the
 Nixon and Middle America • 1375

economy was undergoing a recession and inflation at the same time. Econo-
mists coined the term stagflation to describe the unprecedented syndrome
that defied the orthodox laws of economics. The unusual combination of a
stagnant economy with inflationary prices befuddled experts. There were no
easy answers, no certain solutions.
The economic malaise had at least three deep-rooted causes. First, the
Johnson administration had financed both the Great Society social-welfare
programs and the Vietnam War without a major tax increase, thereby gener-
ating larger federal deficits, a major expansion of the money supply, and
price inflation. Second and more important, by the late sixties U.S. compa-
nies faced stiff competition in international markets from West Germany,
Japan, and other emerging industrial powers. American technological and
economic superiority was no longer unchallenged. Third, the post–World
War II economy had depended heavily upon cheap sources of energy; no
other nation was more dependent than the United States upon the automo-
bile and the automobile industry, and no other nation was more wasteful in
its use of fossil fuels in factories and homes.
Just as domestic petroleum reserves began to dwindle and dependence
upon foreign sources of oil increased, the Organization of Petroleum

Oil crisis, 1973

The scarcity of oil was dealt with by the rationing of gasoline. Gas stations, such as
this one in Colorado, closed on Sundays to conserve supplies.
1376 • REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S (CH. 32)

Exporting Countries (OPEC) resolved to use its huge oil supplies as a politi-
cal and economic weapon. In 1973, the United States sent massive aid to
Israel after a devastating Syrian-Egyptian attack on Yom Kippur, the holiest
day on the Jewish calendar. OPEC responded by announcing that it would
not sell oil to nations supporting Israel and that it was raising its prices by
400 percent. Gasoline grew scarce, and prices soared. American motorists
thereafter faced long lines at gas stations.
Another condition leading to stagflation was the flood of new workers—
mainly baby boomers and women—entering the labor market. From 1965
to 1980, the workforce grew by 40 percent, almost 30 million workers, a
number greater than the total labor force of France or West Germany. The
number of new jobs could not keep up with the size of the workforce, leav-
ing many unemployed. At the same time, worker productivity declined, fur-
ther increasing inflation in the face of rising demand for goods and
services.
Nixon responded erratically and ineffectively to stagflation, trying old
remedies for a new problem. First he sought to reduce the federal deficit by
raising taxes and cutting the budget. When the Democratic Congress refused
to cooperate with that approach, he encouraged the Federal Reserve Board to
reduce the nation’s money supply by raising interest rates. The stock market
immediately collapsed, and the economy plunged into the “Nixon recession.”
A sense of desperation seized the White House as economic advisers strug-
gled to respond to stagflation. In 1969, when asked about the possibility of
imposing government restrictions on wages and prices, Nixon had been
unequivocal: “Controls. Oh, my God, no! . . . We’ll never go to controls.” But
in 1971 he reversed himself. He froze all wages and prices for ninety days. Still
the economy floundered. By 1973, the wage and price guidelines were made
voluntary and therefore ineffective.

N I XO N AND VIETNAM

Many among the “silent majority” of voters that Nixon courted

shared his belief that Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs were
expensive failures. Such attitudes were highlighted in one of the period’s
most popular television shows, All in the Family, whose central character,
Archie Bunker, was a lower-middle-class reactionary outraged by the per-
missiveness of modern society and the radicalism of young people. Large
as the gap was between the “silent majority” and the youth revolt, both
sides agreed that the Vietnam War remained the dominant event of the
 Nixon and Vietnam • 1377

time. Until the war ended and all troops had returned home, the nation
would find it difficult to achieve the equilibrium that President Nixon had
promised.

G R A D UA L W I T H D R AWA L Looking back on the Vietnam War, former

secretary of state and national security adviser Henry Kissinger called it a
“nightmare.” In his view, “we should have never been there at all.” When
Nixon was inaugurated as president in January 1969, he inherited the night-
mare; there were 530,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam. Nixon believed that “there’s
no way to win the war. But we can’t say that, of course,” because the United
States needed to “keep some bargaining leverage” at the Paris negotiations
with the North Vietnamese. During the 1968 presidential campaign, he had
claimed to have a secret plan that would bring “peace with honor” in Viet-
nam. Nixon insisted that the United States could not simply “cut and run,”
leaving the 17 million South Vietnamese to a cruel fate under Communist
tyranny. Yet he assured an aide that “I’m not going to end up like LBJ, holed
up in the White House afraid to show my face on the street. I’m going to stop
that war. Fast.”
Peace, however, was long in coming
and not very honorable. Nixon and
Kissinger overestimated the ability of
the Soviets to exert pressure on the
North Vietnamese to sign a negotiated
settlement, just as they misread their
own ability to coerce the South Viet-
namese government to sign an agree-
ment. By the time a settlement was
reached, in 1973, another twenty thou-
sand Americans had died, the morale
of the U.S. military had been shattered,
millions of Asians had been killed or
wounded, and fighting continued in
Southeast Asia. In the end, Nixon’s pol-
icy gained nothing the president could
not have accomplished in 1969.
The trauma of Vietnam
The new Vietnam policy imple-
mented by Nixon and Kissinger moved Even as the Nixon administration
began a phased withdrawal of U.S.
along three fronts. First, U.S. negotiators troops from Vietnam, the war took a
in Paris demanded the withdrawal of heavy toll on Vietnamese and
Communist forces from South Vietnam Americans alike.
1378 • REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S (CH. 32)

and the preservation of the U.S.-backed regime of President Nguyen Van

Thieu. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong negotiators insisted on retaining a
Communist military presence in the south and reunifying the Vietnamese peo-
ple under a government dominated by the Communists. There was no com-
mon ground on which to come together. Hidden from public awareness and
from America’s South Vietnamese allies were secret meetings between Henry
Kissinger, then Nixon’s national security adviser, and the North Vietnamese.
On the second front, Nixon tried to quell domestic unrest stemming from
the war. He labeled the anti-war movement a “brotherhood of the mis-
guided, the mistaken, the well-meaning, and the malevolent.” He sought to
defuse the anti-war movement by reducing the number of U.S. troops in
Vietnam, justifying the reduction as the natural result of “Vietnamization”—
the equipping and training of South Vietnamese soldiers and pilots to assume
the burden of combat in place of Americans. From a peak of 560,000 in 1969,
U.S. combat forces were withdrawn at a steady pace that matched almost pre-
cisely the pace of the buildup from 1965 to 1969. By 1973, only 50,000 troops
remained in Vietnam. In 1969, Nixon also established a draft lottery system
that eliminated many inequities and clarified the likelihood of being drafted:
only nineteen-year-olds with low lottery numbers would have to go—and in
1973 the president shrewdly did away with the draft altogether by creating an
all-volunteer military.
On the third front, while reducing the number of U.S. combat troops,
Nixon and Kissinger expanded the air war over Vietnam in hopes of per-
suading the North Vietnamese to come to terms. Heavy bombing of North
Vietnam was part of what Nixon called his “madman theory.” He wanted the
North Vietnamese leaders to believe that he “might do anything to stop the
war.” In March 1969, the United States began a fourteen-month-long bomb-
ing campaign aimed at Communist forces that were using Cambodia as a
sanctuary for raids into South Vietnam. Congress did not learn of those
secret raids until 1970, although the total tonnage of bombs dropped was
four times that dropped on Japan during the Second World War. Still,
Hanoi’s leaders did not flinch. Then, on April 30, 1970, Nixon announced
what he called an “incursion” into “neutral” Cambodia by U.S. troops to
“clean out” North Vietnamese military bases. Nixon knew that sending
troops into Cambodia would ignite “absolute public hysteria.” Several mem-
bers of the National Security Council resigned in protest. Secretary of State
William Rogers predicted that the Cambodian escalation “will make the
[anti-war] students puke.” Nixon told Kissinger, who strongly endorsed
the decision to extend the fighting into Cambodia, “If this doesn’t work, it’ll
be your ass, Henry.”
 Nixon and Vietnam • 1379

D I V I S I O N S AT H O M E Strident public opposition to the Vietnam War

and Nixon’s slow withdrawal of combat forces from Vietnam had a devastat-
ing effect on the military’s morale and reputation. “No one wants to be the
last grunt to die in this lousy war,” said one soldier. Between 1969 and 1971
there were 730 reported fragging incidents, efforts by troops to kill or injure
their own officers, usually with fragmentation grenades. Drug abuse became
a major problem in the armed forces. In 1971, four times as many troops
were hospitalized for drug overdoses as for combat-related wounds.
Revelations of atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam caused even
the staunchest supporters of the war to wince. Late in 1969, the shocking story
of the My Lai Massacre broke in the press, plunging the country into two years
of exposure to the gruesome tale of Lieutenant William Calley, who ordered the
murder of 347 Vietnamese civilians in the village of My Lai in 1968. Twenty-five
army officers were charged with complicity in the massacre and subsequent
cover-up, but only Calley was convicted; Nixon later granted him parole.
The loudest public outcry against Nixon’s Indochina policy occurred in
the wake of the Cambodian “incursion.” In the spring of 1970, hundreds of
campuses across the country exploded in what the president of Columbia
University called “the most disastrous month of May in the history of Ameri-
can higher education.” Student protests led to the closing of hundreds of col-
leges and universities, and thousands of students were arrested. At Kent State
University, the Ohio National Guard was called in to quell rioting, during
which the building housing the campus ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training
Corps) was burned down by anti-war protesters. The poorly trained guards-
men panicked and opened fire on the rock-throwing demonstrators, killing
four student bystanders. Although an official investigation of the tragic
deaths at Kent State condemned the “casual and indiscriminate shooting,”
polls indicated that the public supported the National Guard; students had
“got what they were asking for.” Eleven days after the Kent State tragedy, on
May 15, Mississippi highway patrolmen riddled a dormitory at Jackson State
College with bullets, killing two students. In New York City, anti-war demon-
strators who gathered to protest the deaths at Kent State and the invasion of
Cambodia were attacked by “hard-hat” construction workers, who forced the
protesters to disperse and then marched on City Hall to raise the U.S. flag,
which had been lowered to half staff in mourning for the Kent State victims.
The following year, in June, the New York Times began publishing excerpts
from The History of the U.S. Decision-Making Process of Vietnam Policy, a
secret Defense Department study commissioned by Robert McNamara before
his resignation as in 1968 Lyndon Johnson’s secretary of defense. The so-
called Pentagon Papers, leaked to the press by a former Defense Department
1380 • REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S (CH. 32)

Kent State University

National guardsmen shot and killed four student bystanders during anti-war
demonstrations on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio.

official, Daniel Ellsberg, confirmed what many critics of the war had long
suspected: Congress and the public had not received the full story on the
Gulf of Tonkin incident of 1964, and contingency plans for American entry
into the war were being drawn up while President Johnson was promising
that combat troops would never be sent to Vietnam. Moreover, there was no
plan for bringing the war to an end so long as the North Vietnamese per-
sisted. Although the Pentagon Papers dealt with events only up to 1965, the
Nixon administration blocked their publication, arguing that they endan-
gered national security and that their publication would prolong the war. By
a vote of 6 to 3, the Supreme Court ruled against the government. Newspa-
pers throughout the country began publication of the controversial docu-
ments the next day.
Democracies, as Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson had realized,
rarely can sustain long wars because long wars inevitably become unpopular
wars. Responding to mounting public pressures, Congress in 1970 began to
reclaim its authority to wage war. On December 31, 1970, Congress repealed
the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution that had given President Johnson a blank
check to fight communism in Vietnam, but Nixon simply ignored the essen-
tially symbolic legislative action.
 Nixon Triumphant • 1381

N I XO N T R I U M P H A N T

Because the Democrats controlled the Congress, President Nixon

focused much of his effort on foreign policy, where presidential initiatives
were less encumbered by the ceaseless squabbling and lobbying of interest
groups. Nixon also personally preferred dealing in the international arena.
In tandem with Henry Kissinger, with whom he enjoyed a love-hate rela-
tionship, he achieved several major breakthroughs. Nixon displayed his
savvy and flexibility by making dramatic changes in U.S. relations with the
major powers of the Communist world—China and the Soviet Union—
changes that transformed the dynamics of the cold war.
By 1969, Nixon and Kissinger had come to envision a new multipolar
world order replacing the conventional bipolar confrontation between the
United States and the Soviet Union. Since 1945 the United States had lost its
monopoly on nuclear weapons and its overwhelming economic dominance
and geopolitical influence. The rapid rise of competing power centers in
Europe, China, and Japan complicated international relations—the People’s
Republic of China (Communist China) had replaced the United States as the
Soviet Union’s most threatening competitor—but the competition between
the two largest Communist nations also provided strategic opportunities for
the United States, which Nixon and Kissinger seized. Their grand vision of the
future world order focused on cultivating a partnership with Communist
China, slowing the perennial arms race with the Soviet Union, and ending
the war in Vietnam.
In early 1970, Nixon, eager to make his mark on history, announced a sig-
nificant alteration in the containment doctrine that had guided U.S. foreign
policy since the late 1940s. The United States, he stressed, could no longer be
the world’s policeman containing the expansion of communism: “America
cannot—and will not—conceive all the plans, design all the programs, exe-
cute all the decisions, and undertake all the defense of the free nations of the
world.” In explaining what became known as the Nixon Doctrine, the presi-
dent declared that “our interests must shape our commitments, rather than
the other way around.” The United States, he and Kissinger stressed, must
become more selective in its commitments abroad, and America would
begin to establish selected partnerships with Communist countries in areas
of mutual interest.

CHINA In 1971, Nixon, the crusading anti-Communist turned pragma-

tist, sent Henry Kissinger on a secret trip to Beijing to explore the possibility
of U.S. recognition of Communist China. Since 1949, when Mao Zedong’s
1382 • REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S (CH. 32)

revolutionary movement estab-

lished control in China, the United
States had refused to recognize
Communist China, preferring to
regard Chiang Kai-shek’s exiled
regime on the island of Taiwan as
the legitimate Chinese govern-
ment. But now the time seemed
ripe for a bold renewal of ties. Both
the United States and Communist
China were exhausted from pro-
longed wars (in Vietnam and
clashes along the Sino-Soviet bor-
der) and intense domestic strife
(anti-war protests in America, the
The United States and China Cultural Revolution in China).
With President Richard M. Nixon’s visit to Both nations were eager to resist
China in 1972, the United States formally Soviet expansionism around the
recognized China’s Communist government. world.
Here Nixon and Chinese premier Zhou
Enlai drink a toast. During their secret discus-
sions, Kissinger and Chinese
leaders agreed that continuing confrontation made no sense for either nation.
Seven months later, on February 21, 1972, stunned Americans watched on tele-
vision as President Nixon drank toasts in Beijing with prime minister Zhou
Enlai and Chairman Mao Zedong. In one simple but astonishing stroke, Nixon
and Kissinger had ended two decades of diplomatic isolation of the People’s
Republic of China. The United States and China agreed to scientific and cul-
tural exchanges, steps toward the resumption of trade, and the eventual reunifi-
cation of Taiwan with the mainland. A year after the Nixon visit, “liaison
offices” were established in Washington, D.C. and Beijing that served as unoffi-
cial embassies, and in 1979 diplomatic recognition was formalized. Richard
Nixon had accomplished a diplomatic feat that his Democratic predecessors
could not. Hard-line Republican conservatives were furious at Nixon’s actions,
but American corporations were eager to enter the huge Chinese market.

DÉTENTE In truth, China welcomed the breakthrough in relations with

the United States because its festering rivalry with the Soviet Union, with
which it shares a long border, had become more threatening than its rivalry
with the West. The Soviet leaders, troubled by the Sino-American agreements,
were also eager to ease tensions with the United States. This was especially
 Nixon Triumphant • 1383

true now that they had, as a result of a huge arms buildup following the
Cuban missile crisis, achieved virtual parity with the United States in nuclear
weapons. Once again President Nixon surprised the world, announcing that
he would visit Moscow in 1972 for discussions with Leonid Brezhnev, the
Soviet premier. The high drama of the China visit was repeated in Moscow,
with toasts and elegant dinners attended by world leaders who had previously
regarded each other as incarnations of evil.
What became known as détente with the Soviets offered the promise of a
more restrained competition between the two superpowers. Nixon and
Brezhnev signed agreements reached at the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
(SALT), which negotiators had been working on since 1969. The SALT
agreement did not end the arms race, but it did limit the number of missiles
with nuclear warheads each nation could possess and prohibited the con-
struction of antiballistic missile systems. In effect, the Soviets were allowed
to retain a greater number of missiles with greater destructive power, while
the United States retained a lead in the total number of warheads. No limita-
tions were placed on new weapons systems, though each side agreed to work
toward a permanent freeze on all nuclear weapons. The Moscow negotia-
tions also produced new trade agreements, including an arrangement
whereby the United States sold almost a quarter of its wheat crop to the
Soviets at a favorable price. In sum, the Moscow summit revealed the dra-
matic easing of tensions between the two cold war superpowers. For Nixon
and Kissinger, the agreements with China and the Soviet Union represented
monumental changes in the global order that would have lasting conse-
quences. Kissinger later boasted that the SALT agreement was his crowning
achievement. Over time, the détente policy with the Soviet Union would
help end the cold war by lowering Soviet hostility to Western influences pen-
etrating their closed society, which slowly eroded Communist rule from the
inside.

S H U T T L E D I P LO M AC Y The Nixon-Kissinger initiatives in the Middle

East were less dramatic and less conclusive than the agreements with China
and the Soviet Union, but they did show that the United States at long last
recognized the legitimacy of Arab interests in the region and its own depen-
dence upon Middle Eastern oil, even though the Arab nations were adamantly
opposed to the existence of Israel. In the Six-Day War of 1967, Israeli forces
routed the armies of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan and seized territory from all
three nations. Moreover, the number of Palestinian refugees, many of them
homeless since the creation of Israel in 1948, increased after the 1967 Israeli
victory.
1384 • REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S (CH. 32)

The Middle East remained a tinderbox of tensions. On October 6, 1973,

the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, Syria and Egypt attacked Israel, igniting
what became the Yom Kippur War. It created the most dangerous confronta-
tion between the United States and the Soviet Union since the Cuban missile
crisis. President Nixon asked Henry Kissinger, now secretary of state, to keep
the Soviets out of the Middle Eastern war. On October 20, Kissinger flew to
Moscow to meet directly with Leonid Brezhnev just as “all hell had broken
loose” in the White House with Nixon’s firing of the attorney general and his
staff for their unwillingness to cover up the Watergate mess. Kissinger deftly
negotiated a cease-fire and exerted pressure to prevent Israel from taking
additional Arab territory. He also promoted closer ties with Egypt and its
president, Anwar el-Sadat, and more restrained support for Israel. In an
attempt to broker a lasting settlement, Kissinger made numerous flights to
the capitals of the Middle Eastern nations. His “shuttle diplomacy” won
acclaim from all sides, but Kissinger failed to find a comprehensive formula
for peace in the troubled region and ignored the Palestinian problem. He did,
however, lay groundwork for the accord between Israel and Egypt in 1977.

Henry Kissinger’s “shuttle diplomacy”

President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, during
one of Kissinger’s many visits to the Middle East, talk with reporters in an effort
to bring peace.
 Nixon Triumphant • 1385

WA R W I T H O U T E N D During 1972, the mounting social divisions at

home and the approach of the presidential election influenced the stalled
negotiations in Paris between the United States and representatives of North
Vietnam. In the summer of 1972, Henry Kissinger again began meeting pri-
vately with the North Vietnamese negotiators, and he now dropped his insis-
tence upon the removal of all North Vietnamese troops from the South
before the withdrawal of the remaining U.S. troops. On October 26, only a
week before the U.S. presidential election, Kissinger announced, “Peace is at
hand.” But this was a cynical ploy to win votes. Several days earlier, the Thieu
regime in South Vietnam had rejected the Kissinger plan for a cease-fire,
fearful that the presence of North Vietnamese troops in the south would vir-
tually guarantee a Communist victory. The Paris peace talks broke off on
December 16, and two days later the newly reelected Nixon ordered massive
bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong, the two largest cities in North Vietnam.
These so-called Christmas bombings and the simultaneous mining of North
Vietnamese harbors aroused worldwide protest.
But the bombings also made the North Vietnamese more flexible at the
negotiating table. The Christmas bombings stopped on December 29, and
the talks in Paris soon resumed. On January 27, 1973, the United States,
North and South Vietnam, and the Viet Cong signed an “agreement on end-
ing the war and restoring peace in Vietnam.” While Nixon and Kissinger
claimed that the bombing had brought North Vietnam to its senses, in truth
the North Vietnamese never altered their basic stance; they kept 150,000
troops in the South and remained committed to the reunification of Viet-
nam under one government. What had changed since the previous fall was
the grudging willingness of South Vietnamese officials, who were never
allowed to participate in the negotiations, to accept the agreement on the
basis of Nixon’s promise that the United States would respond “with full
force” to any Communist violation of the agreement. Kissinger had little
confidence that the treaty provisions would enable South Vietnam to survive
on its own. He told a White House staffer, “If they’re lucky, they can hold out
for a year and a half.”

THE ELECTION OF 1972 Nixon’s foreign-policy achievements allowed

him to stage the presidential campaign of 1972 as a triumphal procession.
The main threat to his reelection came from Alabama’s Democratic governor
George Wallace, a populist segregationist who assailed the Washington politi-
cal establishment, the “overeducated, ivory-tower folks with pointy heads” who
wore “sissy britches.” Wallace had the potential as a third-party candidate to
deprive the Republicans of conservative southern votes and thereby throw
1386 • REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S (CH. 32)

the election to the Democrats or to the Democratic-controlled Congress.

That threat ended, however, on May 15, 1972, when Wallace was shot by
Arthur Bremer, a man eager to achieve a grisly brand of notoriety (he had
earlier hoped to assassinate Nixon). Wallace survived but was left paralyzed
below the waist, forcing him to withdraw from the campaign.
Meanwhile, the Democrats were further ensuring Nixon’s victory by
nominating Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, a steadfast anti-
war liberal who proceeded to organize one of the most inept presidential
campaigns in history. McGovern recognized that the old New Deal Demo-
cratic coalition of urban ethnic groups, organized labor, and southern white
populists was fading so he tried to create a “new politics” coalition centered
on minorities, women, and young, well-educated activists. However logical,
it was an electoral disaster. In the 1972 election, Nixon won the greatest vic-
tory of any Republican presidential candidate in history, capturing 520 elec-
toral votes to only 17 for McGovern. The popular vote was equally decisive:
46 million to 28 million, a proportion of the total vote (60.8 percent) that
was second only to Lyndon B. Johnson’s victory over Barry Goldwater in
1964. After his landslide victory, Nixon promised to complete his efforts at a
conservative revolution. He planned to promote the “more conservative val-
ues and beliefs of the New Majority throughout the country and use my
power to put some teeth in my new American Revolution.”
But Nixon’s easy victory and triumphant outlook would be short-lived.
During the course of the presidential campaign, McGovern had complained
about the numerous “dirty tricks” orchestrated by members of the Nixon
administration during the campaign. The insecure Nixon, it turned out, had
ordered aides to harass Democratic party leaders—by any means necessary.
Attorney General Mitchell called the “dirty tricks” the “White House hor-
rors.” Nixon, for example, ordered illegal wiretaps on his opponents (as well
as his aides), tried to coerce the Internal Revenue Service to intimidate
Democrats, and told his chief of staff to break into the safe at the Brookings
Institution, a Washington think tank with liberal ties. “Goddamnit,” he told
Bob Haldeman, “get in and get those files. Blow the safe and get it.”
McGovern was especially disturbed by a curious incident on June 17,
1972, when five men were caught breaking into the Democratic National
Committee headquarters in the Watergate apartment and office complex in
Washington, D.C. The burglars were former CIA agents, one of whom,
James W. McCord, worked for the Nixon campaign. They were caught
installing eavesdropping devices (“bugs”). At the time, McGovern’s shrill
Watergate accusations seemed like sour grapes from a candidate running far
behind in the polls. Nixon and his staff ignored the news of the break-in.
 Watergate • 1387

The president said that no one cares “when somebody bugs somebody else.”
Privately, however, he and his senior aides Bob Haldeman, John Dean, and
John Ehrlichman began feverish efforts to cover up the Watergate break-in.
The White House secretly provided legal assistance (“hush money”) to the
burglars to buy their silence and tried to keep the FBI out of the investiga-
tion. Nixon and his closest aides also discussed using the CIA to derail the
Justice Department investigation of the Watergate burglary.

W AT E R G AT E

During the trial of the accused Watergate burglars in January 1973, the
relentless prodding of federal Judge John J. Sirica led one of the accused to
tell the full story of the Nixon administration’s complicity in the Watergate
episode. James W. McCord, security chief of the Committee to Re-Elect the
President (CREEP), was the first in a long line of informers in a political
melodrama that unfolded over two years, revealing the systematic efforts of
Nixon and his aides to create an “imperial presidency” above the law. The
scandal ended in the first presidential resignation in history, the conviction
and imprisonment of twenty-five administration officials, including four cabi-
net members, and the most serious constitutional crisis since the impeachment
trial of President Andrew Johnson in 1868.

U N C OV E R I N G T H E C OV E R- U P The trail of evidence pursued first

by Judge Sirica, a tough law-and-order Republican, then by a grand jury, and
then by a Senate committee headed by Democrat Samuel J. Ervin Jr. of
North Carolina led directly to the White House. Nixon was personally
involved in the cover-up of the Watergate incident, using his presidential
powers to discredit and block the investigation as well as coaching aides how
to lie when questioned. And most alarming, as it turned out, the Watergate
burglary was merely one small part of a larger pattern of corruption and
criminality sanctioned by the Nixon White House.
For all of his abilities and accomplishments, Nixon was a chronically inse-
cure person with a thirst for vengeance and a hair-trigger temper. The
vicious partisanship of the sixties fueled his paranoia. As president, he began
keeping lists of political enemies and launched secret efforts to embarrass
and punish them. In 1970, after the New York Times had disclosed that secret
American bombings in Cambodia had been going on for years, a furious
Nixon ordered illegal telephone taps on several journalists and government
employees suspected of leaking the story. The covert activity against the
1388 • REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S (CH. 32)

press and critics of Nixon’s Vietnam policies increased in 1971, during the
crisis generated by the publication of the classified Pentagon Papers, when a
team of burglars under the direction of White House adviser John Ehrlich-
man broke into Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office in an effort to obtain
damaging information on Ellsberg, the man who had given the Pentagon
Papers to the press. By the spring of 1972, Ehrlichman was overseeing a
team of “dirty tricksters” who performed various acts of sabotage against
Democrats—for example, falsely accusing Senators Hubert H. Humphrey
and Henry Jackson of sexual improprieties, forging press releases, setting off
stink bombs at Democratic campaign events, and planting spies on the
McGovern campaign plane. By the time of the Watergate break-in in June,
the money to finance these pranks was being illegally collected through
CREEP and had been placed under the control of the White House staff.
Nixon and his White House aides tried to cover-up the Watergate break-in.
They secretly paid the burglars to keep quiet as they waited for trial. “They have
to be paid,” Nixon insisted. And he discussed pardoning them after they were
convicted. Nixon aides also began destroying evidence not only of the Water-
gate break-in but other “dirty tricks” ordered by the White House. By January
1973, when the burglars were convicted, it appeared that the cover-up had
worked, but in following months the conspiracy unraveled as various people,
including John Dean, legal counsel to the president, began to cooperate with
Senate investigators and later Justice Department prosecutors. At the same
time, two reporters for the Washington Post, Carl Bernstein and Bob Wood-
ward, relentlessly pursued the story and its money trail. It unraveled further in
1973 when L. Patrick Gray, acting director of the FBI, resigned after confessing
that he had confiscated and destroyed several incriminating documents.
On April 30, Ehrlichman and Haldeman resigned (they would later serve
time in prison, as would John Dean and former attorney general John
Mitchell), together with Attorney General Richard Kleindienst. A few days
later, the president nervously assured the public in a television address, “I am
not a crook.” Then John Dean, whom Nixon had dismissed because of his
cooperation with prosecutors, testified to the Ervin committee in the Senate
over the course of five riveting days, revealing that there had been a White
House–orchestrated cover-up approved by the president. Nixon, meanwhile,
refused to provide Senator Ervin’s committee with documents it requested,
citing “executive privilege” to protect national security. In another shocking
disclosure, a White House aide told the Ervin committee that Nixon had
installed a taping system in the Oval Office of the White House and that
many of the conversations about the Watergate cover-up had been recorded.
That bombshell revelation set off a yearlong legal battle for the “Nixon
tapes.” Harvard law professor Archibald Cox, whom Nixon’s new attorney
 Watergate • 1389

general, Elliot Richardson, had

appointed as special prosecutor to
investigate the Watergate case,
took the president to court in
October 1973 to obtain the tapes.
Nixon refused to release the
recordings and ordered Cox fired.
In what became known as the Sat-
urday Night Massacre, on October
20 Attorney General Elliot
Richardson and Deputy Attorney
General William Ruckelshaus
resigned rather than fire the spe-
cial prosecutor. Solicitor General
Robert Bork finally fired Cox.
Nixon’s dismissal of Cox (“that
fucking Harvard professor”) pro-
duced a firestorm of public indig-
nation. Numerous newspaper and
magazine editorials, as well as The unraveling
a growing chorus of legislators,
Fired Deputy Attorney General William
called for the president to be Ruckelshaus discusses Watergate during
impeached for obstructing justice. A an interview.
Gallup poll revealed that Nixon’s
approval rating had plunged to 17 percent, the lowest level any president had
ever experienced.
The firing of Cox failed to end Nixon’s legal troubles. Cox’s replacement
as special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, also took the president to court. In
March 1974 the Watergate grand jury indicted John Ehrlichman, Bob Halde-
man, and John Mitchell for obstruction of justice and named Nixon as an
“unindicted co-conspirator.” On April 30, Nixon, still refusing to turn over
the actual Oval Office tapes, released 1,254 pages of transcribed recordings
that he had edited himself, often substituting the phrase “expletive deleted”
for the vulgar language and anti-Semitic rants he had frequently unleashed. At
one point in the transcripts the president told his aides that they should have
frequent memory lapses when testifying about the cover-up. The transcripts
provoked widespread shock and revulsion as well as renewed demands for
the president to resign. By the summer of 1974, Nixon was in full retreat,
besieged on all fronts. He became alternately combative, melancholy, or
petty. During White House visits, Henry Kissinger found the besieged presi-
dent increasingly unstable and drinking heavily. Alcohol made Nixon even
1390 • REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S (CH. 32)

more surly and combative, and he drank a lot. After a meeting with Nixon,
Senator Barry Goldwater reported that the president “jabbered incessantly,
often incoherently.” He seemed “to be cracking.”
For months, the drama of Watergate transfixed Americans. Each day they
watched the televised Ervin committee hearings as if they were daytime soap
operas. On July 24, 1974, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously, in United
States v. Richard M. Nixon, that the president must surrender all of the tape
recordings. A few days later, the House Judiciary Committee voted to recom-
mend three articles of impeachment: obstruction of justice through the pay-
ment of “hush money” to witnesses and the withholding of evidence, abuse
of power through the use of federal agencies to deprive citizens of their con-
stitutional rights, and defiance of Congress by withholding the tapes. But
before the House of Representatives could meet to vote on impeachment,
Nixon grudgingly handed over the complete set of White House tapes.
Investigators then learned that sections of certain recordings were missing,
including eighteen minutes of a key conversation in June 1972 during which
Nixon first mentioned the Watergate burglary. The president’s loyal secre-
tary tried to accept blame for the erasure, claiming that she had accidentally
pushed the wrong button, but technical experts later concluded that the
missing segments had been intentionally deleted. The other transcripts,
however, provided more than enough evidence of Nixon’s involvement in
the cover-up. At one point, the same president who had been the architect of
détente with the Soviet Union and the recognition of Communist China had
yelled at aides asking what they and others should say to Watergate investi-
gators, “I don’t give a shit what happens. I want you all to stonewall it, let
them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover-up or anything else, if it’ll save it,
save the plan.” In early August 1974, Barry Goldwater, the elder statesman of
the Republican party, said that “Nixon should get his ass out of the White
House—today.”
On August 9, 1974, Richard Nixon resigned from office, the only president
ever to do so. Crowds outside the White House chanted “Jail to the Chief!” In
1969, Nixon had begun his presidency hoping to heal America, to “bring
people together.” He left the presidency having deeply wounded the nation.
The credibility gap between the presidency and the public that had devel-
oped under Lyndon B. Johnson had become a chasm under Nixon, as the
Watergate revelations fueled a widespread cynicism about the integrity of
politics and politicians. Nixon had earlier claimed that “virtue is not what
lifts great leaders above others” and insisted that a president’s actions could
not be “illegal.” He was wrong. The Watergate affair’s clearest lesson was that
not even a president is above the law.
 Watergate • 1391

T H E E F F E C T S O F WAT E R -
G AT E Vice President Spiro
Agnew did not succeed Nixon
because he had been forced to
resign in October 1973 for hav-
ing accepted bribes from con-
tractors before and during his
term as vice president. The vice
president at the time of Nixon’s
resignation was Gerald Ford,
the congenial former Michigan
congressman and House minor-
ity leader whom Nixon had
appointed, with the approval of
Congress, under the provisions
of the Twenty-fifth Amendment. Nixon’s resignation
Ratified in 1967, the amend-
Having resigned his office, Richard M. Nixon
ment provided for the appoint- waves farewell outside the White House on
ment of a vice president when August 9, 1974.
the office became vacant. On
August 9, 1974, Gerald Ford was sworn in as the nation’s first politically
appointed chief executive.
President Ford was a decent, honorable man who found himself in over his
head in the White House. A ponderous speaker with no charisma, he admitted
that he was a “Ford, not a Lincoln.” Lyndon B. Johnson had been more brutal
in describing Ford, the former football star at the University of Michigan:
“Gerry Ford is a nice guy, but he played too much football with his helmet off.”
Ford assumed the presidency by reassuring the nation that “our long
nightmare is over.” But restoring national harmony was not so easy. Tensions
over racial and gender issues spawned ongoing battles in a variety of “culture
wars” that erupted over incendiary issues such as gay rights, affirmative
action, busing to achieve integrated schools, religious beliefs, and abortion.
Only a month after taking office, Ford reopened the wounds of Watergate by
issuing a “full, free, and absolute pardon” to a despondent Richard Nixon.
Many Americans, however, were not in a forgiving mood when it came to
Nixon’s devious scheming. The announcement of Ford’s pardon of Nixon
ignited a storm of controversy. The new president was grilled by a House
subcommittee wanting to know if he and Nixon had made a deal whereby
Nixon would resign and Ford would become president if Ford granted the
pardon. Ford steadfastly denied such charges and said that nothing was to be
1392 • REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S (CH. 32)

gained by putting Nixon in prison, but the Nixon pardon hobbled Ford’s
presidency. His approval rating plummeted from 71 percent to 49 percent in
one day, the steepest drop ever recorded. Even the president’s press secretary
resigned in protest. Ford was devastated by the “hostile reaction” to the par-
don; he never recovered the public’s confidence.
If there was a silver lining in the dark cloud of Watergate, it was the vigor
and resilience of the institutions that had brought a rogue president to
justice—the press, Congress, the courts, and an aroused public opinion.
Congress responded to the Watergate revelations with several pieces of legisla-
tion designed to curb executive power. Already nervous about possible efforts
to renew American military assistance to South Vietnam, the Democratic-led
Congress passed the War Powers Act (1973), which requires a president to
inform Congress within forty-eight hours if U.S. troops are deployed in com-
bat abroad and to withdraw troops after sixty days unless Congress specifically
approves their stay. In an effort to correct abuses in the use of campaign funds,
Congress enacted legislation in 1974 that set new ceilings on political cam-
paign contributions and expenditures. And in reaction to the Nixon claim of
“executive privilege” as a means of withholding evidence, Congress strength-
ened the 1966 Freedom of Information Act to require prompt responses to
requests for information from government files and to place on government
agencies the burden of proof for classifying information as secret.
With Richard Nixon’s resignation, the nation had weathered a profound
constitutional crisis, but the aftershock of the Watergate episode produced a
deep sense of disillusionment with the so-called imperial presidency. Apart
from Nixon’s illegal actions, the vulgar language he used in the White House
and made public on the tape recordings stripped away the veil of majesty
surrounding national leaders and left even the die-hard defenders of presi-
dential authority shocked at the crudity and duplicity of Nixon and his sub-
ordinates. From prison, Bob Haldeman insisted that Nixon carried “greatness
in him,” but the former chief of staff admitted that the fallen president had a
“dirty, mean, base side” and “a terrible temper.” Nixon, he concluded, was
a “coldly calculating, devious, [and] craftily manipulative” character who
was “the weirdest man ever to live in the White House.”

AN UNELECTED PRESIDENT

During Richard Nixon’s last year in office, the Watergate crisis so dom-
inated national politics that major domestic and foreign problems received
little executive attention. Stagflation, the perplexing combination of inflation
 An Unelected President • 1393

and recession, worsened, as did the oil crisis. At the same time, Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger, who assumed virtual control of foreign policy, watched
helplessly as the South Vietnamese forces crumbled before North Vietnamese
attacks, attempted with limited success to establish a framework for peace in
the Middle East, and supported a CIA role in the overthrow of Salvador
Allende Gossens, the popularly elected Marxist president of Chile, although
neither Nixon nor Kissinger ever explained why a leftist government in Chile
constituted a threat to the United States. Allende was subsequently murdered
and replaced by General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, a ruthless military dictator
supposedly friendly to the United States.

THE FORD YEARS As president, Gerald Ford soon adopted the posture
he had developed as the minority leader in the House of Representatives:
naysaying leader of the opposition who believed that the federal government
exercised too much power. In
his first fifteen months as presi-
dent, Ford vetoed thirty-nine
bills passed by the Democratic
Congress, thereby outstripping
Herbert Hoover’s veto record in
less than half the time. By resist-
ing congressional pressure to
reduce taxes and increase fed-
eral spending, he helped steer
the struggling economy into the
deepest recession since the
Great Depression. Unemploy-
ment jumped to 9 percent in
1975, the annual rate of infla-
tion had reached double digits,
and the federal budget deficit
hit a record the next year. Ford
announced that inflation had
become “Public Enemy No. 1,”
but he rejected bold actions
such as implementing wage and
price controls to curb inflation, Gerald Ford
preferring instead a timid public Ford listens apprehensively to the rising rates
relations campaign, created by of unemployment and inflation at an eco-
an advertising agency, featuring nomic conference in 1974.
1394 • REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S (CH. 32)

lapel buttons that simply read WIN, symbolizing the administration’s publicity
campaign to “Whip Inflation Now.” The WIN buttons instead became a
national joke and a popular symbol of Ford’s ineffectiveness in the fight against
stagflation. He himself admitted that it was a failed “gimmick.” By 1975, when
Ford delivered his State of the Union address, the president lamely admitted
that “the state of the union is not good.”
In foreign policy, Ford retained Henry Kissinger as secretary of state
(while stripping him of his dual role of national security advisor) and
attempted to continue Nixon’s goals of stability in the Middle East, rap-
prochement with China, and détente with the Soviet Union. In addition,
Kissinger’s tireless Middle East diplomacy produced an important agree-
ment: Israel promised to return to Egypt most of the Sinai territory captured
in the 1967 War, and the two nations agreed to rely upon negotiations rather
than force to settle future disagreements. These limited but significant
achievements should have enhanced Ford’s image, but they were drowned in
the sea of criticism and carping that followed the collapse of South Vietnam
to the Communists in May 1975.

THE COLLAPSE OF SOUTH VIETNAM On March 29, 1973, the last

U.S. combat troops left Vietnam. On that same day, almost six hundred
American prisoners of war, most of them downed pilots, were released from
Hanoi. Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Within months
of the U.S. withdrawal, however, the cease-fire in Vietnam collapsed, the war
between North and South resumed, and the Communist forces gained the
upper hand. In Cambodia (renamed the Khmer Republic after it fell to the
Communists and now called Kampuchea) and Laos, where fighting had been
more sporadic, a Communist victory also seemed inevitable. In 1975, the
North Vietnamese launched a full-scale invasion, and South Vietnamese
president Thieu appealed to Washington for the promised U.S. assistance.
Congress refused. The much-mentioned “peace with honor” had proved to
be, in the words of one CIA official, only a “decent interval”—enough time
for the United States to extricate itself from Vietnam before the collapse of
the South Vietnamese government. On April 30, 1975, Americans watched
on television as North Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon, soon to be
renamed Ho Chi Minh City, and helicopters lifted the U.S. embassy officials
to ships waiting offshore. In those desperate, chaotic final moments, terri-
fied South Vietnamese fought to get on board the departing helicopters, for
they knew that the Communists would be merciless victors.
The longest, most controversial, and least successful war in American his-
tory was finally over, leaving in its wake a bitter legacy. During the period of
 An Unelected President • 1395

U.S. involvement in the fighting, almost 2 million combatants and civilians

were killed on both sides. North Vietnam absorbed incredible losses—some
600,000 soldiers and countless civilians killed. More than 58,000 Americans
died in Vietnam, 300,000 were wounded, 2,500 were declared missing, almost
100,000 returned missing one or more limbs, and over 150,000 combat vet-
erans suffered drug or alcohol addiction or severe psychological disorders.
Most of the Vietnam veterans readjusted well to civilian life, but even they
carried for years the stigma of a lost war.
The “loss” of the war and revelations of American atrocities such as those
at My Lai eroded respect for the military so thoroughly that many young
people came to regard military service as corrupting and ignoble. The Viet-
nam War, initially described as a crusade on behalf of democratic ideals,
instead suggested that democracy was not easily transferable to third world
regions that lacked any historical experience with representative govern-
ment. Fought to show the world that the United States would be steadfast in
containing the spread of communism, the war instead sapped the national

Panic amid the withdrawal from Saigon

Soldiers block people from climbing over the walls of the U.S. embassy in Saigon,
South Vietnam, in 1975. South Vietnamese were seeking to flee before the
Communist forces seized the city.
1396 • REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S (CH. 32)

will and fragmented the national consensus that had governed foreign
affairs since 1947. It also changed the balance of power in domestic politics.
Not only did the war undermine Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency; it also cre-
ated enduring fissures in the Democratic party. As anti-war senator and
1972 Democratic presidential candidate George S. McGovern said, “The
Vietnam tragedy is at the root of the confusion and division of the Demo-
cratic party. It tore up our souls.”
Not only had a decade of American effort in Vietnam proved futile, but
the fall of Vietnam to communism also undermined the “domino theory”
that had long undergirded America’s containment doctrine. Instead of Viet-
nam toppling all of the other nations in the region, Communism proved not
to be the monolithic force feared by American presidents since Truman.
Within a year after taking control of the South, the Vietnamese Communists
were at war with the Cambodian Communists, and in 1978 Vietnam would
be fighting Communist China.
The Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian Communist movement, plunged that
country into a colossal bloodbath. The maniacal Khmer Rouge leaders orga-
nized a genocidal campaign to destroy their opponents, killing almost a
third of the total population. Meanwhile, the OPEC oil cartel was threaten-
ing another worldwide boycott, and various third world nations denounced
the United States as a depraved and declining imperialist power. Ford lost his
patience when he sent marines to rescue the crew of the American merchant
ship Mayaguez, which had been captured by the Cambodian Communists.
This vigorous move won popular acclaim until it was disclosed that the
Cambodians had already agreed to release the captured Americans: the
forty-one Americans killed in the operation had died for no purpose.

THE ELECTION OF 1976 Amid years of turmoil, both national par-

ties were in disarray as they prepared for the 1976 presidential election. At
the Republican Convention, Gerald Ford had to fend off a powerful chal-
lenge for the nomination from the darling of the conservative wing of the
party, Ronald Reagan, a former two-term California governor and Hollywood
actor. Nixon mistakenly told Ford that Reagan was “a lightweight and not
someone to be considered seriously or feared.” But Reagan’s candidacy was
hurt when Barry Goldwater endorsed Ford’s candidacy. The fractured Demo-
crats chose an obscure former naval officer and engineer turned peanut
farmer who had served one term as governor of Georgia. James Earl (Jimmy)
Carter Jr. represented the new moderate wing of the Democratic party. He was
one of several Democratic southern governors who self-consciously sought
to reorient their party away from runaway liberalism. Carter insisted that he
 An Unelected President • 1397

was neither a liberal nor a conservative but a manager who would be adept
at getting the “right thing” done in the “right ways.” He capitalized on the
post-Watergate cynicism by promising that he would “never tell a lie to the
American people.” Carter also trumpeted the advantages of his being a polit-
ical “outsider” whose inexperience in Washington politics would be an asset
to a nation still reeling from the Watergate debacle. Carter was certainly dif-
ferent from conventional candidates. Jaded political reporters covering the
presidential campaign marveled at a Southern Baptist candidate who claimed
to be “born again.”
To the surprise of many pundits, the little-known Carter revived the New
Deal voter coalition of southern whites, blacks, urban labor unionists, and
ethnic groups to eke out a narrow win over Ford. Carter had 41 million votes
to Ford’s 39 million. A heavy turnout of African Americans in the South
enabled Carter to sweep every state in the region except Virginia. Carter also
benefited from the appeal of Walter F. Mondale, his liberal running mate and
a favorite among northern blue-collar workers and the urban poor. Carter
lost most of the trans-Mississippi West, but no Democratic candidate had
made much headway there since Harry S. Truman in 1948. The significant
story of the election was the low voter turnout. “Neither Ford nor Carter
won as many votes as Mr. Nobody,” said one reporter, commenting on the
fact that almost half the eligible voters, apparently alienated by Watergate,
the stagnant economy, and the two lackluster candidates, chose to sit out the
election.
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Rebellion and Reaction Civil rights activism was the catalyst for a heightened
interest in social causes during the sixties, especially among the young. Students
for a Democratic Society (SDS) launched the New Left. Other prominent causes
of the era included the anti-war movement, the women’s liberation movement,
Native American rights, Hispanic rights, and gay rights. By 1970 a countercul-
ture had emerged, featuring young people who used mind-altering drugs, lived
on rural communes, and in other ways “dropped out” of the conventional world,
which they viewed as corrupt.
• End of the Vietnam War In 1968, Richard Nixon campaigned for the presi-
dency pledging to secure a “peace with honor” in Vietnam, but years would pass
before the war ended. His delays prompted an acceleration of anti-war protests.
After the Kent State University shootings, the divisions between supporters and
opponents of the war became especially contentious. The publication of the
Pentagon Papers in 1971 and the heavy bombing of North Vietnam by the
United States in December 1972 aroused intense worldwide protests. A month
later North and South Vietnam agreed to end the war. The last U.S. troops left
Vietnam in March 1973; two years later the government of South Vietnam
collapsed, and the country was reunited under a Communist government.
• Watergate In an incident in 1972, burglars were caught breaking into the
Democratic campaign headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington,
D.C. Eventually the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) was
implicated, and investigators began to probe the question of President Nixon’s
involvement. Nixon tried to block the judicial process, which led the public to
call for the president to be impeached for obstruction of justice. In 1974, in
United States v. Richard M. Nixon, the Supreme Court ruled that the president
had to surrender the so-called Watergate tapes. Nixon resigned to avoid being
impeached.
• Middle East Crisis After the 1973 Yom Kippur War in the Middle East, the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) declined to sell oil to
nations supporting Israel. President Carter brokered the Camp David Accords of
1978, which laid the groundwork for a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.
 CHRONOLOGY

1960

1963
March 1969
U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves the birth-
control pill
Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique is published
U.S. planes begin a fourteen-month-long bombing campaign
aimed at Communist sanctuaries in Cambodia
1971 Ratification of the Twenty-sixth Amendment gives eighteen-
year-olds the right to vote in all elections
1972–74 The Watergate scandal unfolds
January 1973 In Paris, the United States, North and South Vietnam, and the
Viet Cong agree to restore peace in Vietnam
1973 Congress passes the War Powers Act
April 1975 Saigon falls to the North Vietnamese

KEY TERMS & NAMES

the counterculture p. 1356 Henry Kissinger p. 1368 Pentagon Papers p. 1379

Woodstock p. 1357 stagflation p. 1375 détente p. 1383

Cesar Chavez p. 1364 Vietnamization p. 1378 Watergate p. 1387

American Indian Movement My Lai Massacre p. 1379 Gerald Ford p. 1391

(AIM) p. 1365
Kent State p. 1379
Richard M. Nixon p. 1367

33
A C O N S E RVAT I V E
REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• What explains the rise of Ronald Reagan and Republican

conservatism?
• What was the Iran-Contra affair, and what did it show about
the nature of the executive branch of government, even after
Watergate?
• What factors led to the end of the cold war?
• What characterized the economy and society in the eighties?
• What were the causes of the First Gulf War?

D uring the seventies, America began to lose its self-

confidence. The failed Vietnam War, the sordid revela-
tions of Watergate, and the explosion in oil prices, interest/
mortgage rates, and inflation revealed the limits of American power, pros-
perity, and virtue. For a nation long accustomed to economic growth and
spreading affluence, the frustrating persistence of stagflation undermined
national optimism. At the same time, the growing environmental movement
highlighted the damages imposed by runaway pollution and unregulated
development on the nation’s air, water, and other natural resources. In short,
people during the seventies began downsizing their expectations of the
American Dream. Out with the global interventionism required by the
efforts to “contain” and “roll back” communism, in with the isolationism
spawned by what became known as the Vietnam Syndrome—a reluctance to
intervene militarily around the world. Out with gas-guzzling U.S.-produced
Cadillacs, in with economical Toyotas made in Japan. Out with the “imperial
presidency,” in with honesty, transparency, humility at home, and hesitancy
abroad.
 The Carter Presidency • 1401

T H E C A RT E R P R E S I D E N C Y

James (Jimmy) Earl Carter Jr. won the very close election of 1976 for
two primary reasons: he convinced voters that he was an incorruptible “out-
sider” who would restore integrity and honesty to the presidency in the
aftermath of the Watergate scandal (his campaign slogan was “I’ll never tell a
lie”), and he represented a new generation of “moderate” southern Demo-
cratic leaders who were committed to fiscal responsibility rather than “big
government.” As he stressed in his 1977 inaugural address, “We have learned
that ‘more’ is not necessarily ‘better,’ that even our great nation has limits.”
He did not heed his own remarks, however. Instead of focusing on a few
top priorities, Carter tried to do too much too fast. He confessed in his diary
that he found it “impossible” not to address “something I see needs to be
done.” In the end, his indiscriminate activism would be his undoing. Carter’s
inexperience in Washington politics often translated into incompetence,
and his relentless moralizing depressed rather than excited the public mood. By
the end of the decade, Carter’s painful failure of leadership and his gloomy
sermonizing would give way to
Ronald Reagan’s uplifting conser-
vative crusade to restore Ameri-
can greatness.
Jimmy Carter suffered the
fate of all presidents since John F.
Kennedy: after an initial honey-
moon, during which he dis-
played folksy charm by walking
with his wife Rosalynn down
Pennsylvania Avenue after his
inauguration rather than riding
in a limousine, his popularity
waned as his political ineffec-
tiveness soared. Like Gerald
Ford before him, Carter faced
vexing domestic problems and
formidable international chal-
lenges. He was expected to cure
The Carter Administration
the recession and reduce infla-
President Jimmy Carter and his wife,
tion at a time when all indus- Rosalynn, forgo the traditional limousine
trial economies were shaken by and walk down Pennsylvania Avenue after
a shortage of oil and confidence. the inauguration, January 20, 1977.
1402 • A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990 (CH. 33)

Carter was also expected to restore American stature abroad, and lift the
national spirit through a set of political institutions in which many people had
lost faith. Meeting such expectations would be miraculous, but Carter, for all
of his “almost arrogant self-confidence,” was no miracle worker.
Still, during the first two years of his presidency, Carter enjoyed several suc-
cesses. His administration included more African Americans and women
than ever before. Carter fulfilled a controversial campaign pledge by offering
amnesty to the thousands of young men who had fled the country rather than
serve in Vietnam. He reorganized the executive branch and reduced govern-
ment red tape by slowing the issuance of burdensome new regulations and
creating two new cabinet-level agencies, the departments of Energy and Edu-
cation. He also pushed through Congress several significant environmental
initiatives, including more stringent regulations of strip coal mining, the cre-
ation of a $1.6 billion “Superfund” to clean up toxic chemical waste sites, and a
proposal to protect over 100 million acres of Alaskan land from development.
But success was short-lived. As president, the bright, energetic Carter was
his own worst enemy. By nature, he was a humorless technocrat rather than
an inspiring leader, a compulsive micro-manager so fixated on details that
he was unable to establish a compelling vision for the nation’s future.
Although he promised to make government “competent, economical, and
efficient,” he himself displayed none of those virtues. He tried to do every-
thing at once rather than establish clear priorities. As a result, Carter got
bogged down in minutiae and was unable to focus on strategic issues. He
was so self-absorbed that he kept a detailed daily diary of everything he did,
and he felt compelled to continue teaching a weekly Sunday Bible study class
as president. He even insisted on scheduling who could play on the White
House tennis court. At the same time, Carter’s “born-again” religious faith
translated into bouts of prolonged soul-searching that palsied his ability to
make confident decisions. Although the sanctimonious Carter prayed for
divine guidance as much as twenty-five times a day, he lacked steadiness of
purpose. The West German chancellor once described the humorless Carter
as “a man who never stopped searching his soul and tended repeatedly to
change his mind.” Jacqueline Kennedy, the widow of John F. Kennedy,
described Carter as a “stiff, prissy little man.”
As a self-defined “Washington outsider,” Carter recruited most of his staff
and many of his cabinet members from the people he had worked with in
Georgia while serving as govenor. Joseph Lester (Jody) Powell Jr., the new
press secretary, boasted to reporters that “this government is going to be run
by people you’ve never heard of.” The eccentric White House staffers and
 The Carter Presidency • 1403

cabinet members who constituted what journalists called the “Georgia mafia,”
like the president, lacked experience and expertise at a national level. And it
showed. Only too late did Carter acknowledge that he needed the wisdom of
Washington insiders. In December 1977, the president admitted that he had
not “learned yet” how to manage the political process. Thomas Phillip (Tip)
O’Neill Jr., the veteran Democratic Speaker of the House, came to despise
Carter’s Georgia staffers. “They were all parochial,” he said in frustration.
“They were incompetent. They came in with a chip on their shoulder against
the entrenched politicians. Washington to them was evil. They were going to
change everything and didn’t understand the rudiments of it.”
Carter’s political naïveté surfaced in the protracted debate over energy pol-
icy. He insisted that managing the energy crisis was the nation’s (and his)
greatest challenge. It constituted what he called the “moral equivalent of war,”
borrowing the phrase from the nineteenth-century philosopher William
James. But Carter chose to keep Congress in the dark as he and a few close
advisers developed his national energy program. Carter disliked stroking
legislators or wheeling and dealing to get legislation passed. When he pre-
sented his energy bill to the Congress, it contained 113 separate initiatives. It
was a miscellany, not a program, providing a little of everything and much of
nothing. Tip O’Neill leafed through the five volumes making up the bill and
groaned. Carter’s energy package was also not well received in the Senate. As
a result, the energy bill that the president signed in 1978 was a gutted version
of the original, reflecting the power of special-interest lobbyists representing
the oil, gas, and automotive industries. One Carter aide said that the bill
looked like it had been “nibbled to death by ducks.” The clumsy political
maneuvers that plagued Carter and his inexperienced aides repeatedly frus-
trated the president’s earnest efforts to remedy the energy crisis. Carter
wrote later in his memoirs that his effort to galvanize the nation behind a
comprehensive energy policy was like “chewing on a rock that lasted the
whole four years.” A journalist pointed out that the acronym for Carter’s
“moral equivalent of war” was, fittingly, “MEOW.”

C A R T E R A N D H U M A N R I G H T S Several of Carter’s early foreign-

policy initiatives also got caught in political crossfires. Soon after his inaugura-
tion, Carter revived the idealistic spirit of Woodrow Wilson’s internationalism
when he vowed that “the soul of our foreign policy” should be the defense of
human rights abroad. “Our commitment to human rights must be absolute.”
It was a noble goal, nobly stated. But as was true of Wilson’s idealistic cru-
sade, Carter’s campaign for universal human rights abroad was wildly
1404 • A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990 (CH. 33)

impractical and largely a failure. Over time, the gap between the idealistic
goals and the actual achievements of Carter’s foreign policy became a
chasm. He decided to cut off aid to nations that chronically violated basic
human rights. This human rights campaign aroused opposition from two
sides, however: those who feared it sacrificed a detached appraisal of
national interest for high-level moralizing, and those who believed that
human rights were important but that the administration was applying the
standard inconsistently to different nations.
Similarly, Carter’s heroic negotiation of treaties to turn over control of the
Panama Canal to the Panamanian government generated intense criticism.
Although former Republican presidents Ford and Nixon, as well as Henry
Kissinger, endorsed Carter’s efforts, Ronald Reagan, knowing little about the
history of America’s involvement in Panama, claimed that the Canal Zone
was sovereign American soil purchased “fair and square” during Theodore
Roosevelt’s administration. “We bought it, we paid for it, it’s ours,” he told
cheering crowds, “and we’re going to keep it.”(In the congressional debate,
one senator quipped, “We stole it fair and square, so why can’t we keep it?”)
Carter argued that the limitations on U.S. influence in Latin America and
the deep resentment of American colonialism in Panama left the United
States with no other choice but to transfer the canal to Panama. The ten-mile
wide, fifty-mile long Canal Zone would revert to Panama in stages, with
completion of the process in 1999. The Senate ratified the treaties by a
paper-thin margin (68 to 32, two votes more than the required two thirds),
but conservatives lambasted Carter for surrendering American authority in
a critical part of the world.

T H E C A M P DAV I D AC C O R D S Carter’s crowning foreign-policy achieve-

ment, which even his most bitter critics applauded, was his brokering of a
peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. In 1977, Egyptian president
Anwar el-Sadat flew to Tel Aviv to speak to the Israeli parliament at the invi-
tation of Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin. Sadat’s bold act, and his
accompanying announcement that Egypt was willing to recognize the legiti-
macy of the Israeli state, opened up diplomatic opportunities that Carter
and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance quickly pursued.
In 1978, Carter invited Sadat and Begin to the presidential retreat at
Camp David, in Maryland, for two weeks of difficult negotiations. The first
part of the eventual agreement called for Israel to return all land in the Sinai
in exchange for Egyptian recognition of Israel’s sovereignty. This agreement,
dubbed the Camp David Accords, was implemented in 1982, when the last
Israeli settler vacated the peninsula. But the second part of the agreement,
 The Carter Presidency • 1405

The Camp David Accords

Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat (left), Jimmy Carter (center), and Israeli prime
minister Menachem Begin (right) at the announcement of the Camp David
Accords, September 1978.

calling for Israel to negotiate with Sadat to resolve the Palestinian refugee
dilemma, began to unravel soon after the Camp David summit.
By March 26, 1979, when Begin and Sadat returned to Washington to sign
the formal treaty, Begin had already refused to block new Israeli settlements
on the West Bank of the Jordan River, which Sadat had regarded as a
prospective homeland for the Palestinians. In the wake of the Camp David
Accords, most of the Arab nations condemned Sadat as a traitor. Islamic
extremists assassinated him in 1981. Still, Carter and Vance’s high-level
diplomacy made an all-out war between Israel and the Arab world less likely.

M O U N T I N G T R O U B L E S Carter’s crowning failure, which even his

most avid supporters acknowledged, was his mismanagement of the econ-
omy. In effect, he inherited a bad situation from President Ford and made it
worse. Carter employed the same economic policies as Nixon and Ford to
fight the mystery of stagflation, but he reversed the order of the federal
“cure,” preferring first to fight unemployment with a tax cut and increased
1406 • A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990 (CH. 33)

government spending. Unemployment declined slightly, from 8 to 7 percent

in 1977, but the annual inflation rate soared; at 5 percent when he took
office, it reached 10 percent in 1978 and kept rising. During one month in
1980, it measured 18 percent. Stopping the runaway inflation preoccupied
Carter’s attention, but his efforts made little headway. Like previous presi-
dents, Carter then reversed himself to fight the other side of the economic
malaise: mushrooming federal budget deficits caused by the sagging economy.
By midterm, he was delaying tax reductions and vetoing government spending
programs that he had proposed in his first year. The result was the worst of
both possible worlds: a deepened recession and inflation averaging between
12 and 13 percent per year.
The signing of a controversial new Strategic Arms Limitation Talks treaty
with the Soviets (SALT II) put Carter’s leadership to the test just as the
mounting economic problems made him the subject of biting editorial car-
toons nationwide. The new agreement placed a ceiling of 2,250 bombers and
missiles on each side and set limits on the number of warheads and new
weapons systems each power could assemble. But the proposed SALT II
treaty became moot in 1979 when the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan to
prop up the faltering Communist government there, which was being chal-
lenged by Muslim rebels. To protest the Soviet action, Carter immediately
shelved SALT II, suspended grain shipments to the Soviet Union, and called
for an international boycott of the 1980 Olympics, which were to be held
that summer in Moscow.

I R A N Then came the Iranian crisis, a yearlong cascade of unwelcome

events that epitomized the inability of the United States to control world
affairs and heightened public perceptions of Carter’s weak leadership. The
crisis began in 1979 with the fall of the shah of Iran, a dictatorial ruler whom
Carter had supported in direct violation of his human rights policy. The rev-
olutionaries who toppled the shah’s government rallied around Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini, a fundamentalist Muslim religious leader who symbol-
ized the orthodox Islamic values the shah had tried to replace with Western
ways. Khomeini’s hatred of the United States dated back to the CIA-sponsored
overthrow of the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. Nor did it
help the American image that the CIA had trained SAVAK, the shah’s ruth-
less secret-police force. Late in 1979, Carter allowed the exiled shah to enter
the United States to undergo emergency treatment for cancer. A few days
later, on November 4, a frenzied mob of Iranian youths stormed the U.S.
embassy in Tehran and seized the diplomats and staff. Khomeini endorsed
 The Carter Presidency • 1407

the outrageous mob action and demanded the return of the shah along with
all his wealth in exchange for the release of the fifty-two hostages still
held captive.
Indignant Americans demanded a military response, but Carter’s range of
options was limited. He appealed to the United Nations, but Khomeini
scoffed at UN requests for the release of the hostages. Carter then froze all
Iranian assets in the United States and appealed to U.S. allies to join a trade
embargo of Iran. The trade restrictions were only partially effective—even
America’s most loyal European allies did not want to lose their access to
Iranian oil—so a frustrated and besieged Carter authorized a risky rescue
attempt by commandos in 1980. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance resigned in
protest against the secret mission and Carter’s sharp turn toward a more
hawkish foreign policy. The commando raid was aborted because of heli-
copter failures and ended with eight fatalities on April 25, 1980, when a
helicopter collided with a transport plane in the desert. In hindsight, it was
evident that the botched raid was poorly planned and badly executed,

Tehran, 1979
Iranian militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held fifty-two Americans
hostage for over a year. Here one of the hostages (face covered) is paraded before a
camera.
1408 • A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990 (CH. 33)

hampered by inadequate preparation and training, poor communication,

and cascading equipment failures, all of which led the U.S. military to create
a Joint Special Operation Command to ensure that such problems did not
occur again. Nightly television coverage of the taunting Iranian rebels burn-
ing American flags generated a near obsession with the falling fortunes of
the United States and the fate of the hostages. The end came after 444 days,
on January 20, 1981, when a feckless Carter released several billion dollars of
Iranian assets to ransom the kidnapped hostages. By then however, Ronald
Reagan had been elected president, and Carter was headed into retirement.
President Jimmy Carter and his embattled Democratic administration
hobbled through 1979 and the onset of another presidential campaign sea-
son. The economy remained sluggish, double-digit annual inflation rates
stymied spending, high prices and long waits angered drivers lined up at gas
stations, and failed efforts to free the U.S. hostages in Iran combined to sour
voters on the administration. Carter’s tepid initiatives to slow inflation and
his inability to persuade the nation to embrace his energy-conservation pro-
gram revealed mortal flaws in his reading of the public mood and his under-
standing of legislative politics. That Democratic senator Edward M. Kennedy
of Massachusetts, youngest brother of former President John Kennedy,
chose to challenge Carter for the presidential nomination revealed how
frustrated many Democrats were with their “outsider” president. In 1979,
the inept Carter panicked, asking his entire cabinet to submit letters of resig-
nation, five of which he accepted.
Carter’s inability to galvanize national support for his efforts to deal with
the energy crisis led him to cancel a televised address to the nation on July 5,
1979. He then secluded himself for two weeks at the presidential retreat near
Camp David, Maryland, keeping the media at bay while he meditated and
hosted leaders from all walks of life, asking them for advice. A southern gov-
ernor told the president that “you are not leading this nation—you’re just
managing the government.” Carter eventually concluded that a “crisis of
spirit,” a debilitating “malaise,” was undermining the national will. On July 18,
he gave a much-anticipated televised speech to an expectant nation. Some
100 million people watched as Carter delivered an unusual presidential
address. He sounded more like a minister than a president when he warned
that “this is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and
it is a warning.” Americans, he declared, had strayed from the ideals of the
Founding Fathers: “In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families,
close-knit communities and our faith in God, too many of us now worship
self-indulgence and consumption.” He insisted, however, that “owning
 The Carter Presidency • 1409

things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning.”
Carter’s description of the state of the nation during the seventies may have
been accurate, but his profoundly pessimistic solution was paralyzing rather
than inspiring. He blamed the public rather than his presidency for the
malaise he was describing. “All the legislation in the world can’t fix what’s
wrong with America,” the president concluded, for the nation was suffering
from “a crisis of confidence.”
The unique speech did not convince Congress or much of the public.
A Phoenix, Arizona, newspaper editorial declared that “the nation did not
tune in to Carter [last night] to hear a sermon. It wanted answers. It did not
get them.” By 1980, one of Carter’s closest aides told the president that “lead-
ership is the single biggest weakness in the public’s perception of you. You
are seen to be weak, providing no sense of direction, unsure yourself about
where you want to lead the country.” He was right.
While the lackluster Carter administration was foundering, conservative
Republicans were forging an aggressive plan to win the White House in 1980
and assault runaway “liberalism” in Washington. Those plans centered on
the popularity of plain-speaking Ronald Reagan, the Hollywood actor
turned two-term California governor and prominent political commenta-
tor. Reagan was not a deep thinker, but he was a superb reader of the public
mood, an unabashed patriot, and a committed champion of conservative
principles. He was also charming and cheerful, a genial politician renowned
for his folksy anecdotes and upbeat outlook. Where the self-righteous Carter
denounced the evils of free-enterprise capitalism and scolded Americans to
revive long-forgotten virtues of frugality and simplicity, a sunny Reagan
promised a “revolution of ideas” that would reverse the tide of Democratic
“New Deal liberalism” by unleashing free-enterprise capitalism, restoring
national pride, and regaining international respect.
In contrast to Carter, Reagan insisted that there were “simple answers” to
the complex problems facing the United States, but they were not easy
answers. He pledged to increase military spending, dismantle the “bloated”
federal bureaucracy, respect states’ rights, reduce taxes and regulations, and
in general shrink the role of the federal government. He also wanted to
affirm old-time religious values by banning abortions and reinstituting
prayer in public schools (he ended up doing neither). Reagan’s appeal
derived from his remarkable skill as a public speaker and his steadfast com-
mitment to a few overarching ideas and simple themes. As a true believer
and an able compromiser, he combined the fervor of a revolutionary with
the pragmatism of a diplomat.
1410 • A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990 (CH. 33)

T H E E L E C T I O N O F 1 9 8 0 Voters, including many long-time Demo-

crats, applauded Reagan’s cheery promises to shrink the federal government
and restore prosperity. His “trickle-down,” “supply-side” economic proposals,
soon dubbed “Reaganomics” by supporters and “voodoo economics” by crit-
ics, argued that the stagflation of the seventies had resulted from excessive
income taxes, which weakened incentives for individuals and businesses to
increase productivity, save, and reinvest. The solution was to slash tax rates so
as to boost economic growth by allowing affluent Americans to pay less taxes
and thereby spend more money on consumer goods. For a long-suffering
nation, it was an alluring economic panacea. Voters loved Reagan’s simple
solutions and upbeat personality. “Our optimism,” he said during the cam-
paign, “has once again been turned loose. And all of us recognize that these
people [Jimmy Carter] who kept talking about the age of limits are really
talking about their own limitations, not America’s.”
Reagan was a colorful campaigner who used humor to punctuate his
themes. At one rally, for instance, he quipped: “A recession is when your
neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. A recovery is
when Jimmy Carter loses his.” Reagan scored with voters by repeatedly ask-
ing, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” For his part, Carter
portrayed Reagan as dangerously conservative, implying that his Republican
opponent would roll back civil rights legislation and risk nuclear war against
the Soviet Union. Voters, however, were more concerned with the stagnant
economy. On election day, Reagan swept to a decisive victory, with 489 elec-
toral votes to 49 for Carter, who carried only six states. The popular vote was
44 million (51 percent) for Reagan to Carter’s 35 million (41 percent), with
7 percent going to John Anderson, a moderate Republican who bolted the
party after the conservative Reagan’s nomination and ran on an indepen-
dent ticket. Flush with a sense of power and destiny, President-elect Reagan,
the oldest president ever elected, headed toward Washington with an ener-
getic blueprint for reorienting America.
But however optimistic Ronald Reagan was about America’s future, the
turbulent and often tragic events of the seventies—the Communist con-
quest of South Vietnam, the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s resignation, the
energy shortage and stagflation, the Iranian hostage episode—generated
what Jimmy Carter labeled a “crisis of confidence” that had sapped Amer-
ica’s energy. By 1980, U.S. power and prestige seemed to be on the decline,
the economy remained in a shambles, and the social revolution launched in
the sixties had sparked a backlash of resentment among middle America.
With theatrical timing, Ronald Reagan emerged to tap the growing reservoir
of public frustration and transform his political career into a crusade to
 The Carter Presidency • 1411

WA
9 NH 4
MT ND ME
4 VT 3 4
OR 3 MN
6 ID 10
4 SD WI MI NY MA 14
WY 4 11 21 41
3 RI 4
IA PA CT 8
NV NE 8
5 OH 27 NJ 17
3 UT IL IN 25 WV
CA 4 CO 26 13 DE 3
45 7 KS MO VA MD 10
6 12
7 12 KY 9 DC 3
NC
AZ OK TN 10 13
NM AR SC
6 4 8
6
MS AL GA 8
7 9 12
TX
26 LA
10
FL
HI 17
4

AK THE ELECTION OF 1980 Electoral Vote Popular Vote

3
Ronald Reagan 489 44,000,000
(Republican)
Jimmy Carter 49 35,000,000
(Democrat)

Why was Ronald Reagan an appealing candidate in 1980? What was the impact of
“nonvoting”? Why was there so much voter apathy?

make America “stand tall again.” He told his supporters that there was “a
hunger in this land for a spiritual revival, a return to a belief in moral
absolutes.” The United States, he declared, remained the “greatest country in
the world. We have the talent, we have the drive, we have the imagination.
Now all we need is the leadership.”
Reagan’s ability to make the American people again believe in the great-
ness of their country won him two presidential elections, in 1980 and 1984,
and ensured the victory of his anointed successor, Vice President George H. W.
Bush, in 1988. Just how revolutionary the Reagan era was remains a subject
of intense debate. What cannot be denied, however, is that Ronald Reagan’s
actions and beliefs set the tone for the decade’s political and economic life.
1412 • A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990 (CH. 33)

T H E R E A G A N R E VO L U T I O N

THE MAKING OF A PRESIDENT Born in the drab prairie town of

Tampico, Illinois, in 1911, the son of an often-drunk shoe salesman and a
devout, Bible-quoting mother, Ronald Reagan graduated from tiny Eureka
College in 1932 during the depths of the Great Depression. He first worked
as a radio sportscaster before starting a movie career in Hollywood in 1937.
He appeared in thirty-one films before serving three years in the army
during the Second World War, making training films. At that time, as he
recalled, he was a Democrat, “a New Dealer to the core” who voted for
Franklin D. Roosevelt four times. After the war, Reagan became president of
the acting profession’s union, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). His leadership
of SAG honed his negotiating skills and intensified his anti-communism as
he fended off efforts to infiltrate the union. He learned “from firsthand
experience how Communists used lies, deceit, violence, or any other tactic
that suited them.” Reagan had campaigned for Harry S. Truman in the 1948
presidential election, but during the fifties he decided that federal taxes
were too high. In 1960 he campaigned as a Democrat for Richard Nixon,
and two years later he joined the
Republican party. Reagan achieved
stardom in 1964 when he delivered a
rousing speech on national television
on behalf of Barry Goldwater’s presi-
dential candidacy.
Republican conservatives found in
Ronald Reagan a new idol, whose
appeal survived the defeat of Goldwater
in 1964. Those who dismissed the for-
mer actor as a mental midget under-
rated his many virtues, including the
importance of his years in front of a
camera. Politics is a performing art, all
the more so in an age of television, and
few if any others in public life had Rea-
gan’s stage presence. Blessed with a bari-
tone voice and a wealth of entertaining
“The Great Communicator” stories, he was a superb speaker who
Ronald Reagan in 1980, shortly before charmed audiences. Wealthy admirers
his election. convinced Reagan to run for governor
 The Reagan Revolution • 1413

of California in 1966, and he won by a landslide. As a two-term governor,

Reagan displayed flexible practicality in working with Democrats in the state
legislature.

THE RISE OF THE “ N E W R I G H T ” By the eve of the 1980 election,

Reagan had benefited from demographic developments that made his con-
servative vision of America a major asset. The 1980 census revealed that the
proportion of the population over age sixty-five was soaring and moving
from the Midwest and the Northeast to the sunbelt states of the South and
the West. Fully 90 percent of the nation’s total population growth during the
eighties occurred in southern or western states. These population shifts
forced a massive redistricting of the House of Representatives, with Florida,
California, and Texas gaining seats and northern states such as New York losing
them. The sunbelt states were attractive not only because of their mild cli-
mate; they also had the lowest tax rates in the nation, the highest rates of eco-
nomic growth, and growing numbers of evangelical Christians and retirees.
Such attributes also made the sunbelt states fertile ground for the Republican
party. This dual development—an increase in the number of senior citizens
and the steady relocation of a significant portion of the population to conser-
vative regions of the country, where hostility to “big government” was deeply
rooted—meant that demographics were carrying the United States toward
Reagan’s conservative political philosophy.
A related development during the seventies was a burgeoning tax revolt
that swept across the nation as a result of the prolonged inflationary spiral.
Inflation increased home values, which in turn brought a dramatic spike in
property taxes. In California, Reagan’s home state, voters organized a mas-
sive grassroots taxpayer revolt. Skyrocketing property taxes threatened to
force many working-class people from their homes. The solution? Cut back
on the size and cost of government to enable reductions in property taxes. In
June 1978, tax rebels in California, with Reagan’s support, succeeded in get-
ting Proposition 13 on the state ballot. An overwhelming majority of voters—
both Republicans and Democrats—approved the measure, which slashed
property taxes by 57 percent and amended the state constitution to make
raising taxes much more difficult. The tax revolt in California soon spread
across the nation as other states passed measures similar to California. The
New York Times compared the phenomenon to a “modern Boston Tea Party.”

THE MORAL MAJORITY The tax revolt fed into a national conserva-
tive resurgence that benefited from a massive revival of evangelical religion
1414 • A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990 (CH. 33)

whose leaders sought to influence social and political change at the local and
national levels. By the eighties, religious conservatism was no longer a local
or provincial phenomenon. Catholic conservatives and Protestant evangeli-
cals now owned television and radio stations, operated numerous schools
and universities, and organized “mega-churches” in the sprawling suburbs,
where they served as animating centers of social activity and spiritual life.
A survey in 1977 revealed that more than 50 million Americans described
themselves as “born-again Christians.” And religious conservatives formed
the strongest grassroots movement of the late twentieth century. During the
seventies and eighties, they launched a cultural crusade against the forces of
secularism and liberalism.
The Reverend Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority (later renamed the Liberty
Alliance), formed in 1979, expressed the major political and social goals of
the religious right wing: the economy should operate without “interference”
by the government, which should be reduced in size; the Supreme Court
decision in Roe v. Wade (1973) legalizing abortion should be reversed;
Darwinian evolution should be replaced in school textbooks by the biblical
story of creation; prayer should be allowed back in public schools; women
should submit to their husbands; and Soviet communism should be
opposed as a form of pagan totalitarianism. Falwell, the “televangelist” min-
ister of a huge Baptist church in Lynchburg, Virginia, stressed that the Moral
Majority was not a religious fellowship; it was a purely political organization
open to conservatives of all faiths. “If you would like to know where I am
politically,” Falwell told reporters, “I am to the right of wherever you are. I
thought [Barry] Goldwater was too liberal.” The moralistic zeal and finan-
cial resources of the religious right made its adherents formidable oppo-
nents of liberal political candidates and programs. Falwell’s Moral Majority
recruited over 4 million members in eighteen states. Its base of support was
in the South and was strongest among Baptists, but its appeal extended
across the country. As Falwell declared, the Moral Majority was “pro-life,
pro-family, pro-morality, and pro-American.” But Falwell’s cultural crusade
also outraged many Americans. “Rarely has an organization set so many teeth
on edge so rapidly,” reported Time magazine. Democratic leader George S.
McGovern called Falwell a “menace to the American political process.”
A curiosity of the 1980 presidential campaign was that the religious right
opposed Jimmy Carter, a self-professed “born-again” Baptist Sunday school
teacher, and supported Ronald Reagan, a man who, like Dwight D. Eisen-
hower, rarely attended church. Reagan’s divorce and remarriage, once an
almost automatic disqualification for the presidency, raised little notice. Nor
 The Reagan Revolution • 1415

did the fact that as California’s governor he had signed one of the most per-
missive abortion laws in the country. That Ronald Reagan became the mes-
siah of the religious right was a tribute both to the force of social issues and
to the candidate’s political skills. Although famous for his personal piety,
Carter lost the support of religious conservatives because he failed to pro-
mote their key social issues. He was not willing to ban abortions or restore
daily prayers in public schools. His support for state ratification of the
equal-rights amendment (ERA), passed by the Congress in 1972, also lost
him votes among religious conservatives.

A N T I - F E M I N I S T BAC K L A S H Another factor contributing to the

conservative resurgence was a well-organized and well-financed backlash
against the feminist movement. During the seventies, women who opposed
the social goals of feminism formed counter organizations with names like
Women Who Want to Be Women and Females Opposed to Equality. Spear-
heading those efforts was Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative Roman Catholic
attorney and Republican activist from Alton, Illinois, who had played a key
role in Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign. Schlafly led the suc-
cessful campaign to keep the ERA amendment from being ratified by the
required thirty-eight states. In the process, she became the galvanizing force
behind a growing anti-feminist movement. Schlafly dismissed feminists as a
“bunch of bitter women seeking a constitutional cure for their personal
problems.” Feminists, she claimed, were “anti-family, anti-children, and
pro-abortion” fanatics who viewed the “home as a prison and the wife
and mother as a slave.” They were determined to “replace the image of
woman as virtue and mother with the image of prostitute, swinger, and
lesbian.”
Schlafly’s STOP (Stop Taking Our Privileges) ERA organization, founded
in 1972, warned that the ERA would allow husbands to abandon wives with-
out any financial support, force women into military service, and give gay
“perverts” the right to marry. She and others also stressed that the sexual
equality provided by the proposed amendment violated biblical teachings
about women’s God-given roles as nurturer and helpmate. By the late seven-
ties, the effort to gain ratification of the ERA, although endorsed by First
Lady Betty Ford, had failed, largely because no states in the conservative
South and West (“Sunbelt”) voted in favor of the amendment.
Many of Schlafly’s supporters in the anti-ERA campaign also partici-
pated in the mushrooming anti-abortion, or “pro-life,” movement. By 1980
more than a million legal abortions were occurring each year. To many
1416 • A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990 (CH. 33)

Anti-abortion movement
Anti-abortion demonstrators pass the Washington Monument on their way to the
Capitol.

religious conservatives, this constituted infanticide. The National Right to

Life Committee, supported by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops,
boasted 11 million members representing most religious denominations.
The intensity of the anti-abortion movement made it a powerful political
force in its own right, and the Reagan campaign was quick to highlight its
own support for traditional “family values,” gender roles, and the “rights” of
the unborn. Such combustible cultural issues helped persuade many north-
ern Democrats—mostly working-class Catholics—to switch parties and
support Reagan. White evangelicals alienated by the increasingly liberal
social agenda of the Democratic party became a crucial element in Reagan’s
electoral strategy.

P R O M O T I N G C O N S E R VAT I V E I D E A S Throughout the seventies,

the business community also had become a source of conservative activism.
In 1972, the leaders of the nation’s largest corporations formed the Business
Roundtable to promote business interests in Congress. Within a few years,
many of those same corporations had formed political action committees
(PACs) to distribute campaign contributions to pro-business political can-
 Reagan’s First Term • 1417

didates. Corporate donations also helped spawn an array of conservative

think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation, founded in 1973 by the con-
servative business titan Joseph Coors. By 1980, the national conservative
insurgency had coalesced into a powerful political force with substantial
financial resources, carefully articulated ideas, and grassroots energy, all of
which helped to fuel Ronald Reagan’s presidential victory.

R E AG A N ’ S F I R S T T E R M

The American presidency is a drama of diversity. Presidents with very

different personalities and temperaments have been successful in their own
ways. Ronald Reagan was quite different from Jimmy Carter. Where Carter
was a technocratic engineer by inclination and training, a compulsive
micro-manager with an analytical mind who was unable to inspire his party
or the public, Reagan was a principled pragmatist, a gracious, humble
visionary, and a cheerful conservative uninterested in the details and com-
plexities of issues but with a clear blueprint for what he wanted to accom-
plish. He was America’s oldest president as well as the only one to have gone
through a divorce. He was also a bundle of contradictions. A captivating
speaker and genial conversationalist with a charming ability to work a crowd
and dazzle a large audience, he was at heart a loner. A complex man who
appeared simple, he trusted his instincts more than his advisers, and he dele-
gated to staffers extraordinary freedom and responsibility (sometimes giv-
ing them too much authority). Reagan’s opponents always underestimated
him. True, the new president was not intellectually curious or especially
knowledgeable about public policy (his devoted speechwriter once said Rea-
gan’s mind was “barren terrain”); he thought more anecdotally than analyti-
cally; he preferred hearing (or telling) a story than reading a book or a briefing
paper. But he helped Americans believe in themselves again, and that was
worth a lot more than being a know-it-all president. Reagan was neither bril-
liant nor sophisticated, but he was blessed with keen insight, reliable intuition,
and far more energy than his critics admitted. And most of all he was sincere
and down to earth. In 1980, a taxi driver explained that he voted for Reagan
because “he’s the only politician I can understand.”
Reagan succeeded where Carter failed for three main reasons. First, he fas-
tened with stubborn certitude on a few essential priorities (lower tax rates, a
reduced federal government, increased military spending, and an aggressive
anti-Soviet foreign policy); he knew what he wanted to accomplish and
1418 • A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990 (CH. 33)

steadfastly pursued his primary goals with dogged consistency. In 1979, an

aide had asked Reagan about his view of the cold war. Reagan replied that he
was not interested in containing communism; he wanted to defeat it. His
old-fashioned logic was quite simple: “We win. They lose.” Second, unlike
Carter, Reagan was adept at tactical compromises and legislative maneuver-
ing with congressional leaders as well as foreign heads of state. James
Wright, a seasoned Texas Democrat who served as the majority leader in the
House of Representatives, said that he stood “in awe” of Reagan’s “political
skill. I am not sure that I have seen its equal.” As a former union leader, Rea-
gan was a masterful negotiator willing to modify his positions on some
issues while sustaining his overarching goals. Reagan once told a journalist
visiting the White House that “die-hard conservatives thought that if I
couldn’t get everything I asked for, I should jump off a cliff with the flag
flying—go down in flames. No, if I can get 70 or 80 percent of what it is I am
trying to get, yes I’ll take that and then continue to try to get the rest in the
future.” Third, Reagan had the gift of inspiration. His infectious optimism
inspired Americans with a sense of common purpose and a revived faith in the
American spirit.

R E AG A N O M I C S As the nation’s fortieth president, Ronald Reagan first

had to survive an attempted assassination. On March 30, 1981, a young man
eager for notoriety fired six shots at the president, one of which punctured a
lung and lodged near his heart. The witty Reagan told doctors as they pre-
pared for surgery: “Please tell me you’re Republicans.” Reagan’s gritty
response to the assassination and his injuries created an outpouring of public
support.
Reagan inherited an America suffering from what Jimmy Carter had called
a “crisis of confidence.” The economy was in a shambles: the annual rate of
inflation had reached 13 percent and unemployment hovered at 7.5 percent.
At the same time, the cold war was heating up. The Soviet Union had just
invaded Afghanistan. None of this fazed Reagan, however. He brought to
Washington a cheerful conservative philosophy embodied in a simple message:
“Government is not the solution to our problem,” he insisted, “government is
the problem.” He credited President Calvin Coolidge’s Treasury secretary,
Andrew W. Mellon, with demonstrating in the twenties that by reducing taxes
and easing government regulation of business, free-market capitalism would
spur economic growth that would produce more government revenues, which
in turn would help reduce the budget deficit. On August 1, 1981, the president
signed the Economic Recovery Tax Act, which cut personal income taxes by
 Reagan’s First Term • 1419

Reaganomics
Demonstrators in Ohio rail against the effects of Reaganomics, protesting an eco-
nomics package that sacrificed funding in areas such as Social Security.

25 percent, lowered the maximum rate from 70 to 50 percent for 1982, and
offered a broad array of other tax concessions.

BUDGET CUTS David Stockman, Reagan’s budget director, assumed

responsibility for the president’s efforts to reduce federal spending on vari-
ous domestic programs. Liberal Democrats howled at Reagan’s efforts to
dismantle welfare programs. A year after taking office, Reagan explained in
his diary that the “press is trying to paint me as trying to undo the New Deal.
I remind them that I voted for FDR four times.” But he added that he was
determined “to undo the Great Society [launched by Lyndon Johnson]. It was
LBJ’s war on poverty that led us to our present mess.” Despite intense rhetoric
on both sides, the Reagan “cutbacks” in social programs were in fact reduc-
tions in the rate of growth that the Carter administration had approved.
Overall federal spending for all social programs in 1982 was $53 billion
higher than in 1980. But because that was $35 billion less than Carter wanted
to spend, critics skewered Reagan for reducing the dollars spent for education
and cultural programs, public housing, food stamps, and school lunches. Lib-
eral groups cried foul. “The impact of the Reagan cuts on minority groups is
likely to be severe,” said a front-page story in the Washington Post. The
1420 • A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990 (CH. 33)

Democratic speaker of the house, Tip O’Neill, declared that the new presi-
dent “has no concern, no regard, no care for the little man in America.” Rea-
gan responded that he remained committed to maintaining the “safety net”
of government services for the “truly needy.” Reagan was true to his word.
Government subsidies to help poor people buy groceries (“food stamps”)
were cut only 4 percent from what the Carter administration had planned to
spend, about $100 million out of a total budget of $11.4 billion.
David Stockman realized that the cuts in domestic spending had fallen far
short of what would be needed to balance the budget in four years, as Rea-
gan had promised. The president, he said, was “too kind, gentle, and senti-
mental” to make the necessary cuts. Massive increases in military spending
complicated the situation. In the summer of 1981, Stockman warned Reagan
and his top aides that “we’re heading for a crash landing on the budget.
We’re facing potential deficit numbers so big that they could wreck the pres-
ident’s entire economic program.”
Stockman was right. The soaring budget deficit, which triggered the
worst economic recession since the thirties, was Reagan’s greatest failure.
Aides finally convinced the president that the government needed “revenue
enhancements,” a euphemism for tax increases. With Reagan’s support, Con-
gress passed a new tax bill in 1982 that would raise almost $100 billion, but
the economic slump persisted through 1982, with unemployment standing
at 10.4 percent. In early 1983, thirty states had double-digit rates of unem-
ployment. By the summer of 1983, however, a major economic recovery was
under way, in part because of increased government spending and lower
interest rates and in part because of lower tax rates. But the federal deficits
had grown ever larger, so much so that the president, who in 1980 had
pledged to balance the federal budget by 1983, had in fact run up debts
larger than those of all his predecessors combined. Yet Congress was in part
responsible for the deficits. Legislators consistently approved budgets that
were higher than those the president requested. Reagan was willing to tol-
erate growing budget deficits in part because he believed that they would
force more responsible spending behavior in Congress and in part because
he was so committed to increased military spending.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST The Reagan administration paralleled

the Harding administration in finding itself embroiled in charges of conflict
of interest, ethical misconduct, and actual criminal behavior. For example,
Reagan showed an awful ignorance of and willful disdain about environ-
mental issues. Public outcry forced the administrator of the Environmental
 Reagan’s First Term • 1421

Protection Agency (EPA) to resign for granting favors to industrial polluters.

Although some two hundred Reagan appointees were accused of unethical
or illegal activities, the president himself remained untouched by any hint of
impropriety. His personal charisma and aloof managerial style shielded him
from the political fallout associated with the growing scandals and conflicts
of interest involving his aides and cronies.

R E AG A N ’ S A N T I - L I B E R A L I S M
During Reagan’s presidency, orga-
nized labor suffered severe setbacks, despite the fact that he himself had
been a union leader. In 1981 Reagan fired members of the Professional Air
Traffic Controllers Organization who had participated in an illegal strike
intended to shut down air travel. Even more important, Reagan’s smashing
electoral victories in 1980 and 1984 broke the political power of the Ameri-
can Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO),
the powerful national confederation of labor unions that had traditionally
supported Democratic candidates. His criticism of unions reflected a gen-
eral trend in public opinion. Although record numbers of new jobs were cre-
ated during the eighties, union membership steadily dropped. By 1987,
unions represented only 17 percent of the nation’s full-time workers, down
from 24 percent in 1979.
Reagan also went on the offensive against feminism. Echoing Phyllis
Schlafly, he opposed the ERA, abortion, and proposals to require equal pay
for jobs of comparable worth. He did name Sandra Day O’Connor as the
first woman Supreme Court justice, but critics labeled it a token gesture
rather than a reflection of any genuine commitment to gender equality. Rea-
gan also cut funds for civil rights enforcement and the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission, and he opposed renewal of the Voting Rights Act
of 1965 before being overruled by Congress.

A MASSIVE DEFENSE BUILDUP Reagan’s conduct of foreign policy

reflected his belief that trouble in the world stemmed mainly from Moscow,
the capital of what he called the “evil empire.” The Soviets, he charged, were
“prepared to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat” and do anything necessary
to promote world communism. Reagan had long believed that former
Republican presidents Nixon and Ford—following the advice of Henry
Kissinger—had been too soft on the Soviets. Kissinger’s emphasis on
détente, he said, had been a “one-way street” favoring the Soviets. To thwart
the advance of Soviet communism, Reagan developed a strategy to exert
constant economic and public pressure on the Soviets. He wanted to reduce
1422 • A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990 (CH. 33)

the risk of nuclear war by convincing the Soviets they could not win such a
conflict. To do so, he and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger embarked
upon a major buildup of nuclear and conventional weapons. Reagan also
hoped that forcing the Soviets to spend much more on their own military
budgets would bankrupt their economy and thereby implode the commu-
nist system. So in stark contrast to his efforts to cut back on government
spending for social programs, Reagan gave the Pentagon a blank check, say-
ing “spend what you need.” To critics who complained about the enormous
sums of money being spent on U.S. weapons systems, Reagan replied that “It
will break the Soviets first.” It did.
In 1983, Reagan escalated the nuclear arms race by authorizing the
Defense Department to develop a controversial Strategic Defense Initiative
(SDI) to construct a complex anti-missile defense system in outer space that
would “intercept and destroy” Soviet missiles in flight. SDI was the most
expensive defense system ever devised. Despite skepticism among the media,
many scientists, and the secretaries of defense and state that such a “Star
Wars” defense system could be built, the new program forced the Soviets to
launch an expensive research and development effort of their own to keep

Strategic Defense Initiative

President Reagan addresses the nation on March 23, 1983, about the development
of a space-age shield to intercept Soviet missiles.
 Reagan’s First Term • 1423

pace. Over the course of Reagan’s two presidential terms, defense spending
totaled nearly $2 trillion.
Reagan’s anti-Soviet strategy involved more than accelerated military
spending. He borrowed the rhetoric of Harry S. Truman, John Foster Dulles,
and John F. Kennedy to express American resolve in the face of “Communist
aggression anywhere in the world.” Détente deteriorated even further when
the Soviets imposed martial law in Poland during the winter of 1981. The
crackdown came after Polish workers, united under the banner of an inde-
pendent union called Solidarity, challenged the Communist monopoly of
power. As with the Soviet interventions in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslova-
kia in 1968, the United States could not intervene in Poland. But Reagan
forcefully protested the crackdown in Poland and imposed economic sanc-
tions against Poland’s Communist government. He also worked behind the
scenes to support the Solidarity movement.

THE AMERICAS Reagan’s foremost international concern, however,

was in Central America, where he detected the most serious Communist
threat. The tiny nation of El Salvador, caught up since 1980 in a brutal strug-
gle between Communist-supported revolutionaries and right-wing mili-
tants, received U.S. economic and military assistance. Critics argued that
U.S. involvement ensured that the revolutionary forces would gain public
support by capitalizing on “anti-Yankee” sentiment. Supporters countered
that allowing a Communist victory in El Salvador would lead all of Central
America to enter the Communist camp (a new “domino” theory). By 1984,
however, the U.S.-backed government of President José Napoleón Duarte
had brought a modicum of stability to El Salvador.
Even more troubling to Reagan was the situation in Nicaragua. The State
Department claimed that the Cuban-sponsored Sandinista socialist govern-
ment, which had seized power in 1979 after ousting a corrupt dictator, was
sending Soviet and Cuban arms to leftist Salvadoran rebels. In response, the
Reagan administration ordered the CIA to train and supply anti-Communist
Nicaraguans, tagged Contras (short for counterrevolutionaries), who staged
attacks on Sandinista bases from sanctuaries in Honduras. In supporting
these “freedom fighters,” Reagan sought not only to impede the traffic in
arms to Salvadoran rebels but also to replace the Sandinistas with a democra-
tic government.
Critics of Reagan’s anti-Sandinista policy accused the Contras of being
mostly right-wing fanatics who indiscriminately killed civilians as well as San-
dinista soldiers. They also feared that the United States might eventually com-
mit its own combat forces, thereby precipitating a Vietnam-like intervention.
1424 • A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990 (CH. 33)

“Shhhh. It’s Top Secret.”

A comment on the Reagan administration’s covert operations in Nicaragua.

Reagan warned that if the Communists prevailed in Central America, “our

credibility would collapse, our alliances would crumble, and the safety of our
homeland would be jeopardized.”

T H E M I D D L E E A S T The Middle East remained a tinderbox of conflict

during the eighties. No peaceable end seemed possible in the prolonged
bloody Iran-Iraq War, entangled as it was with the passions of Islamic
fundamentalism. In 1984, both sides began to attack tankers in the Persian
Gulf, a major source of the world’s oil. (The main international response was
the sale of arms to both sides.) Nor was any settlement in sight in
Afghanistan, where the Soviet occupation forces had bogged down as badly
as the Americans had in Vietnam.
American presidents, both Democratic and Republican, continued to see
Israel as the strongest and most reliable ally in the volatile region, all the
while seeking to encourage moderate Arab groups. But the forces of moder-
ation were dealt a blow during the mid-seventies when Lebanon, long an
enclave of peace despite its ethnic complexity, collapsed into an anarchy of
warring groups. The capital, Beirut, became a battleground for Sunni and
 Reagan’s Second Term • 1425

Shiite Muslims, the Druze, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO),

Arab Christians, Syrian invaders cast as peacekeepers, and Israelis respond-
ing to PLO attacks across the border.
In 1982, Israeli forces pushed the PLO from southern Lebanon and then
began shelling PLO strongholds in Beirut. Israeli troops moved into Beirut
and looked the other way when Christian militiamen slaughtered Muslim
women and children in Palestinian refugee camps. French, Italian, and U.S.
forces then moved into Lebanon as “peacekeepers,” but in such small num-
bers as to become targets themselves. Angry Muslims kept them constantly
harassed. American warships and planes responded by shelling and bomb-
ing Muslim positions in the highlands behind Beirut, thereby increasing
Muslim resentment. On October 23, 1983, an Islamic suicide bomber drove
a truck laden with explosives into the U.S. Marine headquarters at the Beirut
airport; the explosion left 241 Americans dead. In early 1984, Reagan
announced that the marines would be “redeployed” to warships offshore.
The Israeli forces pulled back to southern Lebanon, while the Syrians
remained in eastern Lebanon. Bloody anarchy remained a way of life in a
formerly peaceful country. The Reagan administration had blundered as
badly in Lebanon as Carter had in Iran.

G R E N A D A Fortune, as it happened, presented Reagan the chance for an

easy triumph closer to home. On the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada, a
former British colony and the smallest independent country in the Western
Hemisphere, a leftist government had recruited Cuban workers to build a
new airfield and signed military agreements with Communist countries. In
1983, an even more radical military council seized power. Appeals from the
governments of neighboring island nations led Reagan to order 1,900
marines to invade Grenada, depose the new government, and evacuate a
small group of American students enrolled in medical school. The UN Gen-
eral Assembly condemned the action, but it was popular among Grenadans
and in the United States. Although a lopsided affair, the decisive action
served notice to Latin American revolutionaries that Reagan might use mili-
tary force elsewhere in the region.

R E AG A N ’ S S E C O N D T E R M

By 1983, prosperity had returned, and Reagan’s “supply-side” eco-

nomic program was at last working as touted—except for growing budget
deficits. Reagan’s decision to remove government price controls on oil and
1426 • A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990 (CH. 33)

natural gas as well as his efforts to pressure Saudi Arabia to increase oil pro-
duction produced a decline in energy prices that helped to stimulate eco-
nomic growth.

T H E E L E C T I O N O F 1 9 8 4 By 1984, Reagan had restored strength and

vitality to the White House and the nation. Reporters began to speak of the
“Reagan Revolution.” The economy surged with new energy. The slogan at
the Republican Convention was “America is back and standing tall.” By con-
trast, the nominee of the Democrats, former vice president Walter Mondale,
struggled to mold a competing vision. Endorsed by the AFL-CIO, the
National Organization for Women (NOW), and many prominent African
Americans, Mondale was viewed as the candidate of liberal special interest
groups. He set a precedent by choosing as his running mate New York repre-
sentative Geraldine Ferraro, who was quickly placed on the defensive by the
need to explain her spouse’s complicated business dealings.
A fit of frankness in Mondale’s acceptance speech further complicated his
campaign. “Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I,” he told the convention.
“He won’t tell you. I just did.” Reagan responded by vowing never to
approve a tax increase and by chiding Mondale for his commitment to tax
increases. Reagan also repeated a theme he had used in his campaign against
Jimmy Carter: the future according to Mondale and the Democrats was
“dark and getting darker.” His vision of America’s future, however, was
bright, buoyed by optimism and hope. Mondale never caught up. In the end,
Reagan took 59 percent of the popular vote and lost only Minnesota and the
District of Columbia.

DOMESTIC CHALLENGES Buoyed by his overwhelming victory, Rea-

gan called for “a Second American Revolution of hope and opportunity.” He
dared Democrats in Congress to raise taxes; his veto pen was ready: “Go
ahead and make my day,” he said in an echo of a popular line from a Clint
Eastwood movie. Through much of 1985, the president drummed up sup-
port for a tax-simplification plan. After vigorous debate that ran nearly two
years, Congress passed, and in 1986 the president signed, a comprehensive
Tax Reform Act. The new measure reduced the number of federal tax brack-
ets from fourteen to two and reduced rates from the maximum of 50 percent
to 15 and 28 percent—the lowest since Calvin Coolidge was president.

T H E I R A N - C O N T R A A F FA I R
But Reagan’s second term as president
was not the triumph he and his supporters expected. During the fall of 1986,
Democrats regained control of the Senate by 55 to 45. The Democrats
 Reagan’s Second Term • 1427

picked up only 6 seats in the House, but they increased their already com-
fortable margin to 259 to 176. For his last two years as president, Reagan
would face an opposition Congress.
What was worse, reports surfaced in late 1986 that the United States had
been secretly selling arms to Iran in the hope of securing the release of Amer-
ican hostages held in Lebanon by extremist groups sympathetic to Iran. Such
action contradicted Reagan’s repeated insistence that his administration
would never negotiate with terrorists. The disclosures angered America’s
allies as well as many Americans who vividly remembered the 1979 Iranian
takeover of their country’s embassy in Tehran.
There was even more to the sordid story. Over the next several months,
revelations reminiscent of the Watergate affair disclosed a complicated series
of covert activities carried out by administration officials. At the center of
what came to be called the Iran-Contra affair was the much-decorated
marine lieutenant colonel Oliver North. A swashbuckling aide to the National
Security Council who specialized in counterterrorism, North, from the base-
ment of the White House, had been secretly selling military supplies to Iran
and using the money to subsidize the Contra rebels fighting in Nicaragua at
a time when Congress had voted to ban such aid.
Oliver North’s illegal activities, it turned out, had been approved by
national security adviser Robert McFarlane; McFarlane’s successor, Admiral
John Poindexter; and CIA director William Casey. Both Secretary of State
George Shultz and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger criticized the
arms sale to Iran, but their objections were ignored, and they were thereafter
kept in the dark about what was going on. Later, on three occasions, Shultz
threatened to resign over the continuing operation of the “pathetic” scheme.
After information about the secret (and illegal) dealings surfaced in the
press, McFarlane attempted suicide, Poindexter resigned, and North was
fired. Casey, who denied any connection, left the CIA for health reasons and
died shortly thereafter from a brain tumor.
Under increasing criticism, Reagan appointed both an independent coun-
sel and a three-man commission, led by former Republican senator John
Tower, to investigate the scandal. The Tower Commission issued a devastat-
ing report early in 1987 that placed much of the responsibility for the bun-
gled Iran-Contra affair on Reagan’s loose management style. During the
spring and summer of 1987, a joint House-Senate investigating committee
began holding hearings into the Iran-Contra affair. The televised sessions
revealed a tangled web of inept financial and diplomatic transactions, the
shredding of incriminating government documents, crass profiteering, and
misguided patriotism.
1428 • A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990 (CH. 33)

The Iran-Contra affair

National security adviser Robert McFarlane (left) tells reporters about his resigna-
tion. Vice Admiral John Poindexter (far right) succeeds him in the post.

The investigations of the independent counsel led to six indictments in

1988. A Washington jury found Oliver North guilty of three relatively minor
charges but innocent of nine more serious counts, apparently reflecting the
jury’s reasoning that he acted as an agent of higher-ups. His conviction was
later overturned on appeal. Of those involved in the affair, only John
Poindexter got a jail sentence—six months for his conviction on five felony
counts of obstructing justice and lying to Congress.

TURMOIL IN CENTRAL AMERICA The Iran-Contra affair showed

the lengths to which members of the Reagan administration would go to
support the rebels fighting the ruling Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Fearing
heightened Soviet and U.S. involvement in Central America, neighboring
countries during the mid-eighties pressed for a negotiated settlement to the
unrest in Nicaragua. In 1988, Daniel Ortega, the Nicaraguan president,
pledged to negotiate directly with the Contra rebels. In the spring of 1988,
those negotiations produced a cease-fire agreement, ending nearly seven
years of fighting in Nicaragua. Secretary of State George Shultz called the
pact an “important step forward,” but the settlement surprised and disap-
 The Changing Social Landscape • 1429

pointed hard-liners within the Reagan administration, who saw in it a Con-

tra surrender. The Contra leaders themselves, aware of the eroding support
for their cause in the U.S. Congress, saw the truce as their only chance for
tangible concessions such as amnesty for political prisoners, the return of
the Contras from exile, and “unrestricted freedom of expression.”
In neighboring El Salvador, meanwhile, the Reagan administration’s
attempt to shore up the centrist government of José Napoleón Duarte
through economic and military aid suffered a setback when the far-right
ARENA party scored an upset victory at the polls during the spring of 1988.

THE CHANGING SOCIAL LANDSCAPE

During the eighties, profound changes transformed the tone and tex-
ture of American life. Women continued to enter the workforce in large
numbers. In 1970, 38 percent of the workforce was male; by 1990 it was
45 percent. Women made their greatest gains in the skilled professions:
medicine, dentistry, and law. The economy experienced a wrenching trans-
formation in an effort to adapt to the shifting dynamics of an increasingly
interconnected global marketplace. The nations that had been devastated
by the Second World War—France, Germany, the Soviet Union, Japan, and
China—by the eighties had developed formidable economies with higher
levels of productivity than the United States. More and more American
manufacturing companies shifted their production overseas, thereby accel-
erating the transition of the economy from its once-dominant industrial
base to a more services-oriented economy. Driving all of these changes was
the phenomenal impact of the computer revolution and the development of
the Internet.

THE C O M P U T E R R E VO L U T I O N The idea of a programmable

machine that would rapidly perform mental tasks had been around since
the eighteenth century, but it took the crisis of the Second World War to
gather the intellectual and financial resources needed to create such a “com-
puter.” In 1946, a team of engineers at the University of Pennsylvania cre-
ated ENIAC (electronic numerical integrator and computer), the first
all-purpose, all-electronic digital computer.
The next major breakthrough was the invention in 1971 of the
microprocessor—a tiny computer on a silicon chip. The functions that had
once been performed by huge computers taking up an entire room could
now be performed by a microchip circuit the size of a postage stamp. The
1430 • A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990 (CH. 33)

The computer age

Beginning with the cumbersome electronic numerical integrator and computer
(ENIAC), pictured here in 1946, computer technology flourished, leading to the
development of personal computers in the 1980s and the popularization of the
Internet in the 1990s.

microchip made possible the personal computer. In 1975 an engineer

named Ed Roberts developed the prototype of the so-called personal com-
puter. The Altair 8800 was imperfect and cumbersome, with no display, no
keyboard, and not enough memory to do anything useful. But its potential
excited a Harvard sophomore named Bill Gates. He improved the software
of the Altair 8800, dropped out of college, and formed a company called
Microsoft to sell the new system. By 1977, Gates and others had helped
transform the personal computer from a machine for hobbyists into a mass
consumer product. The development of the Internet, electronic mail
(e-mail), and cell-phone technology during the eighties and nineties allowed
for instantaneous communication, thereby accelerating the globalization of
the economy and dramatically increasing productivity in the workplace.

D E BT A N D T H E S TO C K M A R K E T P LU N G E In the late seventies,

Jimmy Carter had urged Americans to lead simpler lives, cut back on con-
spicuous consumption, reduce energy use, and invest more time in faith
and family. During the eighties, Ronald Reagan promoted very different
 The Changing Social Landscape • 1431

behavior: he reduced tax rates so people would have more money to spend.
Americans preferred Reagan’s emphasis on prosperity rather than frugality,
for it endorsed entrepreneurship as well as an increasingly consumption-
oriented and hedonistic leisure culture. But Reagan succeeded too well in
shifting the public mood back to the “more is more,” “bigger is better” tra-
dition of heedless consumerism. During the “Age of Reagan,” marketers and
advertisers celebrated instant gratification at the expense of the future.
Michelob beer commercials began assuring Americans that “you can have it
all,” and many consumers went on a self-indulgent spending spree. The
more they bought the more they wanted. In 1984, Hollywood producers
launched a new TV show called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous that exem-
plified the decade’s runaway materialism. As the stock market soared, the
number of multi-millionaires working on Wall Street and in the financial
industry mushroomed. The money fever was contagious. Compulsive
shoppers donned T-shirts proclaiming: “Born to Shop.” By 1988, 110 mil-
lion Americans had an average of seven credit cards each. In the hit movie
Wall Street (1987), the high-flying land developer and corporate raider
Gordon Gekko, played by actor Michael Douglas, announces that “greed . . .
is good. Greed is right.”

Black Monday
A frenzied trader calls for attention in the pit of the Chicago Board Options
Exchange as the Dow Jones stock average loses over 500 points.
1432 • A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990 (CH. 33)

During the eighties, many Americans caught up in the materialism of the

times began spending more money than they made. All kinds of debt—
personal, corporate, and government—increased dramatically. Americans in
the sixties had saved on average 10 percent of their income; in 1987 the figure
was less than 4 percent. The federal debt more than tripled, from $908 billion
in 1980 to $2.9 trillion at the end of the 1989 fiscal year. Then, on October 19,
1987, the bill collector suddenly arrived at the nation’s doorstep. On that
“Black Monday,” the stock market experienced a tidal wave of selling reminis-
cent of the 1929 crash. The market plunge of 22.6 percent nearly doubled the
record 12.8 percent fall on October 28, 1929. Wall Street’s selling frenzy rever-
berated throughout the capitalist world, sending stock prices plummeting in
Tokyo, London, Paris, and Toronto.
In the aftermath of the calamitous selling spree on Black Monday, fears of
an impending recession led business leaders and economists to attack Presi-
dent Reagan for allowing such huge budget deficits. Within a few weeks,
Reagan had agreed to work with Congress to develop a deficit-reduction
package and for the first time indicated a willingness to include increased
taxes in such a package. But the eventual compromise plan was so modest
that it did little to restore investor confidence. As one Republican senator
lamented, “There is a total lack of courage among those of us in the Con-
gress to do what we all know has to be done.”

THE POOR, THE HOMELESS, AND THE VICTIMS OF AIDS

The eighties were years of vivid contrast. Despite unprecedented prosper-
ity among the wealthiest Americans, there were growing numbers of
underclass Americans bereft of hope: beggars in the streets and homeless
people sleeping in doorways, in cardboard boxes, and on ventilation
grates. Homelessness was the most acute social issue of the eighties. A vari-
ety of causes had led to a shortage of low-cost housing: the government
had given up on building public housing; urban-renewal programs had
demolished blighted areas but provided no housing for those they dis-
placed; and owners had abandoned unprofitable buildings in poor neigh-
borhoods or converted them into expensive condominiums, a process
called gentrification. In addition, after new medications allowed for the
deinstitutionalization of certain mentally ill patients, many of them ended
up on the streets because the promised community mental-health services
failed to materialize. Drug and alcohol abuse were rampant among the
homeless, mostly unemployed single adults, a quarter of whom had spent
time in mental institutions; some 40 percent had spent time in jail; a third
 The Changing Social Landscape • 1433

AIDS Memorial Quilt

Composed of more than 48,000 panels, the quilt commemorates those who have
died of AIDS-related causes and continues to grow to this day.

were delusional. By the summer of 1988, the New York Times estimated,
more than 45 percent of New York’s adults constituted an underclass
totally outside the labor force, because of a lack of skills, lack of motiva-
tion, drug abuse, and other problems.
Still another group of outcasts was composed of people suffering from
a newly identified malady named AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syn-
drome). At the beginning of the eighties, public health officials had reported
that gay men and intravenous drug users were especially at risk for develop-
ing AIDS. People contracted the virus, HIV, by coming into contact with the
blood or body fluids of an infected person. Those infected with the virus
showed signs of extreme fatigue, developed a strange combination of infec-
tions, and soon died.
The Reagan administration showed little interest in AIDS in part because
it was initially viewed as a “gay” disease. Patrick Buchanan, the conservative
spokesman who served as Reagan’s director of communications, said that
1434 • A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990 (CH. 33)

homosexuals had “declared war on nature, and now nature is extracting an

awful retribution.” Buchanan and others convinced Reagan not to engage
the HIV/AIDS issue.
By 2000, AIDS had claimed almost three hundred thousand American
lives and was spreading among a larger segment of the population. Nearly
1 million Americans were carrying the deadly virus, and it had become the
leading cause of death among men aged twenty-five to forty-four. The
potential for the spread of HIV prompted the surgeon general to launch a
controversial public-education program, which included encouraging “safe
sex” through the use of condoms. With no prospect for a simple cure and
with skyrocketing treatment costs, AIDS emerged as one of the nation’s most
intractable problems.

A H I S T O R I C T R E AT Y The most positive achievement at the end of

Reagan’s second term was a surprising arms-reduction agreement with the
Soviet government. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, who came to power in 1985,
the Soviets pursued renewed détente so that they could focus their energies
and financial resources on pressing domestic problems. The logjam that had
impeded arms negotiations suddenly broke in 1987, when Gorbachev
announced that he was willing to consider mutually reducing nuclear
weaponry. After nine months of strenuous negotiations, Reagan and Gor-
bachev met amid much fanfare in Washington, D.C., on December 9, 1987,
and signed a treaty to eliminate intermediate-range (300- to 3,000-mile)
nuclear missiles. Gorbachev said that Reagan was “a serious man seeking
serious reform. We are beginning to take down the barriers of the postwar
era.” How much of the credit for the treaty belonged to Reagan or to Gor-
bachev remains a puzzle, but the result was profound.
The treaty marked the first time that the two nations had agreed to
destroy a whole class of weapons systems. Under the terms of the treaty, the
United States would destroy 859 missiles, and the Soviets would eliminate
1,752. Still, the reductions represented only 4 percent of the total nuclear-
missile count on both sides. Arms-control advocates thus looked toward a
second and more comprehensive treaty dealing with long-range strategic
missiles.
Gorbachev’s successful efforts to liberalize Soviet domestic life and
improve East-West foreign relations cheered Americans. The Soviets sud-
denly began stressing cooperation with the West in dealing with hot spots
around the world. In the Middle East they urged the PLO to recognize
Israel’s right to exist and advocated a greater role for the United Nations in
the volatile Persian Gulf. Perhaps the most dramatic symbol of a thawing cold
 The Changing Social Landscape • 1435

Foreign relations
A light moment at a meeting between U.S. president Ronald Reagan (left) and
Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev (right).

war was the phased withdrawal of 115,000 Soviet troops from Afghanistan,
which began in 1988, the final year of Reagan’s presidency.

R E AG A N ’ S L E G AC Y Ronald Reagan was a transformational president.

He restored the stature of the presidency and in the process transformed the
tone and tenor of American political life. Politically, Reagan played the cen-
tral role in accelerating the nation’s shift toward conservatism and the
Republican party. But he did not dismantle the welfare state; he fine-tuned
it, in part because the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives
throughout his presidency. Although Reagan had declared in 1981 his inten-
tion to “curb the size and influence of the federal establishment,” the welfare
state remained intact when he left office in early 1989. Neither the Social
Security system nor Medicare had been dismantled or overhauled, nor had
any other major welfare programs. And the federal agencies that Reagan had
threatened to abolish, such as the Department of Education, not only sur-
vived but had seen their budgets grow. As Reagan acknowledged, a federal
agency “is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.” The
federal budget as a percentage of economic output was higher when Reagan
1436 • A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990 (CH. 33)

left office than when he had entered; the budget deficit when he retired was
an all-time record, largely because of the massive increase in defense spend-
ing approved by Reagan. Moreover, he backed off his campaign promises
directed at the religious right, such as reinstituting daily prayer in public
schools and a ban on abortions.
What Ronald Reagan the genial conservative did accomplish was to end
the prolonged period of economic “stagflation” and set in motion what
economists called “The Great Expansion,” an unprecedented twenty-year-
long burst of productivity and prosperity. In the process, Reagan redefined
the national political agenda and accelerated the grassroots conservative
insurgency that had been developing for over twenty years. True, Reagan’s
pragmatic conservatism left the nation with a massive debt burden that
would eventually cause major problems, and the prolonged prosperity
served to widen the inequality gap between rich and poor, but the “Great
Communicator” also renewed America’s self-confidence and soaring sense
of possibilities.
Reagan also helped end the cold war by negotiating the nuclear disarma-
ment treaty and lighting the fuse of democratic freedom in Eastern Europe.
In June 1987, he visited the Berlin Wall and in a dramatic speech called upon
the Soviet Union to allow greater freedom within the Warsaw Pact countries
under its control. “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you
seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberaliza-
tion: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev,
tear down this wall!” It was great theater and good politics. Through his
policies and persistence, Reagan helped end communist control in East Ger-
many, Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. By redirecting the thrust of
both domestic and foreign policy during the eighties, Reagan put the frag-
mented Democratic party on the defensive and forced conventional New
Deal “liberalism” into a panicked retreat. Reagan would cast a long shadow.
He had fashioned the most consequential presidency since Franklin D.
Roosevelt, the man he had voted for on four occasions.

THE ELECTION OF 1988 In 1988, eight Democratic presidential can-

didates engaged in a wild scramble for their party’s nomination. As the primary
season progressed, however, it soon became a two-man race between Massa-
chusetts governor Michael Dukakis and Jesse Jackson, a charismatic African
American civil rights activist who had been one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s chief
lieutenants. Dukakis eventually won and managed a difficult reconciliation with
the Jackson forces that left the Democrats unified and confident as the fall cam-
paign began.
 The Changing Social Landscape • 1437

The Republicans nominated

Reagan’s two-term vice presi-
dent, Texan George H. W. Bush,
a government careerist who after
a bumpy start had easily cast
aside his rivals in the primaries.
A veteran government official,
having served as a Texas con-
gressman, an envoy to China, an
ambassador to the UN, and head
of the CIA, Bush had none of
Reagan’s charisma or rhetorical
skills. One Democrat described
the wealthy Bush as a man born
“with a silver foot in his mouth.”
Early polls showed Dukakis with
a wide lead.
Yet Bush delivered a forceful The 1988 election
address at the Republican nom- George H. W. Bush (right) at the 1988
inating convention that sharply Republican National Convention with his
newly chosen running mate, Dan Quayle, a
enhanced his stature. While senator from Indiana.
pledging to continue the Rea-
gan agenda, he also recognized
that “things aren’t perfect” in America. Bush was a centrist Republican
who had never embraced the dogmatic assumptions of right-wing conser-
vatism. He promised to use the White House to fight bigotry, illiteracy, and
homelessness. Humane sympathies, he insisted, would guide his conser-
vatism. “I want a kinder, gentler nation,” Bush said in his acceptance
speech. But the most memorable line in the speech was a defiant statement
ruling out any tax increases as a means of dealing with the massive budget
deficits created during the Reagan years. “The Congress will push me to
raise taxes, and I’ll say no, and they’ll push, and I’ll say no, and they’ll push
again. And I’ll say to them: Read my lips. No new taxes.”
In a not-so-kind-or-gentle campaign given over to mudslinging, Bush
and his aides attacked Dukakis as a camouflaged liberal in the mold of
George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, and Walter Mondale. In the end, Dukakis
took only ten states plus the District of Columbia, with clusters of support in
the Northeast, Midwest, and Northwest. Bush carried the rest, with a margin
of about 54 percent to 46 percent in the popular vote and 426 to 111 in the
Electoral College.
1438 • A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990 (CH. 33)

WA
10 NH 4
MT ND ME
4 VT 3 4
OR 3 MN
7 ID 10
4 SD WI MI NY MA 13
WY 3 11 20 36
3 RI 4
IA PA CT 8
NV NE 8
5 OH 25 NJ 16
4 UT IL IN
23 WV
CA 5 CO 24 12 DE 3
47 8 KS MO VA MD 10
6 12
7 11 KY 9 DC 3
NC
AZ OK TN 11 13
NM AR SC
7 5 8
6 8
MS AL GA
7 9 12
TX
29 LA
10
FL
HI 21
4

AK THE ELECTION OF 1988 Electoral Vote Popular Vote

3
George Bush 426 47,900,000
(Republican)
Michael Dukakis 111 41,000,000
(Democrat)

How did George H. W. Bush overtake Michael Dukakis’s lead in the polls? What was
the role of race and class in the election results?

Generally speaking, the more affluent and better-educated voters preferred

the Republican ticket. While Dukakis won the urban areas, garnering 86 per-
cent of the African American vote, Bush scored big in the suburbs and in
rural areas, especially in the once-Democratic South, where his margin of
support by white voters ranged from a low of 63 percent in Florida to a high
of 80 percent in Mississippi. More significant was Bush’s success among blue-
collar workers: he captured 46 percent of these typically Democratic voters.

T H E B U S H A D M I N I S T R AT I O N

George H. W. Bush viewed himself as a guardian president rather than

an activist. He lacked Reagan’s visionary outlook and seemed content to sus-
tain Reagan’s priorities. Bush was eager to avoid “stupid mistakes” and to
 The Bush Administration • 1439

find a way to get along with the Democratic majority in Congress. “We don’t
need to remake society,” he announced. Bush therefore sought to consolidate
the initiatives that Reagan had put in place rather than launch his own array
of programs and policies.

DOMESTIC I N I T I AT I V E S The biggest problem facing the Bush

administration was the national debt, which stood at $2.6 trillion in 1989,
nearly three times its 1980 level. Bush’s pledge not to increase taxes (mean-
ing mainly income taxes) and his insistence upon lowering capital-gains
taxes—on profits from the sale of corporate stock and other property—
made it more difficult to reduce the annual deficit or trim the long-term
debt. Likewise, Bush was not willing to make substantial cutbacks in spend-
ing on defense, the federal bureaucracy, and welfare programs. As a result,
by 1990 the country faced “a fiscal mess.” During the summer of 1990, Bush
agreed with Congressional Democrats “that both the size of the deficit prob-
lem and the need for a package that can be enacted” required budget cuts
and “tax revenue increases,” which he had sworn to avoid. The president’s
decision to support tax increases infuriated conservative organizations.
They felt betrayed. The president of the Heritage Foundation, the leading
conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., said that “our message” was
being “sullied by a visionless White House pretending to be conservative.”
Bush’s backsliding on taxes served to divide the conservative movement
while unifying the Republican party (Reagan had unified both).
One of President Bush’s few initiatives was a declaration of “war” on ille-
gal drugs. During the eighties, cocaine addiction spread through sizable seg-
ments of society, luring not only the affluent but also those with little money
to spare, who used the drug in its smokable form, known as crack. Bush
vowed to make drug abuse his number-one domestic priority and appointed
William J. Bennett, former education secretary, as “drug czar,” or head of a
new Office of National Drug Control Policy, with cabinet status but no
department. Yet federal spending on programs intended to curb drug abuse
rose only modestly. The message, on this as well as on education, housing,
and other social problems, was that more of the burden should fall on state
and local authorities.

T H E D E M O C R A C Y M O V E M E N T A B R OA D George H. W. Bush
entered the White House with more foreign-policy experience than most
presidents, and he found the spotlight of the world stage more congenial
than wrestling with the intractable problems of the inner cities, drug abuse,
1440 • A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990 (CH. 33)

and the deficit. Within two years of his inauguration, Bush would lead the
United States into two wars. Throughout most of 1989, however, he merely
had to sit back and observe the dissolution of one totalitarian or authoritar-
ian regime after another around the world. For the first time in years,
democracy was on the march in a sequence of mostly bloodless revolutions
that surprised the world.
Although a grassroots democracy movement in communist China came
to a tragic end in 1989 when government forces mounted a deadly assault on
demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, eastern Europe had an
entirely different experience. With a rigid economic system failing to deliver
the goods to the Soviet people, Mikhail Gorbachev responded with policies
of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness), a loosening of cen-
tralized economic planning and censorship. His foreign policy sought rap-
prochement and trade with the West, and he aimed to relieve the Soviet
economy of burdensome military costs.
Gorbachev also backed off from Soviet imperial ambitions. Early in 1989,
Soviet troops left Afghanistan after spending nine years bogged down in civil
war there. Gorbachev then repudiated the Brezhnev Doctrine, which had
asserted the right of the Soviet Union to intervene in the internal affairs of
other Communist countries. The days when Soviet tanks rolled through
Warsaw and Prague were over, and hard-line leaders in the Eastern-bloc
countries found themselves beset by demands for reform from their own
people. With opposition strength building, the old regimes fell with surpris-
ingly little bloodshed. Communist party rule ended first in Poland and Hun-
gary, then in Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria. In Romania the year of peaceful
revolution ended in a bloodbath when the people joined the army in a
bloody uprising against the brutal dictator Nicolae Ceauseşcu. He and his
wife were captured, tried, and then executed on Christmas Day.
The most spectacular event in the collapse of the Soviet Empire came
on November 9, 1989, when Germans—using small tools and even their
hands—tore down the chief symbol of the cold war, the Berlin Wall. The
massive wall had long seemed impregnable and permanent, like the Cold
War itself. With the barrier down, East Germans streamed across the border.
As people celebrated in the streets, they were amazed, delighted, and moved
to tears. With the borders to the West now fully open, the Communist gov-
ernment of East Germany collapsed, a freely elected government came to
power, and on October 3, 1990, the five states of East Germany were united
with West Germany. The unified German nation remained in NATO, and the
Communist Warsaw Pact alliance was dissolved.
 The Bush Administration • 1441

Dissolution of the Soviet Empire

West Germans hacking away at the Berlin Wall on November 11, 1989, two days
after all crossings between East Germany and West Germany were opened.

The reform impulse that Gorbachev helped unleash in the Eastern-bloc

countries careened out of control within the Soviet Union, however. Gor-
bachev proved unusually adept at political restructuring, yielding the Com-
munist monopoly of government but building a new presidential system
that gave him, if anything, increased powers. His political skills, though, did
not extend to an antiquated economy that resisted change. The revival of
ethnic allegiances added to the instability. Although Russia proper included
slightly more than half the Soviet Union’s population, it was only one of fif-
teen constituent republics, most of which began to seek autonomy, if not
independence, from Russia.
Gorbachev’s popularity shrank in the Soviet Union as it grew abroad. It
especially eroded among the Communist hard-liners, who saw in his
reforms the unraveling of their bureaucratic and political empire. Once the
genie of freedom was released from the Communist lamp, however, it took
on a momentum of its own. On August 18, 1991, political and military lead-
ers tried to seize the reins of power in Russia. They accosted Gorbachev
at his vacation retreat in the Crimea and demanded that he sign a decree
1442 • A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990 (CH. 33)

Action against Gorbachev

In August 1991, one day after Mikhail Gorbachev was placed under house arrest by
Communists planning a coup, Russian president Boris Yeltsin (holding papers)
makes a speech criticizing the plotters.

proclaiming a state of emergency and transferring his powers to them. He

replied, “Go to hell,” whereupon he was placed under house arrest.
The coup was doomed from the start, however. Poorly planned and clum-
sily implemented, it lacked effective coordination. The plotters failed to
arrest popular leaders such as Boris Yeltsin, the president of the Russian
republic; they neglected to close the airports or cut off telephone and televi-
sion communications; and they were opposed by key elements of the mili-
tary and KGB (the secret police). But most important, the plotters failed to
recognize the strength of the democratic idealism unleashed by Gorbachev’s
reforms.
As the political drama unfolded in the Soviet Union, foreign leaders
denounced the coup. On August 20, President Bush responded favorably to
Yeltsin’s request for support and persuaded other leaders to join him in
refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the new Soviet government. The next
day, word began to seep out that the plotters had given up and were fleeing.
Several committed suicide, and a newly released Gorbachev ordered the oth-
ers arrested. Yet things did not go back to the way they had been. Although
 The Bush Administration • 1443

Gorbachev reclaimed the title of president of the Soviet Union, he was

forced to resign as head of the Communist party and admit that he had
made a grave mistake in appointing the men who had turned against him.
Boris Yeltsin emerged as the most popular political figure in the country.
So what had begun as a reactionary coup turned into a powerful acceler-
ant for stunning changes in the Soviet Union, or the “Soviet Disunion,” as
one wag termed it. Most of the fifteen republics proclaimed their indepen-
dence, with the Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia regaining
the status of independent nations. The Communist party apparatus was dis-
mantled, prompting celebrating crowds to topple statues of Lenin and other
Communist heroes.
A chastened Gorbachev could only acquiesce in the breakup of the Soviet
Empire, whereas the systemic problems burdening the Soviet Union before
the coup remained intractable. The economy was stagnant, food and coal
shortages loomed on the horizon, and consumer goods remained scarce.
The reformers had won, but they had yet to establish deep roots in a country
with no democratic tradition. Leaping into the unknown, they faced years of
hardship and uncertainty.
The aborted coup against Gorbachev also accelerated Soviet and Ameri-
can efforts to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons. In late 1991, Presi-
dent Bush shocked the world by announcing that the United States would
destroy all its tactical nuclear weapons on land and at sea in Europe and
Asia, take its long-range bombers off twenty-four-hour-alert status, and ini-
tiate discussions with the Soviet Union for the purpose of instituting sharp
cuts in missiles with multiple warheads. Bush explained that the prospect of a
Soviet invasion of western Europe was “no longer a realistic threat,” and this
transformation provided an unprecedented opportunity for reducing the
threat of nuclear holocaust. President Gorbachev responded by announcing
reciprocal Soviet cutbacks.

PA N A M A The end of the cold war did not spell the end of international
tensions and conflict, however. Indeed, before the end of 1989, U.S. troops
were engaged in battle in Panama, where a petty tyrant provoked the first of
America’s military engagements under George H. W. Bush. In 1983, General
Manuel Noriega had maneuvered himself into the position of leader of the
Panamanian Defense Forces, which made him the de facto head of the gov-
ernment. Earlier, when Bush headed the CIA, Noriega, as chief of military
intelligence, had developed a profitable business of supplying information on
the region to the CIA. At the same time, he developed avenues in the region
1444 • A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990 (CH. 33)

for drug smuggling and gunrunning, laundering the money from those activ-
ities through Panamanian banks. For a time, American intelligence analysts
looked the other way, regarding Noriega as a useful contact, but eventually he
became an embarrassment. In 1987 a rejected associate published charges of
Noriega’s drug activities and accused him further of rigged elections and
political assassination.
In 1988, federal grand juries in Miami and Tampa indicted Noriega and
fifteen others on drug smuggling charges. The next year the Panamanian
president tried to fire Noriega, but the National Assembly ousted the presi-
dent and named Noriega “maximum leader.” The legislators then declared
Panama “in a state of war” with the United States. The next day, December 16,
1989, a U.S. marine in Panama was killed. President Bush thereupon ordered
an invasion of Panama with the purpose of capturing Noriega so that he
might stand trial in the United States.
The twelve thousand U.S. military personnel already in Panama were
quickly joined by twelve thousand more, and in the early morning of Decem-
ber 20 five military task forces struck at strategic targets in the country.
Within hours, Noriega had surrendered. Twenty-three U.S. servicemen were
killed in the action, and estimates of Panamanian casualties, including many
civilians, were as high as four thousand. In April 1992, Noriega was convicted
in the United States on eight counts of racketeering and drug distribution.

T H E G U L F WA R Months after Panama had moved to the background

of public attention, Saddam Hussein, dictator of Iraq, focused attention on
the Middle East when his army suddenly invaded tiny Kuwait on August 2,
1990. Kuwait had raised its production of oil, contrary to agreements with
the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The
resulting drop in global oil prices offended the Iraqi regime, deep in debt
and heavily dependent upon oil revenues. Saddam Hussein was surprised by
the backlash his invasion of Kuwait caused. The UN Security Council unan-
imously condemned the invasion and demanded withdrawal. U.S. Secretary
of State James A. Baker III and the Soviet foreign minister issued a joint
statement of condemnation. On August 6 the Security Council endorsed
Resolution 661, an embargo on trade with Iraq.
Bush condemned Iraq’s “naked aggression” and dispatched planes and
troops to Saudi Arabia on a “wholly defensive” mission: to protect Saudi
Arabia. British forces soon joined in, as did Arab units from Egypt, Morocco,
Syria, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. On August 22, Bush
ordered the mobilization of American reserve forces for the operation, now
dubbed Operation Desert Shield.
 The Bush Administration • 1445

The Gulf War

U.S. soldiers adapt to desert conditions during Operation Desert Shield, December
1990.

A flurry of peace efforts sent diplomats scurrying, but without result. Iraq
refused to yield. On January 12, Congress authorized the use of U.S. armed
forces to “liberate” Kuwait. By January 1991, over thirty nations had joined
Operation Desert Shield. Some nations sent only planes, warships, or sup-
port forces, but sixteen, including ten Islamic countries, committed ground
forces. Desert Shield became Operation Desert Storm when the first allied
cruise missiles began to hit Iraq on January 16.
Saddam Hussein, expecting an allied attack northward into Kuwait, con-
centrated his forces in that country. The Iraqis were outflanked when two
hundred thousand allied troops, largely American, British, and French,
turned up on the undefended Iraqi border with Saudi Arabia one hundred
to two hundred miles to the west. The swift-moving allied ground assault
began on February 24 and lasted only four days. Iraqi soldiers surrendered
by the thousands.
On February 28, six weeks after the fighting began, President Bush called
for a cease-fire, the Iraqis accepted, and the shooting ended. There were 137
American fatalities. The lowest estimate of Iraqi deaths, civilian and military,
was 100,000. The coalition forces occupied about a fifth of Iraq, but Hussein’s
1446 • A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 1977–1990 (CH. 33)

tyrannical regime remained intact. What came to be called the First Gulf War
was thus a triumph without victory. Hussein had been defeated, but he was
allowed to escape to foster more mischief. The consequences of the brief but
intense First Gulf War, the “mother of all battles” in Saddam Hussein’s words,
would be played out in the future in ways that no one had predicted. Arabs
humiliated by the American triumph over the Iraqis began plotting revenge
that would spiral into a new war of terrorism.

C U LT U R A L C O N S E R VAT I S M

Cultural conservatives helped elect Ronald Reagan and George Bush

in the eighties, but they were disappointed with the results. Once in office,
neither president had adequately addressed the moral agenda of the reli-
gious right, including a complete ban on abortions and the restoration
of prayer in public schools. By the nineties, a new generation of young
conservative activists, mostly political independents or Republicans and
largely from the sunbelt states, had emerged as a major force in national
affairs. They were more ideological, more libertarian, more partisan, more
dogmatic, and more impatient than their predecessors. The new breed
of cultural conservatives abhorred the excesses of social liberalism and
the backsliding of RINOs (Republicans-in-Name-Only). They attacked
affirmative-action programs designed to redress historic injustices commit-
ted against women and minorities. During the nineties, powerful groups
inside and outside the Republican party mobilized to roll back government
programs that gave preference to certain social groups. Prominent African
American conservatives supported such efforts, arguing that racially based
preferences were demeaning and condescending remedies for historical
injustices.

THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT Although quite diverse, cultural conserva-

tives tended to be evangelical Christians or orthodox Catholics, and they
joined together to exert increasing religious pressure on the political process.
In 1989, the Virginia-based television evangelist Pat Robertson organized the
Christian Coalition to replace Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority as the flagship
organization of the resurgent religious right. The Christian Coalition chose
 Cultural Conservatism • 1447

the Republican party as the best vehicle for promoting its pro–school prayer,
anti-abortion, and anti–gay rights positions. In addition to celebrating “tra-
ditional family values,” it urged politicians to “radically downsize and
delimit government.” In many respects, the religious right took control of
the political and social agendas in the nineties. As one journalist acknowl-
edged in 1995, “the religious right is moving toward center stage in Ameri-
can secular life.”
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Rise of Conservatism Ronald Reagan’s charm, coupled with disillusionment

over Jimmy Carter’s presidency and the Republicans’ call for a return to tradi-
tional values, won Reagan the presidency in 1980. The Republican insurgency,
characterized by a cultural backlash against the feminist movement, was domi-
nated by Christian evangelicals and people who wanted lower taxes and a
smaller, less intrusive federal government.
• Iran-Contra Scandal During an Islamic revolution in Iran, enraged militants
stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and seized American diplomats and staff
members. In retaliation, President Carter froze all Iranian assets in the United
States. Carter at last released several billion dollars in Iranian assets to ransom
the hostages. The Iranians released the hostages—but not until Ronald Reagan
was in office. Members of Reagan’s administration secretly sold arms to Iran in
the hopes of securing the release of American hostages held in Lebanon by
extremists sympathetic to Iran. The deal contradicted the president’s public
claims that he would never deal with terrorists. Furthermore, profits from the
arms sales were used to fund right-wing rebels in Nicaragua, known as Contras,
despite Congress’s having voted to ban any aid to the Contras. An independent
commission appointed by the president determined that Reagan’s loose manage-
ment style was responsible for the illegal activities, and Reagan admitted that he
had lied to the American people.
• End of the Cold War Toward the end of the century, democratic movements
exploded in communist China, where they failed, and in Eastern Europe, where
they largely succeeded. In the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev’s steps to restruc-
ture the economy and promote more open policies led to demands for further
reform. Communist party rule collapsed in the Soviet satellite states. In Novem-
ber 1989, the Berlin Wall was torn down, and a year later Germany was reunified.
Russia itself survived a coup by hard-liners, and by 1991 the cold war had ended.
• Reaganomics Americans in the eighties experienced unprecedented prosperity,
yet beggars and homeless people were visible in most cities. The prevailing
mood was conservative, and AIDS was condemned as a “gay” disease.
“Reaganomics” failed to reduce public spending, but the president nevertheless
championed tax cuts for the rich. The result was massive public debt and the
stock market collapse of 1987.
• The Gulf War Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. The United
Nations condemned Hussein’s action and authorized the use of force to dislodge
Iraq from Kuwait. Over thirty nations committed themselves to Operation
Desert Shield. When Hussein did not withdraw, the allied forces launched Oper-
ation Desert Storm, and the Iraqis surrendered within six weeks.
 CHRONOLOGY

1971
1978
1978
Microprocessor (computer chip) is invented
President Carter brokers the Camp David Accords
Supreme Court issues the Bakke decision
November 1979 Islamic militants storm the U.S. embassy in Tehran and
take more than fifty Americans hostage
1981 President Reagan fires members of PATCO for illegaly
striking
1982 Israeli troops invade Lebanon
1983 U.S. Marines are killed in a suicide bombing in Beirut
1987 Tower Commission issues report on Iran-Contra affair
1987 Reagan delivers his famous Berlin Wall speech
October 1987 Stock market experiences Black Monday
1989 Tiananmen Square protests in China
Pat Robertson forms the Christian Coalition
November 1989 Berlin Wall is torn down
December 1989 U.S. troops invade Panama and capture Manuel Noriega
August 1990 Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait

KEY TERMS & NAMES

Jimmy Carter p. 1401 Contras p. 1423 glasnost p. 1440

Camp David Accords Iran-Contra affair p. 1427 Saddam Hussein p. 1444

p. 1404
HIV/AIDS p. 1434 Operation Desert Shield
Ronald Reagan p. 1409 p. 1444
Mikhail Gorbachev p. 1434
Reaganomics p. 1410 Operation Desert Storm
George H. W. Bush p. 1437 p. 1445
Moral Majority p. 1414
perestroika p. 1440
Phyllis Schlafly p. 1415

34
AMERICA IN A NEW
MILLENNIUM

FOCUS QUESTIONS wwnorton.com/studyspace

• How did the demographics of the United States change between

1980 and 2010?
• What led to the Democratic resurgence of the early nineties and
the surprising Republican landslide of 1994?
• What caused the surge and decline of the financial markets in the
nineties and the early twenty-first century?
• What were the consequences of the rise of global terrorism in the
early twenty-first century?
• In what ways was the 2008 presidential election historic?

T he United States entered the final decade of the twentieth

century triumphant. American vigilance in the cold war had
contributed to the shocking collapse of the Soviet Union and
the birth of democratic capitalism in eastern Europe. The United States was
now the world’s only superpower. Not since ancient Rome had one nation
exercised such widespread influence, for good and for ill. By the mid-
nineties, the American economy would become the marvel of the world as
remarkable gains in productivity afforded by new technologies created the
greatest period of prosperity in modern history. Yet no sooner did the cen-
tury come to an end than America’s sense of physical and material comfort
was shattered by a horrifying terrorist assault that killed thousands, exacer-
bated the economic recession, and called into question conventional notions
of national security and personal safety.
 America’s Changing Mosaic • 1451

A M E R I C A’ S C H A N G I N G M O S A I C

DEMOGRAPHIC SHIFTS The nation’s population had grown to over

309 million by 2010, and its racial and ethnic composition was rapidly chang-
ing. During the nineties, the foreign-born population increased by 57 percent,
to 31 million, the largest ever, and far more than predicted. By 2010, the United
States had more foreign-born and first-generation residents than ever before,
and each year 1 million more immigrants arrived. Over 36 percent of Ameri-
cans claimed African, Asian, Hispanic, or American Indian ancestry. Hispanics
represented 16 percent of the total population, African Americans 11 percent,
Asians about 4 percent, and American Indians almost 1 percent. The rate of
increase among those four groups was twice as fast as it had been during the
seventies. In 2005, Hispanics became the nation’s largest minority group.
The primary cause of this dramatic change in the nation’s ethnic mix was
a surge of immigration. In 2000, the United States welcomed more than

Illegal immigration
Increasing numbers of Chinese risked their savings and their lives to gain entry to
the United States. These illegal immigrants are trying to keep warm after being
forced to swim ashore when the freighter carrying them to the United States ran
aground near Rockaway Beach in New York City in June 1993.
1452 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

twice as many immigrants as all other countries in the world combined. For
the first time in the nation’s history, the majority of immigrants came not
from Europe but from other parts of the world: Asia, Latin America, and
Africa. Among the legal immigrants, Mexicans made up the largest share,
averaging over one hundred thousand a year. Many new immigrants com-
piled an astonishing record of achievement, yet their very success contributed
to the resentment they encountered from other groups.
Other aspects of American life were also changing. The decline of the tra-
ditional family unit continued. In 2005, less than 65 percent of children lived
with two parents, down from 85 percent in 1970. And more people were liv-
ing alone than ever before, largely as a result of high divorce rates or a grow-
ing practice among young people of delaying marriage until well into their
twenties. The number of single mothers increased 35 percent during the
decade. The rate was much higher for African Americans: in 2000 fewer than
32 percent of black children lived with both parents, down from 67 percent
in 1960.
Young African Americans in particular faced shrinking economic oppor-
tunities at the start of the twenty-first century. The urban poor more than
others were victimized by high rates of crime and violence, with young black
men suffering the most. In 2000, the leading cause of death among African
American men between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four was homicide.
Over 25 percent of African American men aged twenty to twenty-nine were
in prison, on parole, or on probation, while only 4 percent were enrolled in
college. And nearly 40 percent of African American men were functionally
illiterate.

BUSH TO CLINTON

The changing composition of American society would have a pro-

found impact on politics. But during the last decade of the twentieth cen-
tury, changing global dynamics held sway. For months after the First Gulf
War in 1991, George H. W. Bush seemed unbeatable; his public approval rat-
ing soared to 91 percent. But the aftermath of Desert Storm was mixed, with
Saddam Hussein’s despotic grip on Iraq still intact. The Soviet Union mean-
while stumbled on to its surprising end. On December 25, 1991, the Soviet
flag over the Kremlin was replaced by the flag of the Russian Federation. The
cold war had ended with the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and its fif-
teen constituent republics. As a result, the United States had become the
world’s only dominant military power.
 Bush to Clinton • 1453

“Containment” of the Soviet Union, the bedrock of U.S. foreign policy for
more than four decades, had become irrelevant. Bush struggled to interpret
the fluid new international scene. He spoke of a “new world order” but never
defined it. By his own admission he had trouble with “the vision thing.” By
the end of 1991, a listless Bush faced a strong challenge in the Republican
primary from the feisty conservative commentator and former White House
aide Patrick Buchanan, who adopted the slogan “America First” and called
on Bush to “bring home the boys.” As the euphoria of the Gulf War victory
wore off, a popular bumper sticker reflected the growing public frustration
with the economic policies of the Bush administration: “Saddam Hussein
still has his job. What about you?”

R E C E S S I O N A N D D OW N S I Z I N G For the Bush administration and

for the nation, the most devastating development in the early nineties was a
prolonged economic recession as the roller-coaster dynamic at the center of the
capitalist system, continually counterbalancing periods of prosperity with peri-
ods of recession or depression, sent the economy plunging into the longest
recession since the Great Depression. During 1991, 25 million workers—about
20 percent of the labor force—were unemployed at some point. The economy
barely grew at all during the first three years of the Bush administration—the
worst record since the end of the Second World War. Meanwhile, the federal
budget deficit mushroomed by 57 percent, to $4.1 trillion. The euphoria over
the allied victory in the Gulf War quickly gave way to surly anxiety generated by
the depressed economy. At the end of 1991, Time magazine declared that “no
one, not even George Bush” could deny “that the economy was sputtering.” In
addressing the recession, Bush tried a clumsy balancing act, on the one hand
acknowledging that “people are hurting” while on the other telling Americans
that “this is a good time to buy a car.” By 1991, the public approval rating of his
economic policy had plummeted to 18 percent.

REPUBLICAN TURMOIL President Bush had already set a political

trap for himself when he declared at the 1988 Republican Convention: “Read
my lips. No new taxes.” Fourteen months into his presidency, he decided that
the federal budget deficit was a greater risk than violation of his no-new-
taxes pledge. After intense negotiations with congressional Democrats, Bush
announced that reducing the federal deficit required tax increases. His back-
sliding set off a revolt among House Republicans, but a bipartisan majority
(with most Republicans still opposed) finally approved a tax increase, rais-
ing the top tax rate on personal income from 28 to 31 percent, disallowing
certain deductions in the upper brackets, and raising various special taxes.
1454 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

Such actions increased federal revenue but eroded Bush’s political support
among conservative Republicans.
At the 1992 Republican Convention, Patrick Buchanan, who had won
about a third of the votes in the party’s primaries, lambasted Bush for break-
ing his pledge not to raise taxes and for becoming the “biggest spender in
American history.” Buchanan claimed to be a crusader “for a Middle Ameri-
can revolution” that would halt illegal immigration and the gay rights move-
ment. As the 1992 election unfolded, Bush’s real problem was not Pat
Buchanan and the conservative wing of the Republican party, however.
What threatened his reelection was his own failed effort to jump-start the
economy.

D E M O C R AT I C R E S U R G E N C E In contrast to divisions among Repub-

licans, the Democrats at their 1992 convention presented an image of centrist
forces in control. For several years the Democratic Leadership Council, in
which Arkansas governor William Jefferson Clinton figured prominently,
had been pushing the party from the liberal left to the center of the political
spectrum. Clinton strove to move the Democrats closer to the mainstream
of political opinion by reinventing themselves as a socially liberal but pro-
business, fiscally conservative party. He called for a “third way” positioned in
between conservatism and liberalism, something he labeled “progressive
centrism.” Unlike the older generation of liberal Democrats led by Robert
Kennedy, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, and Michael
Dukakis, Clinton was less confident that government could cure all ills.
Born in Hope, Arkansas, Bill Clinton grew to be a bright, ambitious young
man who yearned to be a national political leader. To that end, he attended
Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., won a Rhodes Scholarship to
Oxford University, and then earned a law degree from Yale University, where
he met his future wife, Hillary Rodham. Clinton returned to Arkansas and
won election as the state’s attorney general. By 1979, at age thirty-two, Bill
Clinton was the youngest governor in the country. He served three more
terms as Arkansas governor and in the process emerged as a dynamic young
leader of the “New Democrats” committed to winning back the middle-class
whites (“Reagan Democrats”) who had voted Republican during the 1980s.
Democratic politicians had grown so liberal, he argued, that they had alien-
ated their key constituency, the “vital center.” They needed to abandon their
tired “tax-and-spend” policies and focus on sustaining prosperity at home
and peace abroad.
A self-described moderate seeking the Democratic presidential nomination,
Clinton promised to cut the defense budget, provide tax relief for the middle
 Bush to Clinton • 1455

class, and create a massive economic aid package for the former republics of the
Soviet Union to help them forge democratic societies. Witty, intelligent, and
charismatic, with an in-depth knowledge of public policy, Clinton was adept at
campaigning; he projected energy, youth, and optimism, reminding many
political observers of John F. Kennedy. Clinton was also visibly compassionate
(he could even weep on demand); he told struggling people that he could “feel
your pain”—and he meant it.
But beneath the veneer of Clinton’s charisma and his deep knowledge of
public policy issues were several flaws. Self-absorbed and self-indulgent, he
yearned to be loved. The New York Times explained that Clinton was “emo-
tionally needy, indecisive, and undisciplined.” He often courted popularity
over principle. He was a political opportunist who had earned a well-
deserved reputation for half-truths, exaggerations, and talking out of both
sides of his mouth. Clinton was a policy “wonk” who relished the details and
nuances of complex legislation. He was also very much a political animal.
He made extensive use of polls to shape his stance on issues, pandered to
special-interest groups, and flip-flopped on controversial subjects, leading
critics to label him “Slick Willie.” Even more enticing to the media were
charges that Clinton was a chronic adulterer and that he had manipulated

The 1992 presidential campaign

Presidential candidate Bill Clinton and his running mate, Al Gore, brought youthful
enthusiasm to the campaign trail.
1456 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program during the Vietnam
War to avoid military service. Clinton’s evasive denials of both allegations
could not dispel a lingering distrust of his character.
Yet after a series of bruising party primaries, Clinton won the Democratic
nomination in the summer of 1992. He chose Senator Albert “Al” Gore Jr. of
Tennessee as his running mate. Gore described himself as a “raging moder-
ate.” So the Democratic candidates were two Southern Baptists from adjoin-
ing states. Flushed with their convention victory and sporting a ten-point
lead over Bush in the polls, the Clinton-Gore team stressed economic issues
to win over working-class voters. Clinton won the election with 370 electoral
votes and about 43 percent of the vote; Bush received 168 electoral votes and
39 percent of the vote; and off-and-on independent candidate H. Ross Perot
of Texas garnered 19 percent of the popular vote, more than any other third-
party candidate since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. A puckish billionaire,
Perot found a large audience for his simplified explanations of national
problems and his criticism of Reaganomics as “voodoo economics.”

DOMESTIC POLICY IN CLINTON’S FIRST TERM

Clinton’s inexperience in international affairs and congressional

maneuvering led to several missteps in his first year as president. Like
George H. W. Bush before him, he reneged on several campaign promises.
He abandoned his proposed middle-class tax cut in order to keep down the
federal deficit. Then he dropped his promise to allow gays to serve in the
armed forces after military commanders expressed strong opposition.
Instead, he later announced an ambiguous new policy concerning gays in the
military that came to be known as “don’t ask, don’t tell.” In Clinton’s first
two weeks in office, his approval rating dropped 20 percent. But the true test
for presidents is not how they begin but how fast they learn, how resilient
they are, and where they end up.

THE ECONOMY As a candidate, Clinton had pledged to reduce the fed-

eral deficit without damaging the economy or hurting the nation’s most vul-
nerable people. To this end, on February 17 he proposed higher taxes for
corporations and for individuals in higher tax brackets. He also called for an
economic stimulus package for “investment” in public works (transporta-
tion, utilities, and the like) and “human capital” (education, skills, health,
and welfare). The hotly contested bill finally passed by 218 to 216 in the
House and 51 to 50 in the Senate, with Vice President Gore breaking the tie.
 Domestic Policy in Clinton’s First Term • 1457

Equally contested was con-

gressional approval of the
North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA), which
the Bush administration had
negotiated with Canada and
Mexico. The debate revived old
arguments on the tariff. Clinton
stuck with his party’s tradition
of low tariffs and urged
approval of NAFTA, which
would make North America the NAFTA protesters
largest free-trade area in the Protesters going to a rally against NAFTA.
world, enabling the three
nations to trade with each other on equal footing. Opponents of the bill,
such as gadfly Ross Perot and organized labor, favored tariff barriers that
would discourage the importation of cheaper foreign products. Perot pre-
dicted that NAFTA would result in the “giant sucking sound” of American
jobs being drawn to Mexico. Yet Clinton prevailed with solid Republican
support while losing a sizable minority of Democrats, mostly from the
South, where people feared that many textile mills would lose business to
“cheap-labor” countries, as they did.

H E A LT H - C A R E R E F O R M Clinton’s major public-policy initiative was

a federal health-care plan. “If I don’t get health care,” he declared, “I’ll wish
I didn’t run for President.” Government-subsidized health insurance was
not a new idea. Other industrial countries had long ago started national
health-insurance programs, Germany as early as 1883, Great Britain in
1911. Medicare, initiated in 1965, provided health insurance for people
sixty-five and older, and Medicaid supported state medical assistance for
the poor. Over the years, however, the cost of those programs had grown
enormously, as had business spending on private health insurance. Senti-
ment for health-care reform spread as annual medical costs skyrocketed
and some 39 million Americans went without medical insurance, most of
them poor or unemployed. The Clinton administration argued that univer-
sal medical insurance would reduce the costs of health care to the nation as
a whole.
President Clinton made a tactical error when he appointed his spouse,
Hillary, to head up the task force created to design a federal health-care plan.
She chose not to work with congressional leaders in drafting the proposal.
1458 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

Instead, the final version, essen-

tially designed by the Clintons,
was presented to Congress with
little consultation. The mad-
deningly complicated plan,
dubbed “Hillarycare” by jour-
nalists, proposed to give access
to health insurance to every cit-
izen and legal immigrant. Under
the proposal, people would no
longer purchase health insur-
ance through their employers.
Instead, workers would be
pooled into “regional health
alliances” run by the states that
would offer private insurance
Clinton’s federal health-care plan options. Employers would pay
President Bill Clinton holds up a proposed most of the premiums. Govern-
health security I.D. card while outlining his ment would subsidize all or
plan for health-care reform to Congress.
part of the payments for small
businesses and the poor, the
latter from funds that formerly went to Medicaid, and would collect a new
“sin tax” on tobacco products and perhaps alcoholic beverages to pay for the
program. The bill aroused opposition from Republicans and even moderate
Democrats, as well as the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. By
the summer of 1994, the Clinton health-insurance plan was doomed. Lacking
the votes to stop a filibuster by Senate Republicans, the Democrats acknowl-
edged defeat and gave up the fight for universal medical coverage.

REPUBLICAN INSURGENCY

In 1994, Bill Clinton began to see his coveted presidency unravel.

Unable to get either health-care reform or welfare-reform bills through the
Democratic Congress and having failed to carry out his campaign pledge for
middle-class tax relief, he and his party found themselves on the defensive.
In the midterm elections of 1994, the Democrats suffered a humbling defeat.
It was the first election since 1952 in which Republicans captured both
houses of Congress at the same time.
 Republican Insurgency • 1459

T H E C O N T R AC T W I T H A M E R I C A The Republican insurgency in

Congress during the mid-nineties was led by a feisty, self-infatuated
Georgian named Newton Leroy Gingrich. In early 1995, he became the
first Republican Speaker of the House in forty-two years. Gingrich, a for-
mer history professor with a lust for controversy and an unruly ego (a
journalist said that becoming Speaker of the House added thirty pounds
to his girth and sixty pounds to his ego), was a superb tactician who had
helped mobilize religious and social conservatives associated with the
Christian Coalition. In 1995, he announced that “we are at the end of an
era.” Liberalism, he claimed, was dead, and the Democratic party was
dying. The imperious Gingrich, ingenious yet undisciplined and erratic,
viewed politics as a blood sport. He pledged to start a new reign of con-
gressional Republican dominance that would dismantle the “corrupt
liberal welfare state.” He was aided in his efforts by newly elected Repub-
lican House members who promoted what Gingrich called with great
fanfare the Contract with America. The ten-point contract outlined an
anti-big-government program featuring less regulation of businesses,
less environmental conservation, term limits for members of Congress,
welfare reform, and a balanced-budget amendment. As one of the con-
gressional Republicans explained, “We are ideologues. We have an
agenda” to change America. Gingrich was blunter. He said that Republi-
cans had not been “nasty” enough. That was about to change, as Gingrich
launched an unrelenting assault on the Clinton administration and the
Democratic party.
Yet the much-ballyhooed Contract with America quickly fizzled out. Tri-
umph often undermines judgment, and the Republican revolution touted by
Gingrich could not be sustained by the slim Republican majority in Con-
gress. What is more, many of the seventy-three freshman Republican House
members were dogmatists scornful of compromise. As legislative amateurs,
they limited Gingrich’s ability to maneuver. The Senate rejected many of the
bills that had been passed in the House. Most of all, the Contract with
America disintegrated because Newt Gingrich became such an unpopular
figure, both in Congress and among the electorate. He was too ambitious,
too abrasive, too polarizing. The cocky speaker repeatedly overplayed his
hand. Republican senator Bob Dole said Gingrich was “a one-man band who
rarely took advice.”
Gingrich’s clumsy bravado backfired. “No political figure in modern
time,” a journalist declared in 1996, “has done more to undermine the
power of his message with the defects of his personality than the
1460 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

disastrously voluble Speaker

of the House.” That same year,
U.S. News and World Report
labeled Gingrich the “most
unpopular politician in Amer-
ica.” In 1997, the House of
Representatives censured Ging-
rich for an array of ethics
violations, the first time in
history that a Speaker of the
House was disciplined for eth-
ical wrongdoing. The follow-
ing year, Republicans ousted
Gingrich as Speaker of the
Newt Gingrich House. The emerging lesson of
Gingrich discusses Congress’s failure to
politics in the 1990s was that
strengthen the small business sector at a Americans wanted elected fed-
press conference. eral officials to govern from
the center rather than the
extremes. As Time magazine noted in 1995, “Clinton and Gingrich—
powerful yet indefinably immature—give off a bright, undisciplined
energy, a vibration of adolescent recklessness.”

In the late summer of 1996, Con-

L E G I S L AT I V E B R E A K T H R O U G H
gress broke through its partisan gridlock and passed a flurry of legislation
that President Clinton quickly signed, including bills increasing the mini-
mum wage and broadening public access to health insurance. Most signifi-
cant was a comprehensive welfare-reform measure that ended the federal
government’s open-ended guarantee of aid to the poor, a guarantee that had
been in place since 1935. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportu-
nity Act of 1996 (PRWOA) was a centrist measure that illustrated Clinton’s
efforts to move the Democratic party away from the tired liberalism it had
promoted since the 1930s. “The era of big government is over,” Clinton pro-
claimed.
PRWOA abolished the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)
program and replaced it with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families,
which limited the duration of welfare payments to the unemployed to two
years. Equally significant was that the PRWOA transferred administrative
responsibility to the states, which were free to design their own aid pro-
grams funded by federal grants. The new bill also tightened restrictions on
 Republican Insurgency • 1461

the issuance of federal food stamps, which enable poor people to purchase
groceries at a discount. AFDC had long been criticized for providing finan-
cial incentives for poor women to have children and for discouraging
women from joining the workforce. PRWOA also required that at least half
of a state’s welfare recipients have jobs or be enrolled in job-training pro-
grams by 2002. States failing to meet the deadline would have their federal
funds cut.
The Republican-sponsored welfare-reform legislation passed the Senate
by a vote of 74 to 24, and the Democratic president signed it into law on
August 22, 1996, declaring that the new program “gives us a chance we
haven’t had before to break the cycle of dependency that has existed for mil-
lions and millions of our fellow citizens, exiling them from the world of
work. It gives structure, meaning, and dignity to most of our lives.” Others
were not as excited by the new initiative. Liberals charged that Clinton was
abandoning Democratic social principles in order to gain reelection amid
the conservative public mood. Said one corporate executive, “Clinton is the
most Republican Democrat in a long time.”
The welfare-reform bill represented a turning point in modern politics.
The war on poverty, launched by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and broad-
ened by Richard M. Nixon’s expansion of the federal food-stamp pro-
gram, had ended in defeat. Despite the massive amount of federal funds
spent on various anti-poverty and social welfare programs, poverty was
growing. Now, the federal government was turning over responsibility for
several welfare programs to the states. And, despite criticism, the new
approach seemed to work. Welfare recipients and poverty rates both
declined during the late nineties, leading the editors of the left-leaning
The New Republic to report that welfare reform had “worked much as its
designers had hoped.”

T H E 1 9 9 6 C A M PA I G N After clinching the Republican presidential

nomination in 1996, Senate majority leader Bob Dole resigned his seat in
order to devote his attention to defeating Bill Clinton. As the 1996 presiden-
tial campaign unfolded, however, Clinton maintained a large lead in the
polls. With an improving economy and no major foreign-policy crises to
confront, cultural and personal issues again surged into prominence. Con-
cern about Dole’s age (seventy-three) and his acerbic personality, as well as
rifts in the Republican party between economic conservatives and social
conservatives over volatile issues such as abortion and gun control, ham-
pered Dole’s efforts to generate widespread support, especially among the
growing number of independent voters.
1462 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

On November 5, 1996, the

remarkably resilient Clinton
won again, with an electoral
vote of 379 to 159 and 49 per-
cent of the popular vote. Clin-
ton was the first Democratic
presidential candidate to win an
election while the Republicans
controlled Congress. And he
was the first Democratic presi-
dent to win a second term since
Bob Dole
Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936.
The Republican presidential candidate and Dole received only 41 percent of
former Senate majority leader on the cam-
paign trail. the popular vote, and third-
party candidate Ross Perot got 8
percent. The Republicans lost eight seats in the House but retained an edge,
227 to 207, over the Democrats in the House; in the Senate, Republicans
gained two seats for a 55–45 majority.

THE CLINTON YEARS AT HOME

As the twentieth century came to a close, the United States benefited

from a prolonged period of unprecedented prosperity. Buoyed by low infla-
tion, high employment, declining federal budget deficits, dramatic improve-
ments in industrial productivity and the sweeping globalization of economic
life, business and industry witnessed record profits.

THE “ N E W E C O N O M Y ” By the end of the twentieth century, the

“new economy” was centered on high-flying computer, software, telecom-
munications, and Internet firms. These “dot-com” enterprises had come to
represent almost a third of stock-market values even though many of them
were hollow-shelled companies fueled by the speculative mania. The result
was a financial bubble that soon burst, but during the run-up in the 1990s
investors gave little thought to a possible collapse. The robust economy set
records in every area: low inflation, low unemployment, federal budget
surpluses for the first time in modern history, and dizzying corporate prof-
its and personal fortunes. People began to claim that the new economy
defied the boom-and-bust cycles of the previous hundred years. Alan
 The Clinton Years at Home • 1463

Greenspan, the Federal Reserve Board chairman, foolishly suggested “that

we have moved ‘beyond history’ ”—into an economy that seemed only to
grow. Only too late would people remember that human greed always breeds
recklessness, leading to what Greenspan later called “irrational exuberance.”
One major factor producing the economic boom of the nineties was the
“peace dividend.” The end of the cold war had enabled the U.S. government
to reduce the proportion of the federal budget devoted to defense spending.
Another major factor was the Clinton administration’s 1993 initiative cut-
ting taxes and reducing overall federal spending. But perhaps the single most
important reason for the surge in prosperity was dramatic growth in per-
worker productivity. New information technologies and high-tech produc-
tion processes allowed for greater efficiency.

G L O B A L I Z AT I O N Another major feature of the “new economy” was

globalization. Globe-spanning technologies shrank time and distance,
enabling U.S.-based multinational companies to conduct a growing propor-
tion of their business abroad as more and more nations lowered trade barri-
ers such as tariffs and import fees. U.S. exports rose dramatically in the last
two decades of the twentieth century. By the end of the century, the U.S.
economy had become dependent on the global economy; foreign trade was
central to American prosperity—and to American politics. By 2000, over a
third of the production of American multinational companies was occur-
ring abroad, compared with only 9 percent in 1980. Many U.S. manufactur-
ing companies moved their production “offshore” to take advantage of lower
labor costs and lax workplace regulations abroad, a controversial phenome-
non often labeled “outsourcing.” At the same time, many foreign manufac-
turers, such as Toyota, Honda, and BMW, built production facilities in the
United States. The U.S. economy had become internationalized to such a
profound extent that global concerns exercised an ever-increasing influence
on domestic and foreign policies.

After the triumphs of the civil rights movement in

R A C E I N I T I AT I V E S
the sixties, the momentum for minority advancement had run out by the
nineties—except for gains in college admissions and employment under the
rubric of affirmative action. The conservative mood during the mid-nineties
manifested itself in the Supreme Court. In 1995, the Court ruled against
election districts redrawn to create African American or Latino majorities
and narrowed federal affirmative-action programs intended to benefit
minorities underrepresented in the workplace.
1464 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

In one of those cases, Adarand Constructors v. Peña (1995), the Court

assessed a program that gave some advantages to businesses owned by “dis-
advantaged” minorities. A Hispanic-owned firm had won a highway guard-
rail contract over a lower bid by a white-owned company that sued on the
grounds of “reverse discrimination.” Writing for the majority, Justice Sandra
Day O’Connor said that such affirmative-action programs had to be “nar-
rowly tailored” to serve a “compelling national interest.” O’Connor did not
define what the Court meant by a “compelling national interest,” but the
implication of her language was clear: the Court had come to share the
growing public suspicion of the value and legality of such race-based benefit
programs.
In 1996, two major steps were taken against affirmative action in college
admissions. In Hopwood v. Texas, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Cir-
cuit ruled that considering race to achieve a diverse student body at the Uni-
versity of Texas was “not a compelling interest under the Fourteenth
Amendment.” Later that year, the state of California passed Proposition 209,
an initiative that ruled out race, sex, ethnicity, and national origin as criteria
for preferring any group. These rulings gutted affirmative-action programs
and reduced African American college enrollments, prompting second
thoughts. In addition, the nation still had not addressed intractable prob-
lems that lay beyond civil rights—that is, chronic problems of adult illiter-
acy, poverty, unemployment, urban decay, and slums.

T H E S C A N DA L M AC H I N E During his first term, President Clinton

was dogged by allegations of improper involvement in the Whitewater
Development Corporation. In 1978, while serving as governor of Arkansas,
he had invested in a resort to be built in northern Arkansas. The project
turned out to be a fraud and a failure, and the Clintons took a loss on their
investment. In 1994, Kenneth Starr, a Republican, was appointed as indepen-
dent counsel in an investigation of the Whitewater case. Starr did not
uncover evidence that the Clintons were directly involved in the fraud,
although several of their close associates had been caught in the web and
convicted of various charges, some related to Whitewater and some not.
In the course of another investigation, a salacious scandal erupted when it
was revealed that President Clinton had engaged in a prolonged sexual affair
with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, a recent college graduate.
Even more disturbing, he had pressed her to lie about their relationship
under oath. Like Richard M. Nixon’s handling of the Watergate incident,
Clinton initially denied the charges, but the scandal would not disappear.
 The Clinton Years at Home • 1465

For the next thirteen months, “Monicagate” captured public attention and
enlivened partisan debate about Clinton’s presidency. In August 1998, Clin-
ton agreed to appear before a grand jury convened to investigate the sexual
allegations, thus becoming the first president in history to testify before a
grand jury. On August 17, Clinton, a dogged fighter, self-pitying and defiant,
recanted his earlier denials and acknowledged having had “inappropriate
intimate physical contact” with Lewinsky. That evening the president deliv-
ered a four-minute nationally televised address in which he admitted an
improper relationship with Lewinsky, but insisted that had done nothing
illegal.
Public reaction to Clinton’s remarkable about-face was mixed. A majority
of Americans expressed sympathy for the president because of his public
humiliation; they wanted the entire matter dropped. But Clinton’s credibil-
ity had suffered a serious blow on account of his reckless lack of self-discipline
and his efforts first to deny and then to cover up the scandal. Then, on Sep-
tember 9, 1998, the special prosecutor submitted to Congress a 445-page,
sexually graphic report. The Starr Report found “substantial and creditable”
evidence of presidential wrongdoing, prompting the House of Representa-
tives on October 8 to begin a wide-ranging impeachment inquiry of the
president. Thirty-one Democrats joined the Republicans in supporting
the investigation. On December 19, 1998, William Jefferson Clinton became
the second president to be impeached by the House of Representatives. The
House officially approved two articles of impeachment, charging Clinton
with lying under oath to a federal grand jury and obstructing justice. House
Speaker Newt Gingrich led the effort to impeach the president over the
Lewinsky scandal—even though he himself was secretly engaged in an adul-
terous affair with a congressional staffer.
The Senate trial of President Clinton began on January 7, 1999. Five weeks
later, on February 12, Clinton was acquitted. Rejecting the first charge of
perjury, 10 Republicans and all 45 Democrats voted “not guilty.” On the
charge of obstruction of justice, the Senate split 50–50 (which meant acquit-
tal, since 67 votes were needed for conviction). In both instances, senators
had a hard time interpreting Clinton’s adultery and lies as constituting “high
crimes and misdemeanors,” the constitutional requirement for removal of a
president from office. Clinton’s supporters portrayed him as the victim of a
puritanical special prosecutor and a partisan conspiracy run amok. His crit-
ics lambasted him as a lecherous man without honor or integrity. Both char-
acterizations were accurate yet incomplete. Politically astute and well
informed, Clinton had as much ability and potential as any president. Yet he
1466 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

Impeachment
Representative Edward Pease, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, covers
his face during the vote on the third of four articles of impeachment charging Presi-
dent Clinton with “high crimes and misdemeanors,” December 1998.

was also shamelessly self-indulgent. The result was a scandalous presidency

punctuated by dramatic achievements in welfare reform, economic growth,
and foreign policy.

FOREIGN-POLICY CHALLENGES

Like Woodrow Wilson, Lyndon Johnson, and Jimmy Carter before him,
Bill Clinton was a Democratic president who came into office determined to
focus on the nation’s domestic problems only to find himself mired in foreign
entanglements. Clinton continued the Bush administration’s military inter-
vention in Somalia, on the northeastern horn of Africa, where collapse of the
government early in 1991 had left the country in anarchy, prey to tribal
marauders. President Bush in 1992 had gained UN sanction for a military
force led by American troops to relieve hunger and restore peace. The Soma-
lian operation proved successful at its primary mission, but it never resolved
the political anarchy that lay at the root of the population’s starvation.

H A I T I During its first term, the Clinton administration’s most rewarding

foreign-policy endeavor came in Haiti. The Caribbean island nation had
 Foreign-Policy Challenges • 1467

emerged suddenly from a cycle of coups with a democratic election in 1990,

which brought to the presidency a popular priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
When a Haitian army general ousted Aristide, the United States announced
its intention to bring him back with the aid of the United Nations. With
drawn-out negotiations leading nowhere, Clinton moved in July 1994 to get
a UN resolution authorizing force as a last resort. At that juncture, former
president Jimmy Carter asked permission to negotiate. He convinced the
military leaders to quit by October 15. Aristide returned to Haiti and on
March 31, 1995, the occupation was turned over to a UN force commanded
by an American general.

THE MIDDLE EAST President Clinton also continued George H. W.

Bush’s policy of sponsoring patient negotiations between the Arabs and the
Israelis. A new development was the inclusion of the Palestinian Liberation
Organization (PLO) in the negotiations. In 1993, secret talks between Israeli
and Palestinian representatives in Oslo, Norway, resulted in a draft agree-
ment between Israel and the PLO. This agreement provided for the restora-
tion of Palestinian self-rule in the occupied Gaza Strip and in Jericho, on the
West Bank, in an exchange of land for peace as provided in UN Security
Council resolutions. A formal signing occurred at the White House on Sep-
tember 13, 1993. With President Clinton presiding, Israeli prime minister

Clinton and the Middle East

President Clinton presides as Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin (left) and PLO
leader Yasir Arafat (right) agree to a peace accord between Israel and the Palestini-
ans, September 1993.
1468 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasir Arafat exchanged handshakes, and their
foreign ministers signed the agreement.
The Middle East peace process suffered a terrible blow in early November
1995, however, when Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli
zealot who resented Rabin’s efforts to negotiate with the Palestinians. Some
observers feared that the assassin had killed the peace process as well when
seven months later conservative hard-liner Benjamin Netanyahu nar-
rowly defeated the U.S.-backed Shimon Peres in the Israeli national elections. Yet
in October 1998, Clinton brought Arafat, Netanyahu, and King Hussein of
Jordan together at a conference in Maryland, where they reached an agree-
ment. Under the Wye River Accord, Israel agreed to surrender land in return
for security guarantees by the Palestinians.

THE BALKANS Clinton’s foreign policy also addressed the chaotic tran-
sition in eastern Europe from Soviet domination to independence. When
combustible Yugoslavia imploded in 1991, fanatics and tyrants triggered
ethnic conflict as four of its six republics seceded. Serb minorities, backed by
the new republic of Serbia, stirred up civil wars in Croatia and Bosnia. In
Bosnia especially, the war involved “ethnic cleansing”—driving Muslims
from their homes and towns. Clinton sent food and medical supplies to
besieged Bosnians and dispatched warplanes to retaliate for attacks on
places designated “safe havens” by the United Nations.
In 1995, U.S. negotiators finally persuaded the foreign ministers of Croa-
tia, Bosnia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to agree to a comprehen-
sive peace plan. Bosnia would remain a single nation but would be divided
into two states: a Muslim-Croat federation controlling 51 percent of the ter-
ritory and a Bosnian-Serb republic controlling the remaining 49 percent.
Basic human rights would be restored and free elections would be held to
appoint a parliament and joint president. To enforce the agreement, sixty
thousand NATO peacekeeping troops would be dispatched to Bosnia. A
cease-fire went into effect in October 1995.
In 1998, the Balkan tinderbox flared up again, this time in the Yugoslav
province of Kosovo, which had long been considered sacred ground by
Christian Serbs. By 1989, however, over 90 percent of the 2 million Kosovars
were ethnic Albanian Muslims. In that year, Yugoslav president Slobodan
Milošević decided to reassert Serbian control over the province. He stripped
Kosovo of its autonomy and established de facto martial law. When the
Albanian Kosovars resisted and large numbers of Muslim men began to join
the Kosovo Liberation Army, Serbian soldiers and state police ruthlessly
burned Albanian villages, murdering men, raping women, and displacing
hundreds of thousands of Muslim Kosovars.
 The Election of 2000 • 1469

On March 24, 1999, NATO, relying heavily upon U.S. military resources and
leadership, launched air strikes against Yugoslavia. “Ending this tragedy is a moral
imperative,” explained President Clinton. After seventy-two days of unrelenting
bombardment directed at Serbian military and civilian targets, Milošević sued for
peace on NATO’s terms, in part because his Russian allies had finally abandoned
him. An agreement was reached on June 3, 1999. President Clinton pledged
extensive U.S. aid in helping the Yugoslavs rebuild their war-torn economy.

THE CLINTON PRESIDENCY Personality matters in presidential

politics. Bill Clinton was a man of driving ambition and considerable talent.
His charisma charmed people, and his rhetoric inspired them. His two terms
included many successes. He presided over an unprecedented period of pro-
longed prosperity (115 consecutive months of economic growth and the
lowest unemployment rate in thirty years), generated unheard-of federal
budget surpluses, and passed a welfare-reform measure with support from
both parties. In the process he salvaged liberalism from the dustbin and re-
centered the Democratic party. Clinton also helped bring peace and stability
to the Balkans, one of the most fractious and violent regions in all of Europe.
Although less successful, his tireless efforts to mediate a lasting peace
between Israel and the Palestinians displayed his courage and persistence.
Throughout his presidency, Clinton displayed a remarkable ability to man-
age crises and rebound from adversity. His resilience was extraordinary, in
part because he was a master at spinning events and circumstances to his ben-
efit. At times, however, his loyalty seemed focused on his ambition. His
inflated self-confidence occasionally led to arrogant recklessness. He may have
balanced the budget, but he also debased the presidency. He may have pushed
through a dramatic reform of the welfare system, but his effort to bring health
insurance to the uninsured was a clumsy failure. Clinton was less a great
statesman than he was a great escape artist. He even survived his awful han-
dling of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and his intensely partisan impeachment
trial. In 2000, his last year in office, the smooth-talking Clinton enjoyed a pub-
lic approval rating of 65 percent, the highest end-of-term rating since Presi-
dent Dwight D. Eisenhower. Yet Clinton’s popularity was not deep enough to
ensure the election of his vice president, Al Gore, as his successor.

THE ELECTION OF 2000

The election of 2000 proved to be one of the closest and most contro-
versial in history. The two major-party candidates for president, Vice Presi-
dent Albert Gore Jr., the Democrat, and Texas governor George W. Bush,
1470 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

WA
11 NH 4
MT ND ME
3 VT 3 4
OR 3 MN
7 ID 10
4 SD WI MI NY MA 12
WY 3 11 18 33
3 RI 4
IA PA CT 8
NV NE 7
5 OH 23 NJ 15
4 UT IL IN 21 WV
CA 5 CO 22 12 DE 3
54 8 KS MO VA MD 10
5 13
6 11 KY 8 DC 2
NC
AZ OK TN 11 14
NM AR SC
8 5 8
6
MS AL GA 8
7 9 13
TX
32 LA
9
FL
HI 25
4

THE ELECTION OF 2000 Electoral Vote Popular Vote

AK
3 George W. Bush 271 50,500,000
(Republican)
Al Gore 266 51,000,000
(Democrat)

Why was the 2000 presidential election so close? How was the conflict over the elec-
tion results resolved? How were differences between urban and rural voters key to
the outcome of the election?

the son of the former Republican president, presented contrasting views on

the role of the federal government, tax cuts, environmental policies, and the
best way to preserve Social Security and Medicare. Gore, a Tennessee native
and Harvard graduate whose father had been a senator, favored an active
federal government that would subsidize prescription-medicine expenses for
the elderly, and protect the environment. Bush, on the other hand, proposed
a transfer of power from the federal government to the states, particularly in
regard to environmental and educational policies. In international affairs,
Bush questioned the need to maintain U.S. peacekeeping forces in Bosnia
and the continuing expense of other global military commitments. He urged
a more “humble” foreign policy, one that would end U.S. efforts to install
democratic governments in undemocratic countries (“nation building”)
around the world.
 The Election of 2000 • 1471

The polarization of politics at the start of the twentieth century continued

to spawn various third-party candidates at the extremes. Two independent
candidates added zest to the 2000 presidential campaign: conservative
columnist Patrick Buchanan and liberal activist Ralph Nader. Buchanan
focused his campaign on criticism of NAFTA, while Nader lamented the cor-
rupting effects of large corporate donations on the political process and the
need for more robust efforts to protect the environment.
In the end, the election created high drama. The television networks ini-
tially reported that Gore had narrowly won the state of Florida and its deci-
sive twenty-five electoral votes. Later in the evening, however, the networks
reversed themselves, saying that Florida was too close to call. In the chaotic
early-morning hours, the networks declared that Bush had been elected
president. Gore called Bush to concede, only to issue a retraction a short
time later when it appeared that the results in Florida remained a toss-up.
The final tally in Florida showed Bush with a razor-thin lead, and state law
required a recount. For the first time in 125 years, the results of a presiden-
tial election remained in doubt for weeks after the voting.
As a painstaking hand count of presidential ballots proceeded in Florida,
supporters of Bush and Gore pursued legal maneuvers in the Florida courts

The Florida recount

A rally in Florida protesting the counting of ballots in the disputed 2000 presidential
election.
1472 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

and the U.S. Supreme Court; each side accused the other of trying to steal
the election. The political drama remained stalemated for five weeks. At last,
on December 12, 2000, a harshly divided Supreme Court halted the recounts
in Florida. In the case known as Bush v. Gore, a bare 5–4 majority ruled that
any new recount would clash with existing Florida law. Bush was declared
the winner in Florida by only 537 votes. Although Gore had amassed a
540,000-vote lead nationwide, he lost in the Electoral College by two votes
when he lost Florida. Although Al Gore “strongly disagreed” with the
Supreme Court’s decision, he asked voters to rally around President-elect
Bush and move forward: “Partisan rancor must be put aside.” It was not.

C O M PA S S I O N AT E C O N S E R VAT I S M

George W. Bush arrived in the White House to confront a sputtering

economy and a falling stock market. By the spring of 2000, many of the
high-tech companies that had led the dizzying run-up on Wall Street during
the nineties had collapsed. Greed fed by record profits and speculative
excesses had led businesses and investors to take increasingly dangerous
risks. Consumer confidence and capital investment plummeted with the falling
stock market. By March 2001, the economy was in recession for the first
time in over a decade. Yet neither the floundering economy nor the close
political balance in Congress prevented President Bush from launching an
ambitious legislative agenda. Confident that he could win over conservative
Democrats, he promised to provide “an explosion of legislation” promoting
his goal of “compassionate conservatism.” The top item on Bush’s wish list
was a tax cut intended to stimulate the sagging economy. Bush signed it into
law on June 7, 2001. By cutting taxes, however, federal revenue dimin-
ished, thus increasing the budget deficit. It also shifted more of the tax bur-
den from the rich to the middle and working classes, and increased already
high levels of income inequality.

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND In addition to tax reduction, one of Presi-

dent Bush’s top priorities was to reform primary and secondary education.
In late 2001, Congress passed a comprehensive education-improvement
plan called No Child Left Behind that sought to improve educational qual-
ity by requiring states to set new learning standards and to develop stan-
dardized tests to ensure that all students were “proficient” at reading and
math by 2014. It also mandated that all teachers be “highly qualified” in
their subject area by 2005, allowed children in low-performing schools to
 Global Terrorism • 1473

transfer to other schools, and required states to submit annual standardized

student test scores. A growing number of states criticized the program,
claiming that it provided insufficient funds for remedial programs and that
poor school districts, many of them in blighted inner cities or rural areas,
would be especially hard-pressed to meet the new guidelines. The most
common criticism, however, was that the federal program created a culture
whereby teachers, feeling pressured to increase student performance,
focused their classroom teaching on preparing students for the tests rather
than fostering learning.

GLOBAL TERRORISM

As had happened so often with presidents during the twentieth century,

President Bush soon found himself distracted by global issues and foreign
crises. With the implosion of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war,
world politics had grown less potent but more unstable during the nineties.
Whereas competing ideologies such as capitalism and communism had ear-
lier provided the fulcrum of foreign relations, issues of religion, ethnicity, and
clashing cultural values now divided peoples. Islamic militants around the
world especially resented what they viewed as the “imperial” globalization of
U.S. culture and power. Multinational groups inspired by religious fanaticism
and anti-American rage used high-tech terrorism to gain notoriety and exact
vengeance. Well-financed and well-armed terrorists flourished in the cracks
of fractured nations such as Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, and Afghani-
stan. Throughout the nineties, the United States fought a losing secret war
against organized terrorism. The ineffectiveness of Western intelligence
agencies in tracking the movements and intentions of militant extremists
became tragically evident in the late summer of 2001.

9 / 1 1 : A D AY O F I N FA M Y At 8:45 A.M. on September 11, 2001, a com-

mercial airliner hijacked by Islamic terrorists slammed into the north tower
of the majestic World Trade Center in New York City. A second hijacked
jumbo jet crashed into the south tower eighteen minutes later. The fuel-
laden planes turned the majestic buildings into infernos, forcing desperate
people who worked in the skyscrapers to jump to their deaths. The iconic
twin towers, both 110 stories tall and occupied by thousands of employees,
imploded from the intense heat. Surrounding buildings also collapsed. The
southern end of Manhattan—ground zero—became a hellish scene of
twisted steel, suffocating smoke, and wailing sirens.
1474 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

While the catastrophic drama in New York City was unfolding, a third
hijacked plane crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. A fourth
airliner, probably headed for the White House, missed its mark when
passengers—who had heard reports of the earlier hijackings via cell
phones—assaulted the hijackers to prevent the plane from being used as a
weapon. During the struggle in the cockpit, the plane went out of control
and plummeted into the Pennsylvania countryside, killing all aboard.
The hijackings represented the worst terrorist assault in the nation’s his-
tory. There were 266 passengers and crewmembers aboard the crashed jets.
More than 100 civilians and military personnel were killed at the Pentagon.
The death toll at the World Trade Center was over 2,700, with many fire-
fighters, police officers, and rescue workers among the dead. Hundreds of
those killed were foreign nationals working in the financial district; some
eighty nations lost citizens in the attacks.

9/11
Smoke pours out of the north tower of the World Trade Center as the south tower
bursts into flames after being struck by a second hijacked airplane. Both towers
collapsed about an hour later.
 Global Terrorism • 1475

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 created shock and chaos, grief and anger.
People rushed to donate blood, food, and money. Volunteers clogged mili-
tary-recruiting centers. For the first time in its history, NATO invoked Article
5 of its charter, which states that an attack on any member will be considered
an attack on all members. The stunning terrorist assaults led the editors of
the New York Times to observe that 9/11 was “one of those moments in which
history splits, and we define the world as before and after.”
Within hours of the hijackings, officials had identified the nineteen dead
terrorists as members of al Qaeda (the Base), a well-financed worldwide net-
work of Islamic extremists led by a wealthy Saudi renegade, Osama bin
Laden. Years before, bin Laden had declared jihad (holy war) on the United
States, Israel, and the Saudi monarchy. He believed that the United States,
like the Soviet Union, was on the verge of collapse; all it needed was a spark
to ignite its self-destruction. To that end, for several years he had been using
remote bases in war-torn Afghanistan as terrorist training centers. Collabo-
rating with bin Laden’s terrorist network was Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, a
coalition of ultraconservative Islamists that had emerged in the mid-nineties
following the forced withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Taliban
leaders provided bin Laden with a safe haven, enabling him to recruit Mus-
lim militants and mobilize them into a global strike force. As many as twenty
thousand recruits from twenty different countries circulated through
Afghan training camps before joining secret jihadist cells around the world.
Their goal was to engage in urban warfare, assassination, demolition, and
sabotage, with the United States and Europe as the primary targets.

WA R O N T E R R O R I S M The 9/11 assault on the United States changed

the course of modern life. The economy, already in decline, went into free
fall. President Bush, who had never professed to know much about interna-
tional relations or world affairs, was thrust onto center stage as commander
in chief of a wounded nation eager for vengeance. The new president told
the nation that the “deliberate and deadly attacks . . . were more than acts of
terror. They were acts of war.” The crisis gave the untested, happy-go-lucky
Bush a profound sense of purpose. “I will not yield. I will not rest. I will not
relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security.”
The Bush administration mobilized America’s allies to assault terrorism
worldwide. The coalition demanded that Afghanistan’s Taliban government
surrender the al Qaeda terrorists or risk military attack. On October 7, 2001,
after the Taliban refused to turn over bin Laden, the United States and its allies
launched a ferocious military campaign—Operation Enduring Freedom—to
punish terrorists or “those harboring terrorists.” American and British cruise
1476 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

Operation Enduring Freedom

Smoke rises from the Taliban village of Khanaqa, fifty-five miles from the Afghan
capital Kabul, after a U.S. aircraft released bombs.

missiles and bombers destroyed Afghan military installations and al Qaeda

training camps. On December 9, only two months after the U.S.-led military
campaign in Afghanistan had begun, the Taliban regime collapsed. The war
in Afghanistan then devolved into a high-stakes manhunt for the elusive
Osama bin Laden and his international network of terrorists.

T E R R O R I S M AT H O M E While the military campaign continued in

Afghanistan, officials in Washington worried that terrorists might launch
additional attacks in the United States with biological, chemical, or even
nuclear weapons. To address the threat and to help restore public confi-
dence, President Bush created a new federal agency, the Office of Homeland
Security. Another new federal agency, the Transportation Security Adminis-
tration, assumed responsibility for screening airline passengers for weapons
and bombs. At the same time, President Bush and a supportive Congress cre-
ated the USA Patriot Act, which gave government agencies the right to eaves-
drop on confidential conversations between prison inmates and their
lawyers and permitted suspected terrorists to be tried in secret military
courts. Civil liberties groups voiced grave concerns that the measures jeop-
ardized constitutional rights and protections. But the crisis atmosphere after
9/11 led most people to support these extraordinary steps.
 Global Terrorism • 1477

The Taliban
A young woman shows her face in public for the first time in five years after North-
ern Alliance troops capture Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, in November 2001.
The strict sharia law enforced by the Taliban required that women be covered from
head to foot.

THE BUSH DOCTRINE In the fall of 2002, President Bush unveiled a

new national security doctrine that marked a distinct shift from that of pre-
vious administrations. Containment and deterrence of communism had
been the guiding strategic concepts of the cold war years. In the new uncon-
ventional war against terrorism, however, the cold war policies were out-
dated. Fanatics willing to act as suicide bombers would not be deterred or
contained. The growing menace posed by “shadowy networks” of terrorist
groups and unstable rogue nations with “weapons of mass destruction,”
President Bush declared, required a new doctrine of preemptive military
action. “If we wait for threats to fully materialize,” he explained, “we will
have waited too long. In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is
the path of action. And this nation will act.”

A S E C O N D P E R S I A N G U L F WA R During 2002 and 2003, Iraq

emerged as the focus of the Bush administration’s aggressive new policy of
“preemptive” military action. In September 2002, President Bush urged the
United Nations to confront the “grave and gathering danger” posed by Sad-
dam Hussein’s dictatorial regime and its supposed possession of biological
and chemical weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). In November, the UN
1478 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

Bush’s defense policy

President George W. Bush addresses soldiers in July 2002 as part of an appeal to
Congress to speed approval of increased defense spending after the 9/11 terrorist
attacks.

Security Council passed Resolution 1441 ordering Iraq to disarm immedi-

ately or face “serious consequences.”
On March 17, 2003, President Bush issued an ultimatum to Saddam
Hussein: he and his sons must leave Iraq within forty-eight hours or face a
U.S.-led invasion. Hussein refused. Two days later, on March 19, American
and British forces, supported by other allies making up what Bush called the
“coalition of the willing,” attacked Iraq. Operation Iraqi Freedom involved a
massive bombing campaign followed by a fast-moving invasion across the
Iraqi desert from bases in Kuwait. Some 250,000 American soldiers, sailors,
and marines were joined by 50,000 British troops as well as small contin-
gents from other countries. On April 9, after three weeks of intense fighting
amid sweltering heat and blinding sandstorms, allied forces occupied Bagh-
dad, the capital of Iraq. Hussein’s regime and his inept army collapsed and
fled a week later. On May 1, 2003, President Bush exuberantly declared that
the war was essentially over. “The battle of Iraq,” he said, “is one victory in a
war on terror that began on September 11, 2001, and still goes on.”
The six-week war came at a cost of fewer than two hundred combat
deaths among the three hundred thousand coalition troops. Over two thou-
sand Iraqi soldiers were killed; civilian casualties numbered in the tens of
thousands.
 Global Terrorism • 1479

R E BU I L D I N G I R AQ It proved far easier to win the brief war than to

rebuild Iraq in America’s image. The allies faced the daunting task of restor-
ing order and installing a democratic government in a chaotic Iraq fractured
by age-old religious feuds and ethnic tensions. Violence engulfed the war-
torn country. Vengeful Islamic jihadists from around the world streamed in
to wage a merciless campaign of terror and sabotage against the U.S.-led
coalition forces and their Iraqi allies.
Defense Department analysts had greatly underestimated the difficulty
and expense of occupying, pacifying, and reconstructing postwar Iraq. By
the fall of 2003, President Bush admitted that substantial numbers of Amer-
ican troops (around 150,000) would remain in Iraq much longer than origi-
nally anticipated and that rebuilding the splintered nation would take years
and cost almost a trillion dollars. Victory on the battlefields of Iraq did not
bring peace to the Middle East. Militant Islamic groups seething with hatred
for the United States remained a constant global threat. In addition, the
destruction of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq made for a stronger, tyran-
nical Iran and the accelerating descent of Pakistan into sectarian violence.

A continued presence in Iraq

U.S. military police patrol the market in Abu Ghraib, on the outskirts of Baghdad.
1480 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

The dispute over the legitimacy of the allied war on Iraq also strained rela-
tions between the Anglo-American alliance and France, Germany, and Rus-
sia, all of which had opposed the Iraq War.
Throughout 2003 and 2004, the Iraqi insurgency and its campaign of ter-
ror grew in scope and savagery. Suicide car bombings and roadside
ambushes of U.S. military convoys wreaked havoc among Iraqi civilians and
allied troops. Terrorists kidnapped foreign civilians and beheaded several of
them in grisly rituals videotaped for the world to see. In the United States
the euphoria of battlefield victory turned to dismay as the number of casual-
ties and the expense of the occupation soared. In the face of mounting criti-
cism, President Bush urged Americans to “stay the course,” insisting that a
democratic Iraq would bring stability to the volatile Middle East and thereby
blunt the momentum of Islamic terrorism.
But the president’s credibility suffered a sharp blow in January 2004 when
administration officials admitted that no WMDs—the primary reason for
launching the invasion—had been found in Iraq. The chief arms inspector
told Congress that the intelligence reports about Hussein’s supposed secret
weapons were “almost all wrong.” President Bush said that the absence of
WMDs in Iraq left him with a “sickening feeling,” for he knew that his pri-
mary justification for the assault on Iraq had been undermined. Further-
more, shocking photographs that surfaced in April 2004 showing American
soldiers torturing and abusing Iraqi prisoners further eroded public confi-
dence in Bush’s handling of the war and its aftermath.
By September 2004, U.S. military deaths in Iraq had reached one thou-
sand, and by the end of 2006 the number was nearly three thousand.
Although Saddam Hussein had been captured in December 2003 and a new
Iraqi government would hold its first democratic elections in January 2005,
Iraq seemed less secure than ever to an anxious American public worried
about the rising cost of an unending commitment in Iraq. The continuing
guerrilla wars in Iraq and Afghanistan strained U.S. military resources and
the federal budget.

THE ELECTION OF 2004 Growing public concern about the turmoil

in Iraq complicated George W. Bush’s campaign for a second presidential
term. Throughout 2004, his approval rating plummeted. And in the new
century the electorate had become deeply polarized. A toxic partisanship
dominated political discourse and media commentary in the early years of
the century. Democrats still fumed over the contested presidential election
of 2000. When asked about the intensity of his critics, a combative President
Bush declared the furor “a compliment. It means I’m willing to take a stand.”
 Global Terrorism • 1481

The 2004 election

President George W. Bush (center) and Democratic candidate Senator John Kerry
(left) participate in the second presidential debate, a townhall-style exchange held at
Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

One of his advisers explained it more bluntly: “He likes being hated. It lets
him know he’s doing the right thing.”
The 2004 presidential campaign was punctuated by negative attacks by
both campaigns as the two parties sought to galvanize their loyalists with
strident rhetoric. The Democratic nominee, Senator John Kerry of Massa-
chusetts, lambasted the Bush administration for misleading the nation
about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and for its inept handling of the
reconstruction of postwar Iraq. Kerry also highlighted the record budget
deficits occurring under the Republican administration. Bush countered
that the tortuous efforts to create a democratic government in Iraq would
enhance America’s long-term security.
On election day, November 2, 2004, the exit polls suggested a Kerry vic-
tory, but in the end the election hinged on the crucial swing state of Ohio.
No Republican had ever lost Ohio and still won the presidency. After an anx-
ious night viewing returns from Ohio, Kerry conceded the election. “The
outcome,” he stressed, “should be decided by voters, not a protracted legal
battle.” By narrowly winning Ohio, Bush garnered 286 electoral votes to Kerry’s
251. Yet in some respects the close election was not so close. Bush received
1482 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

WA
11 NH 4
MT ND ME
3 VT 3 4
OR 3 MN
7 ID 10
4 SD WI MI NY MA 12
WY 3 10 17 31
3 RI 4
IA PA CT 7
NV NE 7
5 OH 21 NJ 15
5 UT IL IN 20 WV
CA 5 CO 21 11 DE 3
55 9 KS MO VA MD 10
5 13
6 11 KY 8 DC 3
NC
AZ OK TN 11 15
NM AR SC
10 5 7
6
MS AL GA 8
6 9 15
TX
34 LA
9
FL
HI 27
4

Electoral Vote Popular Vote

AK THE ELECTION OF 2004
3 George W. Bush 286 60,700,000
(Republican)
John Kerry 251 57,400,000
(Democrat)

How did the war in Iraq polarize the electorate? In what ways did the election of
2004 give Republicans a mandate?

3.5 million more votes nationwide than Kerry, and Republicans increased
their control of both the House and the Senate. Trumpeting “the will of the
people at my back,” Bush pledged after his reelection to bring democracy
and stability to Iraq, overhaul the tax code and eliminate the estate tax,
revamp Social Security, trim the federal budget deficit, pass a major energy
bill, and create many more jobs. “I earned capital in the campaign, political
capital, and now I intend to spend it,” he told reporters.

S E C O N D - T E R M B LU E S

Yet like many modern presidents, George Bush stumbled in his second
term. In 2005 he pushed through Congress an energy bill and a Central
American Free Trade Act. But his effort to privatize Social Security retirement
 Second-Term Blues • 1483

accounts, enabling individuals to invest their accumulated pension dollars

themselves, went nowhere, and soaring budget deficits made many fiscal
conservatives feel betrayed.

H U R R I C A N E K AT R I N A In 2005, President Bush’s eroding public sup-

port suffered another blow, this time when a natural disaster turned into a
political crisis. In late August, a killer hurricane named Katrina slammed
into the Gulf coast, devastating large areas of Alabama, Mississippi, and
Louisiana. In New Orleans, whole neighborhoods were under water, often
up to the roofline. Nearly five hundred thousand city residents were dis-
placed, most of them poor and many of them African American. Looting
was so widespread that officials declared martial law; the streets were awash
with soldiers and police. Katrina’s awful wake left over a thousand people
dead in three states and millions homeless and hopeless.
Local political officials and the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA) were caught unprepared as the catastrophe unfolded. Disaster plans
were incomplete; confusion and incompetence abounded. A wave of public
outrage crashed against the Bush administration. In the face of blistering
criticism, President Bush accepted responsibility for the balky federal response

Katrina’s aftermath
Two men paddle through high water with wooden planks in a devastated
New Orleans.
1484 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

to the disaster and accepted the resignation of the FEMA director. Rebuilding
the Gulf coast would take a long time and a lot of money.

A S TA L L E D P R E S I D E N C Y George W. Bush bore the brunt of public

indignation over the bungled federal response to the Katrina disaster. There-
after, his second presidential term was beset by political problems, a sputter-
ing economy, and growing public dissatisfaction with his performance and
the continuing war in Iraq. Even his support among Republicans crumbled,
and many social conservatives felt betrayed by his handling of their con-
cerns. The editors of the Economist, an influential conservative newsmagazine,
declared that Bush had become “the least popular re-elected president since
Richard Nixon became embroiled in the Watergate fiasco.” Soaring gasoline
prices and the federal budget deficit fueled public frustration with the Bush
administration. The president’s efforts to reform the tax code, Social Secu-
rity, and immigration laws languished during his second term, and the tur-
moil and violence in Iraq showed no signs of abating. Senator Chuck Hagel,
a Nebraska Republican, declared in 2005 that “we’re losing in Iraq.”

VO T E R R E B E L L I O N In the November 2006 congressional elections,

the Democrats capitalized on the public disapproval of the Bush administra-
tion to win control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and a major-
ity of governorships and state legislatures. The election results were so
lopsided that for the first time in history the victorious party (the Democrats)
did not lose a single incumbent or open congressional seat or governorship.
Former Texas Republican con-
gressman Dick Armey said that
“the Republican Revolution of
1994 officially ended” with the
2006 election. “It was a rout.”
George Bush admitted that the
voters had given him and his
party a “thumpin’” that would
require a “new era of coopera-
tion” with the victorious Demo-
crats. As it turned out, however,
the Bush White House and the
Democratic Congress became
mired in partisan gridlock. Stale-
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi mate trumped bipartisanship.
At a news conference on Capitol Hill. The transformational election
 Second-Term Blues • 1485

also included a significant milestone: Californian Nancy Pelosi, the leader of

the Democrats in the House of Representatives, became the highest-ranking
woman in the history of the U.S. Congress upon her election as House
Speaker in January 2007.

T H E “ S U R G E ” I N I R A Q The 2006 congressional elections were largely

a referendum on the lack of progress in the Iraq War. Throughout the fall
the violence and casualties in Iraq had spiraled upward. Bush eventually
responded to declining public and political support for the Iraq War by cre-
ating the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan task force whose final report recom-
mended that the United States withdraw its combat forces from a “grave and
deteriorating Iraq” by the spring of 2008.
President Bush disagreed with the findings of the Iraq Study Group and
others, including key military leaders, who urged a phased withdrawal. On
January 10, 2007, he announced that he was sending a “surge” of 20,000
(eventually 30,000) additional American troops to Iraq, bringing the total
to almost 170,000. From a military perspective, the “surge” strategy suc-
ceeded. By the fall of 2008, the convulsive violence in Iraq had declined dra-
matically, and the U.S.-supported Iraqi government had grown in stature
and confidence. But the financial expenses and human casualties of Ameri-
can involvement in Iraq continued to generate widespread criticism, and
the “surge” failed to attain its political objectives. Iraqi political leaders had
yet to build a stable, self-sustaining democracy. The U.S. general who mas-
terminded the increase in troops admitted that the gains remained “fragile
and reversible.” In 2008, as the number of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq passed
4,000, President Bush acknowledged that the conflict was “longer and
harder and more costly than we anticipated.” During 2008, over 60 percent
of Americans said that the war in Iraq had been a mistake.

E C O N O M I C S H O C K After the intense but brief 2001 recession, the

American economy had begun another period of prolonged expansion. Pros-
perity was fueled primarily by a prolonged housing boom, ultra-low interest
and mortgage rates, easy credit, and reckless consumer spending. Home val-
ues across the nation had risen at rates that were unprecedented—and, as
it turned out, unsustainable. Between 1997 and 2006, home prices in the
United States, especially in the sunbelt states, rose 85 percent, leading to a
frenzy of irresponsible mortgage lending for new homes—and a debt-fueled
consumer spending spree. Tens of millions of people bought houses that
were more expensive than they could afford, refinanced their mortgages, or
tapped home-equity loans to make discretionary purchases. The irrational
1486 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

confidence in soaring housing prices also led government regulatory agencies

and mortgage lenders to ease credit restrictions so that more people could
buy homes. Predatory lenders offered an array of so-called subprime loans
with low initial “teaser” rates to homebuyers with weak credit ratings and a
low annual income. Investment banks and brokerage firms exacerbated the
housing bubble by buying and selling bundles of home mortgages and other
complex financial instruments without understanding the risk.
Financial collapses typically follow real-estate bubbles, rising indebted-
ness, and prolonged budget deficits. The housing bubble burst in 2007, when
home values and housing sales began a precipitous decline. During 2008, the
loss of trillions of dollars in home-equity value set off a seismic shock across
the economy. Record numbers of mortgage borrowers defaulted on their pay-
ments. Foreclosures soared, adding to the glut of homes for sale and further
reducing home prices. Banks lost billions, first on shaky mortgages, then on
most other categories of debt: credit cards, car loans, student loans, and an
array of commercial mortgage-backed securities.
Capitalism depends on access to capital; short-term credit is the lifeblood
of the economy. In 2008, however, the nation’s credit supply froze up. Con-
cerned about their own insolvency as well as their ability to gauge credit
risks, banks essentially stopped lending—to the public and to each other.
So people stopped buying; businesses stopped selling; industries slashed
production, laid off workers, and postponed investment. The sudden con-
traction of consumer credit, corporate spending, and consumer purchases
pushed the economy into a deepening recession in 2008. The scale and sud-
denness of the slump caught economic experts and business leaders by
surprise. Some of the nation’s most prestigious banks, investment firms,
and insurance companies went belly-up. The price of food and gasoline spiked.
Unemployment soared. “Almost all businesses are in a survival mode,” said one
economist, “and they’re slashing payrolls and investments. We’re in store for
some big job losses.” Indeed, some two million jobs disappeared in 2008.
The high-flying stock market, itself fed by artificially low interest rates,
began to tremble in September 2008; during October the bottom fell out.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost a third of its value. Panic set in amid
the turmoil. By late fall of 2008, the United States was facing its greatest
financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. What had begun as a
decline in home prices had become a global economic meltdown—fed by
the paralyzing fright of insecurity. No investment seemed safe. As people
saw their home values plummet and their retirement savings accounts gut-
ted, they were left confused, anxious, and angry. Even Alan Greenspan, the
former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, found himself in a state of
“shocked disbelief ” at the onset of what began to be called the Great Reces-
 A Historic Election • 1487

sion, which officially lasted from December 2007 to January 2009. But its
effects would linger long thereafter. “The Age of Prosperity is over,”
announced the prominent Republican economist Arthur Laffer in 2008.
The economic crisis demanded decisive action. On October 3, 2008, after
two weeks of contentious and often emotional congressional debate, Presi-
dent Bush signed into law a far-reaching historic bank bailout fund called
the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The TARP called for the Trea-
sury Department to spend $700 billion to keep banks and other financial
institutions from collapsing. “By coming together on this legislation, we
have acted boldly to prevent the crisis on Wall Street from becoming a crisis
in communities across our country,” Bush said after the House voted 263 to
171 to pass the TARP bill. Despite such unprecedented government invest-
ment in the private financial sector, the economy still sputtered. In early
October, stock markets around the world began to crash. Economists
warned that the world was at risk of careening into a depression.

A HISTORIC ELECTION

The economic crisis had potent political effects. As two preeminent

economists noted, “In the eight years since George W. Bush took office, nearly
every component of the U.S. economy has deteriorated.” Budget deficits,
trade deficits, and consumer debt had reached record levels, and the total
expense of the American war in Iraq was projected to top $3 trillion. During
President Bush’s last year in office, just 29 percent of the voters “approved” of
his leadership. And more than 80 percent said that the nation was headed in
the “wrong direction.” Even a prominent Republican strategist, Kevin Phillips,
deemed Bush “perhaps the least competent president in modern history.”
Bush’s vulnerability excited Democrats about the possibility of regain-
ing the White House in the 2008 election. Not only was the Bush presidency
floundering, but the Republican party was in disarray, plagued by scandals,
riven by factions, and lacking effective leadership. In 2004, the American
electorate had been evenly divided by party identification: 43 percent for
both the Democratic and the Republican parties. By 2008 the Democrats
were leading the Republicans 50 percent to 35 percent.
The early front-runner for the Democratic nomination was New York
senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the highly visible spouse of ex-president
Bill Clinton. Like her husband, she displayed an impressive command of
policy issues and mobilized a well-funded campaign team. And as the first
woman with a serious chance of gaining the presidency, she garnered wide-
spread support among voters eager for female leadership. In the end,
1488 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

The Clinton campaign

Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks at the Fort
Worth Stockyards.

however, an overconfident Clinton was upset in the Democratic primaries

and caucuses by little-known first-term senator Barack Obama of Illinois, an
inspiring speaker who attracted huge crowds by promising a “politics of
hope” and bolstering their desire for “change.” While the Clinton campaign
courted the powerful members of the party establishment, Obama mounted
an innovative Internet-based campaign directed at grassroots voters, donors,
and volunteers. In early June 2008, he gained enough delegates to secure the
Democratic nomination.
Obama was the first African American presidential nominee of either party,
the gifted biracial son of a white mother from Kansas and a black Kenyan father
who left the household and returned to Africa when Barack was a toddler. The
forty-seven-year-old Harvard Law School graduate and former professor, com-
munity organizer, and state legislator presented himself as a conciliator who
could inspire and unite a diverse people and forge bipartisan collaborations. He
promised to end “the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations
and worn-out dogmas that for too long have strangled our politics.”
Obama exuded poise, confidence, and energy. By contrast, his Republican
opponent, seventy-two-year-old Arizona senator John McCain, was the oldest
presidential candidate in history. As a twenty-five-year veteran of Congress, a
 A Historic Election • 1489

leading Republican senator, and a 2000 candidate for the Republican presiden-
tial nomination, he had developed a reputation as a bipartisan maverick will-
ing to work with Democrats to achieve key legislative goals.
Concerns about McCain’s support among Republican conservatives led
him to select Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, the first
woman on a Republican ticket. Although hardly known outside party cir-
cles, Palin held the promise of winning over religious conservatives nervous
about McCain’s ideological purity. She opposed abortion, gay marriage, and
stem-cell research, and she endorsed the teaching of creationism in public
schools. For his part, Barack Obama rejected calls to choose Hillary Clinton
as his running mate. Instead, he selected seasoned Delaware senator Joseph
Biden, in large part because of his knowledge of foreign policy and national
security issues. Biden was chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

THE 2008 ELECTION In the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama

shrewdly capitalized on widespread dissatisfaction with the Republicans
and centered his campaign on the echoing promise of “change.” He

The 2008 presidential debates

Republican presidential candidate John McCain (left) and Democratic presidential
candidate Barack Obama (right) focused on foreign policy, national security, and
the financial crisis at the first of three presidential debates.
1490 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

repeatedly linked McCain with the unpopular George W. Bush. Obama

promised to end the war in Iraq and he denounced the prevailing Repub-
lican “economic philosophy that says we should give more and more to
those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone
else.” He described the 2008 financial meltdown as the “final verdict on
this failed philosophy.”
On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama made history by becoming the
nation’s first person of color elected president. “Change has come to America,”
he announced in his victory speech. His triumph was decisive and sweeping.
The inspirational Obama won the popular vote by seven points: 53 percent
to 46 percent. His margin in the electoral vote was even more impressive:
365 to 173. The president-elect won big among his core supporters—voters
under age thirty, women, minorities, the very poor, and first-time voters. He
collected 95 percent of the African American vote and 66 percent of voters
aged eighteen to twenty-nine, and he won the increasingly important Hispanic
vote. Obama also helped the Democrats win solid majorities in the House
and Senate races.

Election night rally

President-elect Barack Obama, his wife Michelle, and two daughters, Sasha and
Malia, wave to the crowd of supporters in Chicago’s Grant Park.
 Obama’s First Term • 1491

WA
11 NH 4
MT ND ME
3 VT 3 4
OR 3 MN
7 ID 10
4 SD WI MI NY MA 12
WY 3 10 17 31
3 NE RI 4
IA PA CT 7
NV 4 7 21
OH NJ 15
5 UT (+1 Dem.) IL IN 20 WV
CA 5 CO 21 11 DE 3
55 9 KS MO VA MD 10
5 13
6 11 KY 8 DC 3
NC
AZ OK TN 11 15
NM AR SC
10 5 7
6
MS AL GA 8
6 9 15
TX
34 LA
9
FL
HI 27
4

THE ELECTION OF 2008 Electoral Vote Popular Vote

AK
3 Barack Obama 365 69,500,000
(Democrat)
John McCain 173 59,900,000
(Republican)

How did the economic crisis affect the outcome of the election? What are the
similarities and differences between the map of the 2004 election and the map
of the 2008 election?

Within days of his electoral victory, Barack Obama adopted a bipartisan

approach in selecting his new cabinet members. He appointed Hillary Clinton
secretary of state, renewed Republican Robert Gates as secretary of defense,
selected retired general James Jones, who had campaigned for McCain, as his
national security adviser, and appointed Eric Holder as the nation’s first
African American attorney general.

O B A M A’ S F I R S T T E R M

T H E F I R S T H U N D R E D D AY S On January 20, 2009, President Obama,

calm and dispassionate, delivered his inaugural address in frigid weather amid
daunting challenges. The United States was embroiled in two wars, in Iraq
1492 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

and Afghanistan. The economy was in shambles, unemployment was soar-

ing, and the national debt was hemorrhaging. A supremely self-confident yet
inexperienced Obama acted quickly—some said too quickly—to fulfill his
campaign pledges. He wanted to be a transformative president, an agent of
fundamental public policy changes. He pledged to overhaul unneeded gov-
ernment regulations, reform education, energy, environmental, and health-
care policies, restructure the tax code, invigorate the economy, and recast
U.S. foreign policy. In March, Obama froze the salaries of his senior staffers,
mandated higher fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles, and increased
the federal cigarette tax. Obama also eased restrictions on travel to Cuba that
had been in place for nearly fifty years.

T H E S L U G G I S H E C O N O M Y The new Obama administration’s main

challenge was to keep the deepening global recession from becoming a pro-
longed depression. During late 2008, the economy was shrinking at an annu-
alized rate of nearly 9 percent and losing seven hundred thousand jobs a
month—symptoms of a depression. Unemployment in early 2009 had
passed 8 percent and was still rising. More than 5 million people had lost
their jobs since 2007. The financial sector remained paralyzed. When Obama
promised to act “boldly and wisely” to fulfill his campaign pledges and stim-
ulate the stagnant economy, many progressive Democrats expected him to
mimic Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 and launch an array of New Deal-like
programs to help the needy and restore public confidence.
That did not happen. Most of Obama’s financial advisers, as it turned out,
came from the gigantic Wall Street investment banks like Goldman Sachs
and Citigroup that were in part responsible for the greatest financial crisis
since the Great Depression. In responding to that crisis, the new administra-
tion focused most of its efforts on helping shore up Wall Street—the very
financial interests that had provoked the crisis. As Time magazine noted in
2010, Obama’s advisers devised a recovery plan for the huge banks “that fur-
ther enriched their cronies without doing much for the average Joe.” The big
banks and brokerage houses received lavish government bail-outs, while the
working class and hard-pressed homeowners received much less help in the
form of spending to provide debt relief or to stimulate the flagging economy.
Yes, the massive infusion of federal money shored up the largest banks, but
in a way that required taxpayers to assume all the risk for the reckless specu-
lation the banks had engaged in that had triggered the crisis.
In mid-February, after a prolonged and often strident debate, Congress
passed, and Obama signed, a $787-billion economic stimulus bill called the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It was the largest in history, but
 Obama’s First Term • 1493

in the end not large enough to serve its purpose of restoring economic
growth. The bill included cash distributions to the states, additional funds
for food stamps, unemployment benefits, construction projects to renew the
nation’s infrastructure (roads, bridges, levees, government buildings, and
the electricity grid), money for renewable-energy systems, and $212 billion
in tax reductions for individuals and businesses. Yet the stimulus package
was not robust enough to reverse the deepening recession. Moreover, con-
gressional passage of the stimulus bill showed no evidence that Obama was
successful in implementing a “bipartisan” presidency. Only three Senate
Republicans voted for the bill. Not a single House Republican voted for it,
and eleven House Democrats opposed it as well.

H E A LT H C A R E R E F O R M Obama compounded his error in underesti-

mating the depth and complexity of the recession by choosing to emphasize
comprehensive health-care reform rather than concentrate on creating jobs
and restoring prosperity. Obama explained that the nation’s health-care sys-
tem was so broken that it was “bankrupting families, bankrupting busi-
nesses, and bankrupting our government at the state and federal level.” The
president’s goal was to streamline the nation’s health-care system, make
health insurance more affordable, and make health care accessible for every-
one. Throughout 2009, White House staffers and congressional committees
worked through a maze of complicated issues before presenting to the Con-
gress the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
The ten-year-long, $940 billion proposal (a thousand pages long!), modeled
after a Massachusetts health-care program enacted in 2006 under then–
Republican governor Mitt Romney, included numerous provisions, the most
controversial of which was the so-called individual mandate, which required
that the uninsured must purchase an approved private insurance policy made
available through state agencies or pay a tax penalty. Employers who did not
offer health insurance would also have to pay higher taxes, and drug compa-
nies as well as manufacturers of medical devices would have to pay annual
government fees. Everyone would pay higher Medicare payroll taxes to help
fund the changes. The individual mandate was designed to ensure that all
Americans had health insurance so as to reduce the skyrocketing costs of
hospitals providing “charity care” for the 32 million uninsured Americans. But
the idea of forcing people to buy health insurance flew in the face of the prin-
ciple of individual freedom and personal responsibility. As a result, the health-
care reform legislation became a highly partisan issue. Critics questioned not
only the individual mandate but also the administration’s projections that the
new program would reduce federal expenditures over the long haul.
1494 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

President Obama invested much of his time, energy, and political capital
in shepherding the legislation through the Congress. In December 2009, the
PPACA received Senate approval, with all Democrats and two Independents
voting for, and all Republicans voting against. In March 2010, the House of
Representatives narrowly approved the package, by a vote of 219–212, with
34 Democrats and all 178 Republicans voting against the bill. Obama signed
PPACA into law on March 23, 2010. Its major provisions would be imple-
mented over a four-year transition period.

R E G U L AT I N G WA L L S T R E E T The unprecedented meltdown of the

nation’s financial system beginning in 2008 prompted calls for overhauling
the nation’s financial regulatory system. On July 21, 2010, Obama signed the
Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, also called Dodd–
Frank after its two congressional sponsors. It was the most comprehensive
overhaul of the financial system since the New Deal in the thirties. The 2,319-
page law acknowledged the need to limit the amount of risk that Wall Street
investment banks could take with their clients’ money in order to generate
revenue for the bank and huge bonuses for themselves. The Dodd-Frank bill
also called for government agencies to exercise greater oversight over highly
leverage and highly complex new financial instruments and protected con-
sumers from unfair practices in loans and credit cards by establishing a new
consumer financial-protection agency. While allowing the mega-banks to
continue rather than be broken up, the Dodd-Frank legislation also empow-
ered government regulators to dismantle any financial firms, not just banks,
that were failing. At the signing ceremony in the Ronald Reagan Building in
Washington, D.C., Obama claimed that the new bill would “lift our econ-
omy,” give “certainty to everybody” about the legitimacy of financial transac-
tions, and end “tax-funded bailouts [of big businesses]—period” because it
would no longer allow corporations to become “too big to fail.”

WA R S I N I R A Q A N D A F G H A N I S TA N President Obama had more

success in dealing with foreign affairs than in reviving the economy, in part
because he appointed able people such as Hillary Clinton as secretary of state
and Robert Gates as secretary of defense. Obama wanted to “change
the trajectory of American foreign policy in a way that would end the war in
Iraq, refocus on defeating our primary enemy, al Qaeda, strengthen our
alliances and our leadership.” His foremost concern was to rein in what he
believed was the overextension of American power and prestige abroad. What
journalists came to call the Obama Doctrine stressed that the United States
could not afford to be the world’s only policeman. As Obama explained, the
 Obama’s First Term • 1495

United States has limited “resources and capacity.” It was imperative to adopt
a multilateral approach to world crises so as to reduce America’s investment
in massive foreign commitments and interventions. Obama sought to mobi-
lize collective action against tyranny and terrorism rather than continue to go
it alone. And he was remarkably successful in doing so.
The Obama Doctrine grew out of the fact that the president inherited
two enormously expensive wars, one in Iraq and the other in Afghanistan. On
February 27, 2009, Obama announced that all U.S. combat troops would be
withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2011. Until then, a “transitional force” of
thirty-five thousand to fifty thousand troops would assist Iraqi security forces,
protect Americans, and fight terrorism. True to his word, the last U.S. troops
left Iraq in December 2011. Their exit marked the end of a bitterly divisive war
that had raged for nearly nine years and left Iraq shattered, with troubling
questions lingering over whether the newly democratic Arab nation would be
self-sustaining as well as a steadfast U.S. ally amid chronic sectarian clashes in
a turbulent region. The U.S. intervention in Iraq had cost over four thousand

Home from Iraq

American troops returned from Iraq to more somber, humbler homecomings than
the great fanfare that rounded off previous wars.
1496 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

American lives, over one hundred thousand Iraqi lives, and $800 billion.
Whether it was worth such an investment remained to be seen.
At the same time that he was reducing U.S. military involvement in
Iraq, President Obama dispatched twenty-one thousand additional troops
to Afghanistan, which he called “ground zero” in the continuing battle
against global terrorism. The goal in Afghanistan was to “disrupt, dismantle,
and defeat al Qaeda” at its Afghan base through a revitalized effort to assault
the Taliban. When President Bush escalated U.S. military involvement in
Afghanistan, the situation in the war-torn tribal land resembled the predica-
ment the United States had found itself in during the Vietnam War: an
indefensible border region harboring enemy sanctuaries; American reliance
on a corrupt partner government; and the necessity of fighting a war of
counterinsurgency—the most difficult type of conflict because there was no
easy distinction between civilians and the insurgents. Yet by the summer of
2011, it appeared that the American strategy was working. President Obama
announced that the “tide of war was receding” and that the United States
had largely achieved its goals in Afghanistan, setting in motion a substantial
withdrawal of U.S. forces beginning in 2011 and lasting until 2014. As was
true in Iraq, Obama stressed that the Afghans must determine the future sta-
bility of Afghanistan. “We will not try to make Afghanistan a perfect place,”
he said. “We will not police its streets or patrol its mountains indefinitely.
That is the responsibility of the Afghan government.”

T H E D E AT H O F O S A M A B I N L A D E N At the same time that Obama

was ending the U.S. role in Iraq and Afghanistan, he focused additional
resources on counterterrorism, expanding the use of special operations
forces and remote-controlled drones to assault the senior leaders of al
Qaeda, almost all of whom operated out of Pakistan. The crowning achieve-
ment of Obama’s efforts was the discovery, at long last, of Osama bin Laden’s
hideout. Ever since the attacks of 9/11, bin Laden had eluded an intense
manhunt after crossing the Afghan border into Pakistan. His luck ran out in
August 2011, however, when U.S. intelligence officials discovered bin Laden’s
sanctuary in a walled residential compound outside of Abbottabad, Pak-
istan. On May 1, 2011, President Obama authorized a daring night raid by a
U.S. Navy SEAL team of two dozen specially trained commandos trans-
ported by helicopters from Afghanistan. After a brief firefight, caught on
videotape and fed live by a satellite link to the White House situation room,
the Navy SEAL team killed bin Laden and transported his body to an aircraft
carrier in the Arabian Sea, where it was washed, wrapped in a white sheet,
and dropped overboard. There were no American casualties. Ten years ear-
lier, bin Laden had told a reporter that he “loves death. The Americans
 Obama’s First Term • 1497

love life. I will engage them and fight. If I am to die, I would like to be killed
by the bullet.” The U.S. Special Forces assault team granted his wish. The
news that the mastermind of global terrorism had been killed sparked
worldwide celebrations. Violent Islamism no longer seemed inevitable or
indomitable.

THE “A R A B AWA K E N I N G ” The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were

simply the latest evidence of the massive investment that the United States
had made in the stability of the Middle East and North Africa since the first
Arab oil embargo in the 1970s. The security of Israel and ensuring American
access to the region’s vast oil reserves made the Middle East strategically
important—and volatile. After 9/11, America’s focus on the turbulent Mid-
dle East became an obsession. The invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq
in 2003 displaced and decimated al Qaeda and helped to prevent any more
major attacks on U.S. soil. But the deepening involvement in the region also
drained America’s budget (costing well over a trillion dollars), created dis-
sension at home, and emboldened enemies such as Iran and Syria to become
even more aggressive in their provocations.
In late 2010 and early 2011, however, something remarkable and unex-
pected occurred: spontaneous democratic uprisings emerged throughout
much of the Arab world, as long-oppressed peoples rose up against generations-
old authoritarian regimes. The idealistic rebels demanded basic liberties
such as meaningful voting rights, a credible judicial system, and freedom of
the press. One by one, corrupt Arab tyrants were forced out of power by a
new generation of young idealists inspired by democratic ideals and con-
nected by social media on the Internet. They did not simply demand change;
they embodied it, putting their lives on the line.
The Arab Awakening began in mid-December 2010 in Tunisia, on the
coast of North Africa. Like much of the Arab world, Tunisia was a chroni-
cally poor nation suffering from high unemployment, runaway inflation,
political corruption, and authoritarian rule. On December 17, Mohamed
Bouazizi, a twenty-six-year-old street vendor distraught over rough police
treatment, set himself on fire in a public square. His suicidal act was like a
stone thrown into a pond whose ripples quickly spread outward. It sparked
waves of pro-democracy demonstrations across Tunisia that forced the pres-
ident, who had been in power for twenty-three years, to step down when his
own security forces refused orders to shoot protesters. An interim government
thereafter allowed democratic elections.
Rippling waves of unrest sparked by the Tunisian “Burning Man” soon
rolled across Algeria, Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco, Egypt, Oman, Yemen, Libya,
Saudi Arabia, and Syria. The people’s insistence on exercising their basic
1498 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

rights as citizens, the marches

and rallies in the streets and
parks, and the sudden coming
to voice of the voiceless were
tangible signs of an old order
crumbling. In Egypt, the Arab
world’s most populous coun-
try, several thousand protesters
led by university students con-
verged in the streets of teeming
Cairo in late January, 2011.
They demanded the end of the
long rule of strongman Presi-
dent Hosni Moubarak, a
staunch American ally who had
treated his own people with
contempt. The boldness of the
youthful rebels was contagious.
Within a few days, hundreds of
Arab Awakening
thousands of demonstrators
Thousands of protestors converge in Cairo’s
Tahrir Square to call for an end to Moubarak’s representing all walks of life
rule. converged on Tahrir Square,
where many of them encamped
for eighteen days, singing songs, holding candlelight vigils, and waving flags
in the face of a brutal crackdown by security forces. Violence erupted when
Moubarak’s supporters attacked the protesters. The government tried to cut
off access to social communications—mobile telephones, text-messaging,
and the Internet—but its success was limited. Desperate to stay in power,
Moubarak replaced his entire cabinet, but it was not enough to quell the anti-
government movement. On February 11, 2011, Moubarak resigned, ceding
control to the military leadership. On March 4, a civilian was appointed
prime minister, and elections were promised within a year.
As the so-called Arab Awakening flared up in other parts of the region, some
of the rebellions grew violent, some were brutally smashed (Syria), and some
achieved substantial political changes. The remarkable uprisings heralded a
new era in the history of the Middle East struggling to be born. Arabs had sud-
denly lost their fear—not just their fear of violent rulers, but also their fear that
they were not capable of democratic government. By the millions, they demon-
strated with their actions that they would no longer passively accept the old way
of being governed.
 Obama’s First Term • 1499

L I B YA O U S T S G A D D A F I The pro-democracy turmoil in North Africa

quickly spread to oil-rich Libya, long governed by the zany dictator Colonel
Muammar Gaddafi, the Arab world’s most violent despot. Anti-government
demonstrations began on February 15, 2011, prompting Gaddafi to order
Libyan soldiers and foreign mercenaries to suppress the rebellious “rats,” first
with rubber bullets, then with live ammunition, including artillery and war-
planes. The soaring casualties spurred condemnations of Gaddafi’s brutalities
from around the world, including the United States. By the end of February,
what began as a peaceful pro-democratic uprising had turned into a full-scale
civil war in which the poorly organized, scantily armed rebels faced an
entrenched regime willing to do anything to retain its stranglehold over the
nation. On March 17, the UN Security Council authorized a no-fly zone over
Libya designed to prevent Gaddafi’s use of warplanes against the civilian rebels.
President Obama handled the Libyan uprising with patience and ingenu-
ity. Eager to avoid the mistakes made in the Iraq War, he insisted on several
conditions being met before involving U.S. forces in Libya. First, the pro-
democratic rebel force needed to request American assistance. Second, any
UN coalition must include Arab nations as well as the United States and its
European allies. Third, the United States would commit warplanes and cruise
missiles but not ground forces; it could not afford a third major war in the
region. On March 19, those conditions were met. With the Arab League’s
support, France, the United States, and the United Kingdom intervened in
Libya with a bombing campaign against pro-Gaddafi forces. One rebel leader
called the Allied air strikes “a gift from God.” For seven months, intense
fighting raged back and forth across northern Libya. Slowly, the ragtag Libyan
rebels gained confidence and coordination. What most observers believed
was impossible—the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime—began to take hold.
In late August, anti-Gaddafi forces, accompanied by television crews, captured
the capital of Tripoli, scattering Gaddafi’s government and marking the end of
his forty-two-year dictatorship. On October 20, rebel fighters captured and
killed Gaddafi in his hometown of Sirt.
The Obama administration believed that the root cause of Islamist terrorism
was not religion but the absence of Arab democracy. Promoting democracy in
the region represented a profound change in American policy. Since the end of
the Second World War, U.S. leaders had tended to prize stability in the Arab
nations, even if it meant propping up tyrants. Under President Obama, the
United States did an about-face and supported the Arab Awakening’s crusade
for democratic change and human rights. Yet while the Arab Awakening had
ensured that the political process in many countries would be more open and
dynamic, it did not necessarily bring stability to the turbulent region. The Arab
1500 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

political stage had suddenly been repopulated with a new cast of characters act-
ing out the first scene of an unfolding drama promoting pluralism and toler-
ance. “You have to understand,” said a Syrian rebel, “that this is not a bunch of
different revolutions. This is one big revolution for all the Arabs. It will not stop
until it reaches everywhere.”

T H E T E A PA R T Y At the same time that Arabs were rebelling against

entrenched political elites, grassroots rebellions were occurring in the United
States as well. No sooner was Obama sworn in than limited-government con-
servatives frustrated by his election began mobilizing to thwart any renewal
of “tax-and-spend” liberalism. In January 2009, a New York stock trader
named Graham Makohoniuk sent out an e-mail message urging people to
send tea bags to the Senate and House of Representatives. He fastened on tea
bags to symbolize the famous Boston Tea Party of 1773 during which out-
raged American colonists protested against British tax policies. The e-mail
message “went viral” among anti-tax libertarians and conservatives across the
nation. Within days, thousands of tea bags poured into congressional offices.
Within weeks, the efforts of angry activists coalesced into a decentralized
nationwide protest movement soon labeled “the Tea Party.” It had neither a
national headquarters nor an official governing body; nor was there a formal
process for joining the grassroots movement. Within a year or so, there were
about a thousand Tea Party groups spread across the fifty states. “The GOP is
very worried,” noted a political scientist. “It’s very hard to deal with the Tea
Party movement. It’s like fighting guerrilla warfare with them.”
The Tea Party is at once a mood, an attitude, and an ideology, an eruption of
libertarians, mostly white, male, middle-class Republicans over the age of forty-
five, boiling mad at a political system that they believe has grown dependent on
spending their taxes. The overarching aim of the Tea Party is to transform the
Republican party into a vehicle of conservative ideology and eliminate all those
who resist the true faith. More immediately, the “tea parties” rallied against
President Obama’s health-care initiative and economic stimulus package, argu-
ing that they verged on socialism in their efforts to bail out corporate America
and distressed homeowners. On April 15, 2009, the Internal Revenue tax-filing
deadline, Tea Party demonstrations occurred in 750 cities.
What began as a scattering of anti-tax protests crystallized into a powerful
anti-government movement promoting fiscal conservatism at the local, state,
and national levels. Like Ronald Reagan, the Tea Party saw government as the
problem, not the solution. As candidates began to campaign for the 2010 con-
gressional elections, the Tea Party mobilized to influence the results, not by
forming a third political party but by trying to take over the leadership of the
Republican party. Members of the Tea Party were as frustrated by the old-line
 Obama’s First Term • 1501

The Tea Party Movement

Tea Party supporters gather outside the New Hampshire Statehouse for a tax day
rally.

Republican establishment (RINOs—Republicans in Name Only) as they were

disgusted by liberal Democrats. As a Virginia Tea Party candidate claimed, “I
don’t think there’d be a Tea Party if the Republican Party had been a party of
limited government in the first part of this decade.” The Tea Party members
were not seeking simply to rebuild the Republican party; they wanted to take
over a “decaying” Republican party and restore its anti-tax focus. Democrats,
including President Obama, initially dismissed the Tea Party as a fringe group
of extremists, but the 2010 election results proved them wrong.

C O N S E R VAT I V E R E S U R G E N C E Barack Obama had campaigned in

2008 on the promise of bringing dramatic change to the federal government.
“Yes, we can” was his echoing campaign slogan. In the fall of 2010, however,
many of the same voters who had embraced Obama’s promises in 2008 now
answered, “Oh, no you don’t!” Democratic House and Senate candidates
(as well a moderate Republicans), including many long-serving leaders, were
defeated in droves as insurgent conservatives recaptured control of the House
of Representatives (gaining sixty-three seats) and won a near majority in
the Senate. Republicans also took control of both the governorships and the
legislatures in twelve states; ten states were already Republican-controlled.
It was the most lopsided midterm election since 1938. A humbled Obama,
1502 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

who in a fit of hubris had earlier claimed that his first two years were compa-
rable to the achievements of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and
Lyndon B. Johnson, called it a “shellacking” reminiscent of what Congres-
sional Republicans had experienced in 2006. One of his aides was more apoc-
alyptic: he called the election an “inflection point,” suggesting that the rest of
the president’s first term would be contentious; stalemate would trump
change as the new “Tea Party” Republicans strove to rebuke Obama at every
turn. Exit polls on election day showed widespread frustration about Obama’s
handling of the slumping economy. Recovery and jobs growth remained elu-
sive. Voters said that Obama and the Democrats had tried to do too much too
fast—bailing out huge banks and automobile companies, spending nearly a
trillion dollars on various pet projects designed to stimulate the flaccid econ-
omy, and reorganizing the national health-care system. Republican candi-
dates were carried into office on a wave of discontent fomented by the Tea
Party movement that demanded ideological purity from its candidates.
“We’ve come to take our government back,” declared one Republican con-
gressional winner. Thereafter, Obama and the Republican-dominated Con-
gress engaged in a strident sparring match, each side refusing to accommodate
the other as the incessant partisan bickering postponed meaningful action on
the languishing economy and the runaway federal budget deficit.

O C C U P Y WA L L S T R E E T The emergence of the Tea Party illustrated the

growing ideological extremism of twenty-first-century politics. On the left
wing of the political spectrum, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement,
founded in the fall of 2011, represented the radical alternative to the Tea Party.
In the spring of 2011 Kalle Lasn, the founding editor of Adbusters, an anti-
consumerism magazine published in Vancouver, Canada, decided to pro-
mote a grassroots uprising against a capitalist system that was promoting
mindless materialism and growing economic and social inequality. What
America most needed, Lasn believed, was a focused conversation about
growing income inequality, diminishing opportunities for upward social
mobility, runaway corporate greed as well as the distorting impact of corpo-
rate donations to political campaigns, and economic fairness—all issues that
had been exacerbated by the government “bailouts” of huge banks and cor-
porations weakened by the Great Recession. As the Pew Research Center
reported, the conflict between rich and poor had become “the greatest
source of tension in American society.”
Lasn began circulating through his magazine and online networks a poster
showing a ballerina perched atop the famous “Charging Bull” sculpture on
Wall Street. The caption read: “What Is Our Demand? Occupy Wall Street.
 Obama’s First Term • 1503

Bring tent.” The call to arms quickly circulated over the Internet, and another
decentralized grassroots movement was born. Within a few days OWS had
launched an anarchical website, OccupyWallSt.org, and moved the headquar-
ters for the anti-capitalist uprising from Vancouver to New York City. Dozens,
then hundreds, then thousands of people, mostly young adults, many of them
unemployed, converged on Zuccotti Park in southern Manhattan in a kind of
spontaneous democracy. They formed tent villages and gathered in groups
to “occupy” Wall Street to protest corrupt banks and brokerage houses
whose “fraudsters,” they claimed, had caused the 2008 economic crash and
forced the severe government cutbacks in social welfare programs. OWS
charged that most of the nation’s financiers at the heart of the Great Reces-
sion had not been prosecuted or even disciplined. The biggest banks were
larger than ever, and huge bonuses were being paid to staff members.
The protesting “occupiers” drafted a “Declaration of the Occupation” that
served as the manifesto of a decentralized movement dedicated to under-
mining the disproportionate political and economic power exercised by the
Wall Street power brokers. OWS demanded that corporate donations to

Occupy Wall Street

The grassroots movement expanded rapidly from rallies in Zuccotti Park, Manhat-
tan, (left) into massive marches on financial districts nationwide. Right, thousands
of protesters storm downtown Los Angeles.
1504 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

political candidates cease and that elected officials focus on helping people
rather than bailing out big business. Economic data showed that for decades
the super-rich had been garnering a growing percentage of national wealth
at the expense of the working and middle classes. In 1980, the richest one
percent of Americans controlled ten percent of all personal income; by 2012,
the top one percent amassed twenty-five percent of total income. And
the people hurt most by the Great Recession were those at the bottom
of the income scale. By 2010, there were 46.2 million Americans living below
the U.S. poverty line, an all-time record. The OWS protesters were deter-
mined to reverse such economic and social trends. They described them-
selves as the voice of the 99 percent of Americans who were being victimized
by the 1 percent of the wealthiest and most politically connected Americans.
As one of the protesters proclaimed, “everyone can see that the [capitalist]
system is deeply unjust and careening out of control. Unfettered greed has
trashed the global economy. And it is trashing the natural world as well.”
The OWS protesters excelled at creative disruption. They tried to shut
down the New York Stock Exchange, held a sit-in at the nearby Brooklyn
Bridge, and grappled with police. The vagueness (“We are our demands!”) of
a spontaneous grassroots “movement without demands” was initially a
virtue, as the demonstrations attracted national media coverage. “We can’t
hold on to any authority,” one organizer explained. “We don’t want to.” But
soon thousands more alienated people showed up, many of whom brought
their own agendas to the effort. A “horizontal” movement with organizers
and facilitators but no leaders at times morphed into a chaotic mob punctu-
ated by antic good cheer and zaniness (organizers dressed up as Wall Street
executives, stuffed Monopoly “play” money in their mouths, etc.). At the
same time, however, the anarchic energies of OWS began to spread like a
virus across the nation. Similar efforts calling for a “government accountable
to the people, freed up from corporate influence” emerged in cities around
the globe; encampments of alienated activists sprang up in over a thousand
towns and cities. On December 6, 2011, President Obama echoed the OWS
movement when he deplored in a speech “the breathtaking greed of a few”
and said that the effort to restore economic “fairness” was the “defining issue
of our time.” Although the OWS demonstrations receded after many cities
ordered police to arrest the protesters and dismantle the ramshackle
encampments, by the end of 2011 the OWS effort to spark a national conver-
sation about growing income inequality had succeeded. As the New York
Times announced, “The new progressive age has begun.”

POLARIZED POLITICS American politics has always been chaotic,

combative, and fractious; its raucous energy is one of its strengths. But the
 Obama’s First Term • 1505

2010 election campaigns were spirited to the point of violence; polarizing

partisan rhetoric had never been fiercer. Obama’s pledge to be a bipartisan
president fell victim to acidic battles between the two political parties. The
increasingly dogmatic tone of American politics did not bode well for those
hoping for bipartisan leadership cooperation. As a House Republican pre-
dicted in the aftermath of the 2010 elections, there would be “no compromise
on stopping runaway spending, deficits, and debt. There will be no compro-
mise on repealing Obamacare.” The strident refusal to compromise became a
point of honor for both parties—and created a nightmarish stalemate for the
nation, as the dysfunctional political system harmed an already sick economy.
The gulf between the two parties had become a chasm. “American politicians
are intent,” said the editors of The Economist, “not on improving the coun-
try’s competitiveness, but on gouging each other’s eyes out.”
Ideological purity became the watchword of modern conservatism as lib-
ertarianism emerged as an appealing alternative to traditional conservatism.
The libertarian wing of the conservative revolt was led by Texas Congressman
Ron Paul, who not only disapproved of runaway federal spending on social
programs but also on military defense. Paul disagreed with George W. Bush’s
decision to invade Iraq and upset religious conservatives by arguing that
flashpoint cultural issues such as abortion and gay marriage should be
addressed on a state-by-state basis, not by the federal government.
By 2011, the conservative insurgency led by the Tea Party focused on the
record-breaking federal deficit and the tepid economic recovery (2011 home
sales were the worst in history). The Tea Party faction in Congress theatrically
began to practice a form of brinkmanship: they were willing to let the nation
go bankrupt rather than raise the debt-ceiling limit. What Tea Party members
hated most was the willingness of Republicans over the years to compromise
with Democrats and thereby enable the federal government to keep growing
and overspending its budgets. But if the Tea Party pushed too hard, it would
fracture the Republican party. Some were not sure that was such a bad idea.
“If the Republicans can’t come through with their promises,” a Rhode Island
Tea Partier mused, “maybe the party needs to be blown up.”
The politics of impasse stalemated American government during 2011
and 2012. Rather than work responsibly together to close the nation’s gaping
budget deficit, the two warring parties proved incapable of reaching a com-
promise; they instead opted for the easy way out by applying temporary patches
that would expire after the November 2012 elections. Those patches created
a fiscal “cliff” at the end of 2012, whereby the tax cuts created by George W. Bush
would expire, as would a cut in payroll taxes. At the same time, a string of
across-the-board federal budget cuts (called “sequesters”) would also auto-
matically occur unless Congress acted. Rather than bridge their differences
1506 • A MERICA IN A N EW M ILLENNIUM (CH. 34)

during 2011–2012, both sides preferred to fight it out during the presidential
election campaign in hopes that the voters would signal a clear message.

BOLD DECISIONS In May 2012 President Obama jumped headfirst into

the simmering cultural wars by courageously changing his longstanding posi-
tion and announcing his support for the rights of gay couples to marry. That
his statement came a day after the state of North Carolina legislature voted to
ban all rights for gay couples illustrated how incendiary the issue was around
the country. While asserting it was the “right” thing to do, Obama also knew
that endorsing gay marriage had political ramifications. The gay community
would play an energetic role in the 2012 presidential election, and the youth
vote, the under-30 electorate who of all the voting-age cohorts supported gay
marriage, would be equally crucial to Obama’s reelection chances. No sooner
had Obama made his pathbreaking announcement than polls showed that
American voters split half and half on the charged issue, with Democrats and
independent voters constituting the majority of such support.
The following month, in June 2012, Obama again stunned the nation by
issuing an executive order (soon labeled the DREAM Act) allowing undocu-
mented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children to
remain in the country as citizens. His unanticipated decision thrilled Latino
supporters who had lost heart over his failure to convince Congress to support
a more comprehensive reform of immigration laws. The nation’s changing
demographics bolstered Obama’s immigration initiatives. In 2005 Hispanics
had become the largest minority group in the nation, surpassing African Amer-
icans. By 2012 the United States had more foreign-born and first-generation
residents than ever before, and each year 1 million more immigrants arrived.

T H E C O U RT RU L E S No sooner had Obama pushed his controversial

health care plan through Congress in 2010 than opponents—state gover-
nors, conservative organizations, businesses, and individual citizens, largely
divided along party lines—began challenging the constitutionality of the
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), which Republicans
labeled Obamacare. During the spring and summer of 2012, as the Supreme
Court deliberated over the merits of the PPACA, most observers expected
the conservative justices to declare Obama’s most significant presidential
achievement unconstitutional. But that did not happen. On June 28, 2012,
the Court issued its much-awaited decision in a case titled National Federa-
tion of Independent Business v. Sebelius. The landmark 5-to-4 ruling
surprised Court observers by declaring most of the new federal law constitu-
tional. Even more surprising was that the deciding vote was cast by the chief
 Obama’s First Term • 1507

justice, John G. Roberts, a philosophical conservative who had never before

voted with the four “liberal” justices on the Court. Roberts upheld the
PPACA’s “individual mandate,” requiring virtually every adult to buy private
health insurance or else pay a tax, arguing that it was within the Congress’s
power to impose taxes as outlined in Article 1 of the Constitution. Because
Congress had such authority, Justice Roberts declared, “it is not our role to
forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness.” That would be up to the
voters who elect the members of Congress. Many conservatives, including
the four dissenting justices, felt betrayed by Roberts’s unexpected ruling.
The Court decision sent ripples through the 2012 presidential election cam-
paign. The surprising verdict boosted Obama’s reelection chances, leading
the New York Times to predict that the ruling “may secure Obama’s place in
history.” Republican candidate Mitt Romney, who as governor of Massachu-
setts had signed a similar health care bill only to repudiate it once he decided
to run for president, promised to repeal the PPACA if elected.
As the November 2012 presidential election approached, it remained to
be seen whether President Obama could shift the focus of voters from the
sluggish economy to cultural politics and social issues. Mitt Romney won the
Republican presidential nomination because he promised, as a former
corporate executive, to accelerate economic growth. Romney sought to
downplay volatile social issues, in part because of his inconsistent stances on
hot-button topics such as abortion, gay marriage, and immigration reform.
His shifting stances reflected a shift in the Republican strategy. Over the past
forty years, their conservative positions on social issues were vote-getters;
now they feared that too much moralizing by the religious right ran the risk
of alienating the independent voters who continue to be the decisive factor
in presidential elections. The question for Romney was whether the still-
powerful religious right would allow him to sidestep tough social issues; the
question for Obama was whether he could sidestep his failure to restore
prosperity to an economy experiencing the slowest recession recovery since
the 1930s.
End of Chapter Review
CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Changing Demographics From 1980 to 2010, the population of the United

States grew by 25 percent to 306 million. The number of traditional family units
continued to decline; the poverty rate was especially high among African Ameri-
cans. A wave of immigrants caused Latinos to surpass African Americans as the
nation’s largest minority.
• Divided Government The popularity of President George H. W. Bush waned
after the Gulf War, an economic recession, and his decision to raise taxes. The
election of William Jefferson Clinton in 1992 aroused Republican Speaker New-
ton Leroy Gingrich to craft his Contract with America to achieve the Republican
landslide of 1994.
• Economic Prosperity and Crises The United States benefited from a period of
unprecedented prosperity during the 1990s, fueled by the dramatic effect of the
new computer-based industries on the economy. The collapse of high-tech com-
panies in 2000 betrayed the underlying insecurity of the market. Economic
growth soon surged again primarily because of consumers’ ability to borrow
against the skyrocketing value of their home mortgages. In 2007, the country
experienced an unparalleled crisis when the global financial markets collapsed
under the weight of “toxic” financial securities.
• Global Terrorism The 9/11 attacks led President George W. Bush to declare a
war on terrorism and enunciate the Bush Doctrine. In 2002 the Bush adminis-
tration shifted its focus to Saddam Hussein. The American-led Operation Iraqi
Freedom succeeded in removing Hussein from power but was fully unprepared
to establish order in a country that was soon wracked by sectarian violence. The
American public became bitterly divided over the Iraq War.
• 2008 Presidential Election The 2008 presidential campaigns included the first
major female candidate, Senator Hillary Clinton; an African American, Senator
Barack Obama; and Senator John McCain, the oldest candidate in history. Obama
won the popular vote and a landslide victory in the Electoral College, becoming
the nation’s first African American president. His victory was facilitated by the
collapse of the economy, an unprecedented Internet- and grassroots-based cam-
paign, and voters’ weariness with President Bush and the Republican policies of
the preceding eight years.
 CHRONOLOGY

1991
1995
1996
Ethnic conflict explodes in Yugoslavia
Republicans promote the Contract with America
Congress passes the Personal Responsibility and Work
Opportunity Act
1998 Kenneth Starr issues Whitewater report
1998 Bill Clinton brokers the Wye Mills Accord
1999 Bill Clinton is impeached and acquitted
2000 Supreme Court issues Bush v. Gore decision
September 11, 2001 9/11 attacks
2003 Iraq War begins with Operation Iraqi Freedom
2005 Hurricane Katrina
2007 Nancy Pelosi becomes the first female Speaker of the
House of Representatives
2008 Global financial markets collapse
2009 Barack Obama becomes the nation’s first African
American president
2011 Occupy Wall Street movement begins
2011 U.S. troops return from Iraq

KEY TERMS & NAMES

William Jefferson Clinton George W. Bush p. 1469 Hillary Rodham Clinton
p. 1454 p. 1487
No Child Left Behind
North American Free Trade p. 1472 Barack Obama p. 1488
Agreement (NAFTA)
p. 1457 Osama bin Laden p. 1475 American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act p. 1492
Contract with America September 11 p. 1475
p. 1459 Arab Awakening p. 1497
the “surge” p. 1485
ethnic cleansing p. 1468 Tea Party p. 1500
Troubled Asset Relief
Albert Gore Jr. p. 1469 Program (TARP) p. 1487 Occupy Wall Street p. 1502

GLOSSARY

36°30′ According to the Missouri Compromise, any part of the Louisiana Purchase north of
this line (Missouri’s southern border) was to be excluded from slavery.

54th Massachusetts Regiment After President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclama-

tion, the Union army organized all black military units, which white officers led. The
54th Massachusetts Regiment was one of the first of such units to be organized.

Abigail Adams (1744–1818) As the wife of John Adams, she endured long periods of separa-
tion from him while he served in many political roles. During these times apart, she
wrote often to her husband; and their correspondence has provided a detailed portrait
of life during the Revolutionary War.

abolition In the early 1830s, the anti-slavery movement shifted its goal from the gradual end
of slavery to the immediate end or abolition of slavery.

John Adams (1735–1826) He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a delegate
to the First and Second Continental Congress. During the Revolutionary War, he
worked as a diplomat in France and Holland and negotiated the peace treaty with
Britain. After the Revolutionary War, he served as the minister to Britain as well as the
vice president and the second president of the United States. As president, he passed the
Alien and Sedition Acts and endured a stormy relationship with France, which included
the XYZ affair.

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) As secretary of state under President Monroe, he negotiated
agreements to define the boundaries of the Oregon country and the Transcontinental
Treaty. He urged President Monroe to issue the Monroe Doctrine, which incorporated
Adams’s views. As president, Adams envisioned an expanded federal government and a
broader use of federal powers. Adams’s nationalism and praise of European leaders
caused a split in his party. Some Republicans suspected him of being a closet monar-
chist and left to form the Democrat party. In the presidential election of 1828, Andrew
Jackson claimed that Adams had gained the presidency through a “corrupt bargain”
with Henry Clay, which helped Jackson win the election.

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) A genius of revolutionary agitation, he believed that English Par-
liament had no right to legislate for the colonies. He organized the Sons of Liberty as
well as protests in Boston against the British.

A1
A2 • GLOSSARY

Jane Addams (1860–1935) As the leader of one of the best known settlement houses, she
rejected the “do-goodism” spirit of religious reformers. Instead, she focused on solving
the practical problems of the poor and tried to avoid the assumption that she and other
social workers knew what was best for poor immigrants. She established child care for
working mothers, health clinics, job training, and other social programs. She was also
active in the peace movement and was awarded the Noble Peace Prize in 1931 for her
work on its behalf.

Agricultural Adjustment Act (1933) New Deal legislation that established the Agricultural
Adjustment Administration (AAA) to improve agricultural prices by limiting market
supplies; declared unconstitutional in United States v. Butler (1936).

Emilio Aguinaldo (1869?–1964) He was a leader in Filipino struggle for independence. Dur-
ing the war of 1898, Commodore George Dewey brought Aguinaldo back to the
Philippines from exile to help fight the Spanish. However, after the Spanish surren-
dered to Americans, America annexed the Philippines and Aguinaldo fought against
the American military until he was captured in 1901.

Alamo, Battle of the Siege in the Texas War for Independence of 1836, in which the San Anto-
nio mission fell to the Mexicans. Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie were among the coura-
geous defenders.

Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) Four measures passed during the undeclared war with France
that limited the freedoms of speech and press and restricted the liberty of noncitizens.

American Colonization Society An organization created in 1816 to address slavery and racial
issues in the Old South. Proposed that slaves and freed blacks would be shipped to Africa.

American Federation of Labor Founded in 1881 as a federation of trade unions made up of

skilled workers, the AFL under president Samuel Gompers successfully pushed for the
eight-hour workday.

American Indian Movement (AIM) Fed up with the poor conditions on Indian reservations
and the federal government’s unwillingness to help, Native Americans founded the
American Indian Movement (AIM) in 1963. In 1973, AIM led 200 Sioux in the occupa-
tion of Wounded Knee. After a ten-week standoff with the federal authorities, the gov-
ernment agreed to reexamine Indian treaty rights and the occupation ended.

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Hoping to restart the weak economy, President
Obama signed this $787-billion economic stimulus bill in February of 2009. The bill
included cash distributions to states, funds for food stamps, unemployment benefits,
construction projects to renew the nation’s infrastructure, funds for renewable-energy
systems, and tax reductions.

American System Program of internal improvements and protective tariffs promoted by

Speaker of the House Henry Clay in his presidential campaign of 1824; his proposals
formed the core of Whig ideology in the 1830s and 1840s.

anaconda strategy Union General Winfield Scott developed this three-pronged strategy to
defeat the Confederacy. Like a snake strangling its prey, the Union army would crush its
enemy through exerting pressure on Richmond, blockading Confederate ports, and
dividing the South by invading its major waterways.
 Glossary • A3

Annapolis Convention In 1786, all thirteen colonies were invited to a convention in Annapo-
lis to discuss commercial problems, but only representatives from five states attended.
However, the convention was not a complete failure because the delegates decided to
have another convention in order to write the constitution.

anti-Federalists Forerunners of Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican party; opposed the

Constitution as a limitation on individual and states’ rights, which led to the addition of a
Bill of Rights to the document.

Anti-Masonic party This party grew out of popular hostility toward the Masonic fraternal
order and entered the presidential election of 1832 as a third party. It was the first party
to run as a third party in a presidential election as well as the first to hold a nomination
convention and announce a party platform.

Arab Awakening A wave of spontaneous democratic uprisings that spread throughout the
Arab world beginning in 2011, in which long-oppressed peoples demanded basic liber-
ties from generations-old authoritarian regimes.

Benedict Arnold (1741–1801) A traitorous American commander who planned to sell out the
American garrison at West Point to the British, but his plot was discovered before it
could be executed and he joined the British army.

Atlanta Compromise Speech to the Cotton States and International Exposition in 1895 by
educator Booker T. Washington, the leading black spokesman of the day; black scholar
W. E. B. Du Bois gave the speech its derisive name and criticized Washington for
encouraging blacks to accommodate segregation and disenfranchisement.

Atlantic Charter Issued August 12, 1941, following meetings in Newfoundland between Presi-
dent Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the charter
signaled the allies’ cooperation and stated their war aims.

Crispus Attucks (1723–1770) During the Boston Massacre, he was supposedly at the head of
the crowd of hecklers who baited the British troops. He was killed when the British
troops fired on the crowd.

Stephen F. Austin (1793–1836) He established the first colony of Americans in Texas, which
eventually attracted 2,000 people.

Axis powers In the Second World War, the nations of Germany, Italy, and Japan.

Aztec Empire Mesoamerican people who were conquered by the Spanish under Hernando
Cortés, 1519–1528.

baby boom Markedly higher birth rate in the years following the Second World War; led to the
biggest demographic “bubble’’ in American history.

Bacon’s Rebellion Unsuccessful 1676 revolt led by planter Nathaniel Bacon against Virginia
governor William Berkeley’s administration, because it had failed to protect settlers
from Indian raids.

Bank of the United States Proposed by the first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton,
the bank opened in 1791 and operated until 1811 to issue a uniform currency, make
A4 • GLOSSARY

business loans, and collect tax monies. The second Bank of the United States was char-
tered in 1816 but was not renewed by President Andrew Jackson twenty years later.

barbary pirates Plundering pirates off the Mediterranean coast of Africa; President Thomas
Jefferson’s refusal to pay them tribute to protect American ships sparked an undeclared
naval war with North African nations, 1801–1805.

Battle of the Bulge On December 16, 1944, the German army launched a counter attack
against the Allied forces, which pushed them back. However, the Allies were eventually
able to recover and breakthrough the German lines. This defeat was a great blow to the
Nazi’s morale and their army’s strength. The battle used up the last of Hitler’s reserve
units and opened a route into Germany’s heartland.

Bear Flag Republic On June 14, 1846, a group of Americans in California captured Sonoma
from the Mexican army and declared it the Republic of California whose flag featured a
grizzly bear. In July, the commodore of the U.S. Pacific Fleet landed troops on Califor-
nia’s shores and declared it part of the United States.

Beats A group of writers, artists, and musicians whose central concern was the discarding of orga-
nizational constraints and traditional conventions in favor of liberated forms of self
expression. They came out of the bohemian underground in New York’s Greenwich Village
in the 1950s and included the writers Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William
Burroughs. Their attitudes and lifestyles had a major influence on the youth of the 1960s.

beatnik A name referring to almost any young rebel who openly dissented from the middle-
class life. The name itself stems from the Beats.

Nicholas Biddle (1786–1844) He was the president of the second Bank of the United States. In
response to President Andrew Jackson’s attacks on the bank, Biddle curtailed the bank’s
loans and exchanged its paper currency for gold and silver. He was hoping to provoke
an economic crisis to prove the bank’s importance. In response, state banks began
printing paper without restraint and lent it to speculators, causing a binge in speculat-
ing and an enormous increase in debt.

Bill of Rights First ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1791 to guarantee
individual rights and to help secure ratification of the Constitution by the states.

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) The Saudi-born leader of al Qaeda, whose members attacked
America on September 11, 2001. Years before the attack, he had declared jihad (holy
war) on the United States, Israel, and the Saudi monarchy. In Afghanistan, the Taliban
leaders gave bin Laden a safe haven in exchange for aid in fighting the Northern
Alliance, who were rebels opposed to the Taliban. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the
United States asked the Taliban to turn over bin Laden. Following their refusal, America
and a multinational coalition invaded Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban. In
May 2011, bin Laden was shot and killed by American special forces during a covert
operation in Pakistan.

black codes Laws passed in southern states to restrict the rights of former slaves; to combat the
codes, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment and
set up military governments in southern states that refused to ratify the amendment.

black power movement A more militant form of protest for civil rights that originated in urban
communities, where nonviolent tactics were less effective than in the South. Black power
 Glossary • A5

encouraged African Americans to take pride in their racial heritage and forced black
leaders and organizations to focus attention on the plight of poor inner-city blacks.

James Gillepsie Blaine (1830–1893) As a Republican congressman from Maine, he developed

close ties with business leaders, which contributed to him losing the presidential elec-
tion of 1884. He later opposed President Cleveland’s efforts to reduce tariffs, which
became a significant issue in the 1888 presidential election. Blaine served as secretary of
state under President Benjamin Harrison and his flamboyant style often overshadowed
the president.

“bleeding’’ Kansas Violence between pro- and antislavery settlers in the Kansas Territory, 1856.

blitzkrieg The German “lightening war” strategy used during the Second World War; the Germans
invaded Poland, France, Russia, and other countries with fast-moving, well-coordinated
attacks using aircraft, tanks, and other armored vehicles, followed by infantry.

Bolsheviks Under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, this Marxist party led the November 1917
revolution against the newly formed provisional government in Russia. After seizing
control, the Bolsheviks negotiated a peace treaty with Germany, the Treaty of Brest-
Litovsk, and ended their participation in World War I.

Bonus Expeditionary Force Thousands of World War I veterans, who insisted on immediate
payment of their bonus certificates, marched on Washington in 1932; violence ensued
when President Herbert Hoover ordered their tent villages cleared.

Daniel Boone (1734–1820) He found and expanded a trail into Kentucky, which pioneers used
to reach and settle the area.

John Wilkes Booth (1838?–1865) He assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at the Ford’s
Theater on April 14, 1865. He was pursued to Virginia and killed.

Bourbons In post–Civil War southern politics, the opponents of the Redeemers were called
Bourbons. They were known for having forgotten nothing and learned nothing from
the ordeal of the Civil War.

Joseph Brant (1742?–1807) He was the Mohawk leader who led the Iroquois against the
Americans in the Revolutionary War.

brinksmanship Secretary of State John Foster Dulles believed that communism could be con-
tained by bringing America to the brink of war with an aggressive communist nation.
He believed that the aggressor would back down when confronted with the prospect of
receiving a mass retaliation from a country with nuclear weapons.

John Brown (1800–1859) He was willing to use violence to further his antislavery beliefs. In
1856, a pro-slavery mob sacked the free-state town of Lawrence, Kansas. In response,
John Brown went to the pro-slavery settlement of Pottawatomie, Kansas and hacked to
death several people, which led to a guerrilla war in the Kansas territory. In 1859, he
attempted to raid the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. He had hoped to use the stolen
weapons to arm slaves, but he was captured and executed. His failed raid instilled panic
throughout the South, and his execution turned him into a martyr for his cause.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954) U.S. Supreme Court decision that
struck down racial segregation in public education and declared “separate but equal’’
unconstitutional.
A6 • GLOSSARY

William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) He delivered the pro-silver “cross of gold” speech at the
1896 Democratic Convention and won his party’s nomination for president. Disap-
pointed pro-gold Democrats chose to walk out of the convention and nominate their
own candidate, which split the Democratic party and cost them the White House.
Bryan’s loss also crippled the Populist movement that had endorsed him.

“Bull Moose” Progressive party In the 1912 election, Theodore Roosevelt was unable to secure
the Republican nomination for president. He left the Republican party and formed his
own party of progressive Republicans, called the “Bull Moose” party. Roosevelt and Taft
split the Republican vote, which allowed Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win.

Bull Run, Battles of (First and Second Manassas) First land engagement of the Civil War took
place on July 21, 1861, at Manassas Junction, Virginia, at which surprised Union troops
quickly retreated; one year later, on August 29–30, Confederates captured the federal
supply depot and forced Union troops back to Washington.

Martin Van Buren (1782–1862) During President Jackson’s first term, he served as secretary of
state and minister to London. He often politically fought Vice President John C. Calhoun
for the position of Jackson’s successor. A rift between Jackson and Calhoun led to Van
Buren becoming vice president during Jackson’s second term. In 1836, Van Buren was
elected president, and he inherited a financial crisis. He believed that the government
should not continue to keep its deposits in state banks and set up an independent Trea-
sury, which was approved by Congress after several years of political maneuvering.

General John Burgoyne (1722–1792) He was the commander of Britain’s northern forces dur-
ing the Revolutionary War. He and most of his troops surrendered to the Americans at
the Battle of Saratoga.

burned-over district Area of western New York strongly influenced by the revivalist fervor of
the Second Great Awakening; Disciples of Christ and Mormons are among the many
sects that trace their roots to the phenomenon.

Aaron Burr (1756–1836) Even though he was Thomas Jefferson’s vice president, he lost favor
with Jefferson’s supporters who were Republicans. He sought to work with the Federal-
ists and run as their candidate for the governor of New York. Alexander Hamilton
opposed Burr’s candidacy and his stinging remarks on the subject led to Burr challeng-
ing him to duel in which Hamilton was killed.

George H. W. Bush (1924–) He had served as vice president during the Reagan administra-
tion and then won the presidential election of 1988. During his presidential cam-
paign, Bush promised not to raise taxes. However, the federal deficit had become so
big that he had to raise taxes. Bush chose to make fighting illegal drugs a priority. He
created the Office of National Drug Control Policy, but it was only moderately suc-
cessful in stopping drug use. In 1989, Bush ordered the invasion of Panama and
the capture of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, who was wanted in America on
drug charges. He was captured, tried, and convicted. In 1990, Saddam Hussein
invaded Kuwait; and Bush sent the American military to Saudi Arabia on a defensive
mission. He assembled a multinational force and launched Operation Desert Storm,
which took Kuwait back from Saddam in 1991. The euphoria over the victory in
Kuwait was short lived as the country slid into a recession. He lost the 1992 presiden-
tial election to Bill Clinton.
 Glossary • A7

George W. Bush (1946–) In the 2000 presidential election, Texas governor George W. Bush ran
as the Republican nominee against Democratic nominee Vice President Al Gore. The
election ended in controversy over the final vote tally in Florida. Bush had slightly
more votes, but a recount was required by state law. However, it was stopped by
Supreme Court and Bush was declared president. After the September 11 terrorist
attacks, he launched his “war on terrorism.” President George W. Bush adapted the
Bush Doctrine, which claimed the right to launch preemptive military attacks against
enemies. The United States invaded Afghanistan and Iraq with unclear outcomes leav-
ing the countries divided. In the summer of 2006, Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf
Coast and left destruction across several states and three-quarters of New Orleans
flooded. Bush was attacked for the unpreparedness of the federal government to handle
the disaster as well as his own slowness to react. In September 2008, the nation’s econ-
omy nosedived as a credit crunch spiraled into a global economic meltdown. Bush
signed into law the bank bailout fund called Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP),
but the economy did not improve.

Bush v. Gore (2000) The close 2000 presidential election came down to Florida’s decisive
twenty-five electoral votes. The final tally in Florida gave Bush a slight lead, but it was
so small that a recount was required by state law. While the votes were being recounted,
a legal battle was being waged to stop the recount. Finally, the case, Bush v. Gore, was
present to the Supreme Court who ruled 5–4 to stop the recount and Bush was declared
the winner.

Bush Doctrine Believing that America’s enemies were now terrorist groups and unstable
rogue nations, President George W. Bush adapted a foreign policy that claimed the right
to launch preemptive military attacks against enemies.

buying (stock) on margin The investment practice of making a small down payment (the
“margin”) on a stock and borrowing the rest of money need for the purchase from a
broker who held the stock as security against a down market. If the stock’s value
declined and the buyer failed to meet a margin call for more funds, the broker could sell
the stock to cover his loan.

John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) He served in both the House of Representatives and the Senate
for South Carolina before becoming secretary of war under President Monroe and then
John Quincy Adams’s vice president. He introduced the bill for the second national
bank to Congress and led the minority of southerners who voted for the Tariff of 1816.
However, he later chose to oppose tariffs. During his time as secretary of war under
President Monroe, he authorized the use of federal troops against the Seminoles who
were attacking settlers. As John Quincy Adams’s vice president, he supported a new tar-
iffs bill to win presidential candidate Andrew Jackson additional support. Jackson won
the election, but the new tariffs bill passed and Calhoun had to explain why he had
changed his opinion on tariffs.

Camp David Accords Peace agreement between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, brokered by President Jimmy Carter in 1978.

“Scarface” Al Capone (1899–1947) He was the most successful gangster of the Prohibition era
whose Chicago-based criminal empire included bootlegging, prostitution, and gambling.
A8 • GLOSSARY

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) He was a steel magnate who believed that the general public
benefited from big business even if these companies employed harsh business practices.
This philosophy became deeply ingrained in the conventional wisdom of some Ameri-
cans. After retiring, he devoted himself to philanthropy in hopes of promoting social
welfare and world peace.

carpetbaggers Northern emigrants who participated in the Republican governments of the

reconstructed South.

Jimmy Carter (1924–) Jimmy Carter, an outsider to Washington, capitalized on the post-
Watergate cynicism and won the 1976 presidential election. He created departments of
Energy and Education and signed into law several environmental initiatives. However,
his efforts to support the Panama Canal Treaties and his unwillingness to make deals
with legislators caused other bills to be either gutted or stalled in Congress. Despite his
efforts to improve the economy, the recession continued and inflation increased.
In 1978, he successfully brokered a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt called the
Camp David Accords. Then his administration was plagued with a series of crises.
Fighting in the Middle East produced a fuel shortage in the United States. The Soviets
invaded Afghanistan and Carter responded with the suspension of an arms-control
treaty with the Soviets, the halting of grain shipments to the Soviet Union, and a call for
a boycott of the Olympic Games in Moscow. In Iran, revolutionaries toppled the shah’s
government and seized the American embassy, taking hostage those inside. Carter
struggled to get the hostages released and was unable to do so until after he lost the
1980 election to Ronald Reagan. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his
efforts to further peace and democratic elections around the world.

Jacques Cartier (1491–1557) He led the first French effort to colonize North America and
explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence and reached as far as present day Montreal on the
St. Lawrence River.

Bartolomé de Las Casas (1484–1566) A Catholic missionary who renounced the Spanish
practice of coercively converting Indians and advocated the better treatment for them.
In 1552, he wrote A Brief Relation of the Destruction of the Indies, which described the
Spanish’s cruel treatment of the Indians.

Fidel Castro (1926–) In 1959, his Communist regime came to power in Cuba after two years of
guerrilla warfare against the dictator Fulgenico Batista. He enacted land redistribution
programs and nationalized all foreign-owned property. The latter action as well as his
political trials and summary executions damaged relations between Cuba and America.
Castro was turned down when he asked for loans from the United States. However, he
did receive aid from the Soviet Union.

Carrie Chapman Catt (1859–1947) She was a leader of a new generation of activists in the
women’s suffrage movement who carried on the work started by Elizabeth Cady Stanton
and Susan B. Anthony.

Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) He founded the United Farm Workers (UFW) in 1962 and worked
to organize migrant farm workers. In 1965, the UFW joined Filipino farm workers
striking against corporate grape farmers in California’s San Joaquin Valley. In 1970, the
strike and a consumer boycott on grapes compelled the farmers to formally recognize
 Glossary • A9

the UFW. As the result of Chavez’s efforts, wages and working conditions improved for
migrant workers. In 1975, the California state legislature passed a bill that required
growers to bargain collectively with representatives of the farm workers.

Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) The first federal law to restrict immigration on the basis of
race and class. Passed in 1882, the act halted Chinese immigration for ten years, but it
was periodically renewed and then indefinitely extended in 1902. Not until 1943 were
the barriers to Chinese immigration finally removed.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints / Mormons Founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith,
the sect was a product of the intense revivalism of the burned-over district of New
York; Smith’s successor Brigham Young led 15,000 followers to Utah in 1847 to escape
persecution.

Winston Churchill (1874–1965) The British prime minister who led the country during the
Second World War. Along with Roosevelt and Stalin, he helped shape the post-war
world at the Yalta Conference. He also coined the term “iron curtain,” which he used in
his famous “The Sinews of Peace” speech.

“city machines” Local political party officials used these organizations to dispense patronage
and favoritism amongst voters and businesses to ensure their loyal support to the polit-
ical party.

Civil Rights Act of 1957 First federal civil rights law since Reconstruction; established the Civil
Rights Commission and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.

Civil Rights Act of 1964 Outlawed discrimination in public accommodations and employment.

Henry Clay (1777–1852) In the first half of the nineteenth century, he was the foremost
spokesman for the American system. As speaker of the House in the 1820s, he pro-
moted economic nationalism, “market revolution,” and the rapid development of west-
ern states and territories. He formulated the “second” Missouri Compromise, which
denied the Missouri state legislature the power to exclude the rights of free blacks and
mulattos. In the deadlocked presidential election of 1824, the House of Representatives
decided the election. Clay supported John Quincy Adams, who won the presidency and
appointed Clay to secretary of state. Andrew Jackson claimed that Clay had entered into
a “corrupt bargain” with Adams for his own selfish gains.

Hillary Rodham Clinton (1947–) In the 2008 presidential election, Senator Hillary Clinton,
the spouse of former President Bill Clinton, initially was the front-runner for the Demo-
cratic nomination, which made her the first woman with a serious chance to win the
presidency. However, Senator Barack Obama’s Internet-based and grassroots-orientated
campaign garnered him enough delegates to win the nomination. After Obama became
president, she was appointed secretary of state.

William Jefferson Clinton (1946–) The governor of Arkansas won the 1992 presidential election
against President George H. W. Bush. In his first term, he pushed through Congress a tax
increase, an economic stimulus package, the adoption of the North America Free Trade
Agreement, welfare reform, a raise in the minimum wage, and improved public access to
health insurance. However, he failed to institute major health-care reform, which had
been one of his major goals. In 1996, Clinton defeated Republican presidential candidate
A10 • GLOSSARY

Bob Dole. Clinton was scrutinized for his investment in the fraudulent Whitewater Devel-
opment Corporation, but no evidence was found of him being involved in any wrongdo-
ing. In 1998, he was revealed to have had a sexual affair with a White House intern.
Clinton had initially lied about the affair and tried to cover up it, which led to a vote in
Congress on whether or not to begin an impeachment inquiry. The House of Representa-
tives voted to impeach Clinton, but the Senate found him not guilty. Clinton’s presidency
faced several foreign policy challenges. In 1994, he used U.S. forces to restore Haiti’s
democratically elected president to power after he had been ousted during a coup.
In 1995, the Clinton Administration negotiated the Dayton Accords, which stopped the
ethnic strife in the former Yugoslavia and the Balkan region. Clinton sponsored peace
talks between Arabs and Israelis, which culminated in Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin and the Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat signing the Oslo
Accords in 1993. This agreement provided for the restoration of Palestinian self-rule in
specific areas in exchange for peace as provided in UN Security Council resolutions.

Coercive Acts / Intolerable Acts (1774) Four parliamentary measures in reaction to the
Boston Tea Party that forced payment for the tea, disallowed colonial trials of British
soldiers, forced their quartering in private homes, and set up a military government.

coffin ships Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine had to endure a six-week journey
across the Atlantic to reach America. During these voyages, thousands of passengers
died of disease and starvation, which led to the ships being called “coffin ships.”

Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) The Italian sailor who persuaded King Ferdinand and
Queen Isabella of Spain to fund his expedition across the Atlantic to discover a new trade
route to Asia. Instead of arriving at China or Japan, he reached the Bahamas in 1492.

Committee on Public Information During the First World War, this committee produced war
propaganda that conveyed the Allies’ war aims to Americans as well as attempted to
weaken the enemy’s morale.

Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) During Nixon’s presidency, his administration
engaged in a number of immoral acts, such as attempting to steal information and
falsely accusing political appointments of sexual improprieties. These acts were funded
by money illegally collected through CREEP.

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense This pamphlet refocused the blame for the colonies’ prob-
lems on King George III rather than on Parliament and advocated a declaration of
independence, which few colonialists had considered prior to its appearance.

Compromise of 1850 Complex compromise mediated by Senator Henry Clay that headed off
southern secession over California statehood; to appease the South it included a stronger
fugitive slave law and delayed determination of the slave status of the New Mexico and
Utah territories.

Compromise of 1877 Deal made by a special congressional commission on March 2, 1877, to

resolve the disputed presidential election of 1876; Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who
had lost the popular vote, was declared the winner in exchange for the withdrawal of
federal troops from the South, marking the end of Reconstruction.
 Glossary • A11

Conestoga wagons These large horse-drawn wagons were used to carry people or heavy
freight long distances, including from the East to the western frontier settlements.

conquistadores Spanish term for “conqueror,” applied to European leaders of campaigns

against indigenous peoples in central and southern America.

consumer culture In the post-World War II era, affluence seemed to be forever increasing in
America. At the same time, there was a boom in construction as well as products and
appliances for Americans to buy. As a result, shopping became a major recreational activ-
ity. Americans started spending more, saving less, and building more shopping centers.

containment U.S. strategy in the cold war that called for containing Soviet expansion; originally
devised in 1947 by U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan.

Continental army Army authorized by the Continental Congress, 1775–1784, to fight the British;
commanded by General George Washington.

Contract with America A ten-point document released by the Republican party during the
1994 Congressional election campaigns, which outlined a small-government program
featuring less regulation of business, diminished environmental regulations, and other
core values of the Republican revolution.

Contras The Reagan administration ordered the CIA to train and supply guerrilla bands of
anti-Communist Nicaraguans called Contras. They were fighting the Sandinista gov-
ernment that had recently come to power in Nicaragua. The State Department believed
that the Sandinista government was supplying the leftist Salvadoran rebels with Soviet
and Cuban arms. A cease-fire agreement between the Contras and Sandinistas was
signed in 1988.

Calvin “Silent Cal” Coolidge (1872–1933) After President Harding’s death, his vice president,
Calvin Coolidge, assumed the presidency. Coolidge believed that the nation’s welfare
was tied to the success of big business, and he worked to end government regulation of
business and industry as well as reduce taxes. In particular, he focused on the nation’s
industrial development.

Hernán Cortés (1485–1547) The Spanish conquistador who conquered the Aztec Empire and set
the precedent for other plundering conquistadores.

General Charles Cornwallis (1738–1805) He was in charge of British troops in the South dur-
ing the Revolutionary War. His surrendering to George Washington at the Battle of York-
town ended the Revolutionary War.

Corps of Discovery Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led this group of men on an expedi-
tion of the newly purchased Louisiana territory, which took them from Missouri to Ore-
gon. As they traveled, they kept detailed journals and drew maps of the previously
unexplored territory. Their reports attracted traders and trappers to the region and gave
the United States a claim to the Oregon country by right of discovery and exploration.

“corrupt bargain” A vote in the House of Representatives decided the deadlocked presidential
election of 1824 in favor of John Quincy Adams, who Speaker of the House Henry Clay
A12 • GLOSSARY

had supported. Afterward, Adams appointed Clay secretary of state. Andrew Jackson
charged Clay with having made a “corrupt bargain” with Adams that gave Adams the
presidency and Clay a place in his administration. There was no evidence of such a deal,
but it was widely believed.

the counterculture “Hippie’’ youth culture of the 1960s, which rejected the values of the dom-
inant culture in favor of illicit drugs, communes, free sex, and rock music.

court-packing plan President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s failed 1937 attempt to increase the num-
ber of U.S. Supreme Court justices from nine to fifteen in order to save his Second New
Deal programs from constitutional challenges.

covenant theory A Puritan concept that believed true Christians could enter a voluntary
union for the common worship of God. Taking the idea one step further, the union
could also be used for the purposes of establishing governments.

Coxey’s Army Jacob S. Coxey, a Populist, led this protest group that demanded the federal gov-
ernment provide the unemployed with meaningful employment. In 1894, Coxey’s
Army joined other protests groups in a march on Washington D.C. The combination of
the march and the growing support of Populism scared many Americans.

Crédit Mobilier scandal Construction company guilt of massive overcharges for building the
Union Pacific Railroad were exposed; high officials of the Ulysses S. Grant administra-
tion were implicated but never charged.

George Creel (1876–1953) He convinced President Woodrow Wilson that the best approach to
influencing public opinion was through propaganda rather than censorship. As the
executive head of the Committee on Public Information, he produced propaganda that
conveyed the Allies’ war aims.

“Cross of Gold” Speech In the 1896 election, the Democratic party split over the issue of
whether to use gold or silver to back American currency. Significant to this division was
the “Cross of Gold” speech that William Jennings Bryan delivered at the Democratic
convention. This pro-silver speech was so well received that Bryan won the nomination
to be their presidential candidate. Disappointed pro-gold Democrats chose to walk out
of the convention and nominate their own candidate.

Cuban missile crisis Caused when the United States discovered Soviet offensive missile sites in
Cuba in October 1962; the U.S.–Soviet confrontation was the cold war’s closest brush
with nuclear war.

cult of domesticity The belief that women should stay at home to manage the household, edu-
cate their children with strong moral values, and please their husbands.

George A. Custer (1839–1876) He was a reckless and glory-seeking Lieutenant Colonel of the
U.S. Army who fought the Sioux Indians in the Great Sioux War. In 1876, he and his
detachment of soldiers were entirely wiped out in the Battle of Little Bighorn.

D-day June 6, 1944, when an Allied amphibious assault landed on the Normandy coast and
established a foothold in Europe from which Hitler’s defenses could not recover.
 Glossary • A13

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) He was the president of the Confederacy during the Civil War.
When the Confederacy’s defeat seemed invitable in early 1865, he refused to surrender.
Union forces captured him in May of that year.

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) He founded the American Railway Union, which he organized
against the Pullman Palace Car Company during the Pullman strike. Later he organized
the Social Democratic party, which eventually became the Socialist Party of America. In
the 1912 presidential election, he ran as the Socialist party’s candidate and received
more than 900,000 votes.

Declaratory Act Following the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766, Parliament passed this act which
asserted Parliament’s full power to make laws binding the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.”

deism Enlightenment thought applied to religion; emphasized reason, morality, and natural law.

détente In the 1970s, the United States and Soviet Union began working together to achieve a
more orderly and restrained competition between each other. Both countries signed an
agreement to limit the number of Intercontinental Long Range Ballistic Missiles
(ICBMs) that each country could possess and to not construct antiballistic missiles sys-
tems. They also signed new trade agreements.

George Dewey (1837–1917) On April 30, 1898, Commodore George Dewey’s small U.S. naval
squadron defeated the Spanish warships in Manila Bay in the Philippines. This quick
victory aroused expansionist fever in the United States.

John Dewey (1859–1952) He is an important philosopher of pragmatism. However, he pre-

ferred to use the term instrumentalism, because he saw ideas as instruments of action.

Ngo Dinh Diem (1901–1963) Following the Geneva Accords, the French, with the support of
America, forced the Vietnamese emperor to accept Dinh Diem as the new premier of
South Vietnam. President Eisenhower sent advisors to train Diem’s police and army. In
return, the United States expected Diem to enact democratic reforms and distribute
land to the peasants. Instead, he suppressed his political opponents, did little or no land
distribution, and let corruption grow. In 1956, he refused to participate in elections to
reunify Vietnam. Eventually, he ousted the emperor and declared himself president.

Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802–1887) She was an important figure in increasing the public’s awareness
of the plight of the mentally ill. After a two-year investigation of the treatment of the men-
tally ill in Massachusetts, she presented her findings and won the support of leading reform-
ers. She eventually convinced twenty states to reform their treatment of the mentally ill.

Dixiecrats Deep South delegates who walked out of the 1948 Democratic National Conven-
tion in protest of the party’s support for civil rights legislation and later formed the
States’ Rights (Dixiecrat) party, which nominated Strom Thurmond of South Carolina
for president.

dollar diplomacy The Taft administration’s policy of encouraging American bankers to aid
debt-plagued governments in Haiti, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

Donner party Forty-seven surviving members of a group of migrants to California were

forced to resort to cannibalism to survive a brutal winter trapped in the Sierra Nevadas,
1846–1847; highest death toll of any group traveling the Overland Trail.
A14 • GLOSSARY

Stephen A. Douglas (1812–1861) As a senator from Illinois, he authored the Kansas-Nebraska

Act. Once passed, the act led to violence in Kansas between pro- and antislavery fac-
tions and damaged the Whig party. These damages prevented Senator Douglas from
being chosen as the presidential candidate of his party. Running for senatorial reelec-
tion in 1858, he engaged Abraham Lincoln in a series of public debates about slavery in
the territories. Even though Douglas won the election, the debates gave Lincoln a
national reputation.

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) He escaped from slavery and become an eloquent speaker
and writer against slavery. In 1845, he published his autobiography entitled Narrative of
the Life of Frederick Douglass and two years later he founded an abolitionist newspaper
for blacks called the North Star.

dot-coms In the late 1990s, the stock market soared to new heights and defied the predictions
of experts that the economy could not sustain such a performance. Much of the eco-
nomic success was based on dot-com enterprises, which were firms specializing in com-
puters, software, telecommunications, and the internet. However, many of the
companies’ stock market values were driven higher and higher by speculation instead of
financial success. Eventually the stock market bubble burst.

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) U.S. Supreme Court decision in which Chief Justice Roger B.
Taney ruled that slaves could not sue for freedom and that Congress could not prohibit
slavery in the territories, on the grounds that such a prohibition would violate the Fifth
Amendment rights of slaveholders.

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) He criticized Booker T. Washington’s views on civil rights as

being accommodationist. He advocated “ceaseless agitation” for civil rights and the
immediate end to segregation and an enforcement of laws to protect civil rights and
equality. He promoted an education for African Americans that would nurture bold
leaders who were willing to challenge discrimination in politics.

John Foster Dulles (1888–1959) As President Eisenhower’s secretary of state, he institutional-

ized the policy of containment and introduced the strategy of deterrence. He believed
in using brinkmanship to halt the spread of communism. He attempted to employ it in
Indochina, which led to the United States’ involvement in Vietnam.

Dust Bowl Great Plains counties where millions of tons of topsoil were blown away from
parched farmland in the 1930s; massive migration of farm families followed.

Peggy Eaton (1796–1879) The wife of John Eaton, President Jackson’s secretary of war, was the
daughter of a tavern owner with an unsavory past. Supposedly her first husband had
committed suicide after learning that she was having an affair with John Eaton. The
wives of members of Jackson’s cabinet snubbed her because of her lowly origins and
past. The scandal that resulted was called the Eaton Affair.

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) New England Congregationalist minister, who began a reli-
gious revival in his Northampton church and was an important figure in the Great
Awakening.
 Glossary • A15

election of 1912 The presidential election of 1912 featured four candidates: Wilson, Taft, Roo-
sevelt, and Debs. Each candidate believed in the basic assumptions of progressive poli-
tics, but each had a different view on how progressive ideals should be implemented
through policy. In the end, Taft and Roosevelt split the Republican party votes and Wil-
son emerged as the winner.

Queen Elizabeth I of England (1533–1603) The protestant daughter of Henry VIII, she was
Queen of England from 1558–1603 and played a major role in the Protestant Reforma-
tion. During her long reign, the doctrines and services of the Church of England were
defined and the Spanish Armada was defeated.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) During the Second World War, he commanded
the Allied Forces landing in Africa and was the supreme Allied commander as well as
planner for Operation Overlord. In 1952, he was elected president on his popularity as a
war hero and his promises to clean up Washington and find an honorable peace in the
Korean War. His administration sought to cut the nation’s domestic programs and bud-
get, but he left the basic structure of the New Deal intact. In July of 1953, he announced
the end of fighting in Korea. He appointed Earl Warren to the Supreme Court whose
influence helped the court become an important force for social and political change.
His secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, institutionalized the policies of containment
and deterrence. Eisenhower supported the withdrawal of British forces from the Suez
Canal and established the Eisenhower doctrine, which promised to aid any nation
against aggression by a communist nation. Eisenhower preferred that state and local
institutions to handle civil rights issues, and he refused to force states to comply with the
Supreme Court’s civil rights decisions. However, he did propose the legislation that
became the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Ellis Island Reception center in New York Harbor through which most European immigrants
to America were processed from 1892 to 1954.

Emancipation Proclamation (1863) President Abraham Lincoln issued a preliminary procla-

mation on September 22, 1862, freeing the slaves in the Confederate states as of January 1,
1863, the date of the final proclamation.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) As a leader of the transcendentalist movement, he wrote

poems, essays, and speeches that discussed the sacredness of nature, optimism, self-
reliance, and the unlimited potential of the individual. He wanted to transcend the lim-
itations of inherited conventions and rationalism to reach the inner recesses of the self.

encomienda System under which officers of the Spanish conquistadores gained ownership of
Indian land.

Enlightenment Revolution in thought begun in the seventeenth century that emphasized rea-
son and science over the authority of traditional religion.

enumerated goods According to the Navigation Act, these particular goods, like tobacco or
cotton, could only be shipped to England or other English colonies.

Erie Canal Most important and profitable of the barge canals of the 1820s and 1830s;
stretched from Buffalo to Albany, New York, connecting the Great Lakes to the East
Coast and making New York City the nation’s largest port.
A16 • GLOSSARY

ethnic cleansing The act of killing an entire group of people in a region or country because of
its ethnic background. After the collapse of the former Yugoslavia in 1991, Serbs in
Bosnia attacked communities of Muslims, which led to intervention by the United
Nations. In 1998, fighting broke out again in the Balkans between Serbia and Kosovo.
Serbian police and military attacked, killed, raped, or forced Muslim Albanian Kosovars
to leave their homes.

Fair Employment Practices Commission Created in 1941 by executive order, the FEPC
sought to eliminate racial discrimination in jobs; it possessed little power but repre-
sented a step toward civil rights for African Americans.

Farmers’ Alliance Two separate organizations (Northwestern and Southern) of the 1880s and
1890s that took the place of the Grange, worked for similar causes, and attracted land-
less, as well as landed, farmers to their membership.

Federal Writers’ Project During the Great Depression, this project provided writers, such as
Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, and Saul Bellow, with work, which gave them a chance
to develop as artists and be employed.

The Federalist Collection of eighty-five essays that appeared in the New York press in
1787–1788 in support of the Constitution; written by Alexander Hamilton, James
Madison, and John Jay but published under the pseudonym “Publius.’’

Federalists Proponents of a centralized federal system and the ratification of the Constitution.
Most Federalists were relatively young, educated men who supported a broad interpre-
tation of the Constitution whenever national interest dictated such flexibility. Notable
Federalists included Alexander Hamilton and John Jay.

Geraldine Ferraro (1935–) In the 1984 presidential election, Democratic nominee, Walter
Mondale, chose her as his running mate. As a member of the U.S. House of Representa-
tives from New York, she was the first woman to be a vice-presidential nominee for a
major political party. However, she was placed on the defensive because of her hus-
band’s complicated business dealings.

Fifteenth Amendment This amendment forbids states to deny any person the right to vote
on grounds of “race, color or pervious condition of servitude.” Former Confederate
states were required to ratify this amendment before they could be readmitted to the
Union.

“final solution” The Nazi party’s systematic murder of some 6 million Jews along with more
than a million other people including, but not limited to, gypsies, homosexuals, and
handicap individuals.

Food Administration After America’s entry into World War I, the economy of the home front
needed to be reorganized to provide the most efficient means of conducting the war. The
Food Administration was a part of this effort. Under the leadership of Herbert Hoover,
the organization sought to increase agricultural production while reducing civilian con-
sumption of foodstuffs.
 Glossary • A17

force bill During the nullification crisis between President Andrew Jackson and South Car-
olina, Jackson asked Congress to pass this bill, which authorized him to use the army to
force South Carolina to comply with federal law.

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) He was President Nixon’s vice president and assumed the presi-
dency after Nixon resigned. President Ford issued Nixon a pardon for any crimes
related to the Watergate scandal. The American public’s reaction was largely negative;
and Ford never regained the public’s confidence. He resisted congressional pressure to
both reduce taxes and increase federal spending, which sent the American economy
into the deepest recession since the Great Depression. Ford retained Kissinger as his
secretary of state and continued Nixon’s foreign policy goals, which included the sign-
ing of another arms-control agreement with the Soviet Union. He was heavily criticized
following the collapse of South Vietnam.

Fort Laramie Treaty (1851) Restricted the Plains Indians from using the Overland Trail and
permitted the building of government forts.

Fort Necessity After attacking a group of French soldiers, George Washington constructed and
took shelter in this fort from vengeful French troops. Washington eventually surrendered
to them after a day-long battle. This conflict was a significant event in igniting the French
and Indian War.

Fort Sumter First battle of the Civil War, in which the federal fort in Charleston (South Car-
olina) Harbor was captured by the Confederates on April 14, 1861, after two days of
shelling.

“forty-niners’’ Speculators who went to northern California following the discovery of gold in
1848; the first of several years of large-scale migration was 1849.

Fourteen Points President Woodrow Wilson’s 1918 plan for peace after World War I; at the
Versailles peace conference, however, he failed to incorporate all of the points into the
treaty.

Fourteenth Amendment (1868) Guaranteed rights of citizenship to former slaves, in words

similar to those of the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

Franciscan Missions In 1769, Franciscan missioners accompanied Spanish soldiers to Califor-

nia and over the next fifty years established a chain of missions from San Diego to San
Francisco. At these missions, friars sought to convert Indians to Catholicism and make
them members of the Spanish empire. The friars stripped the Indians of their native
heritage and used soldiers to enforce their will.

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) A Boston-born American, who epitomized the Enlighten-

ment for many Americans and Europeans, Franklin’s wide range of interests led him to
become a publisher, inventor, and statesman. As the latter, he contributed to the writing
of the Declaration of Independence, served as the minister to France during the Revo-
lutionary War, and was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention.

Free-Soil party Formed in 1848 to oppose slavery in the territory acquired in the Mexican
War; nominated Martin Van Buren for president in 1848, but by 1854, most of the
party’s members had joined the Republican party.
A18 • GLOSSARY

Freedmen’s Bureau Reconstruction agency established in 1865 to protect the legal rights of
former slaves and to assist with their education, jobs, health care, and landowning.

freedom riders In 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality had this group of black and white
demonstrators ride buses to test the federal court ruling that had banned segregation on
buses and trains and in terminals. Despite being attacked, they never gave up. Their
actions drew national attention and generated respect and support for their cause.

Freeport Doctrine Senator Stephen Douglas’ method to reconcile the Dred Scott court ruling
of 1857 with “popular sovereignty,” of which he was a champion. Douglas believed that
so long as residents of a given territory had the right to pass and uphold local laws, any
Supreme Court ruling on slavery would be unenforceable and irrelevant.

John C. Frémont “the Pathfinder” (1813–1890) He was an explorer and surveyor who helped
inspire Americans living in California to rebel against the Mexican government and
declare independence.

French and Indian War Known in Europe as the Seven Years’ War, the last (1755–1763) of four
colonial wars fought between England and France for control of North America east of
the Mississippi River.

Sigmund Freud (1865–1939) He was the founder of psychoanalysis, which suggested that
human behavior was motivated by unconscious and irrational forces. By the 1920s, his
ideas were being discussed more openly in America.

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 Gave federal government authority in cases involving runaway
slaves; so much more punitive and prejudiced in favor of slaveholders than the 1793
Fugitive Slave Act had been that Harriet Beecher Stowe was inspired to write Uncle
Tom’s Cabin in protest; the new law was part of the Compromise of 1850, included to
appease the South over the admission of California as a free state.

fundamentalism Anti-modernist Protestant movement started in the early twentieth century

that proclaimed the literal truth of the Bible; the name came from The Fundamentals,
published by conservative leaders.

“gag rule” In 1831, the House of Representatives adopted this rule, which prevented the dis-
cussion and presentation of any petitions for the abolition of slavery to the House. John
Quincy Adams, who was elected to the House after his presidency ended, fought the
rule on the grounds that it violated the First Amendment. In 1844, he succeeded in hav-
ing it repealed.

William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) In 1831, he started the anti-slavery newspaper Liberator
and helped start the New England Anti-Slavery Society. Two years later, he assisted Arthur
and Lewis Tappan in the founding of the American Anti-Slavery Society. He and his fol-
lowers believed that America had been thoroughly corrupted and needed a wide range of
reforms. He embraced every major reform movement of the day: abolition, temperance,
pacifism, and women’s rights. He wanted to go beyond just freeing slaves and grant them
equal social and legal rights.
 Glossary • A19

Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) He was the leading spokesman for Negro Nationalism, which
exalted blackness, black cultural expression, and black exclusiveness. He called upon
African Americans to liberate themselves from the surrounding white culture and cre-
ate their own businesses, cultural centers, and newspapers. He was also the founder of
the Universal Negro Improvement Association.

Citizen Genet (1763–1834) As the ambassador to the United States from the new French
Republic, he engaged American privateers to attack British ships and conspired with fron-
tiersmen and land speculators to organize an attack on Spanish Florida and Louisiana.
His actions and the French radicals excessive actions against their enemies in the new
French Republic caused the French Revolution to lose support among Americans.

Geneva Accords In 1954, the Geneva Accords were signed, which ended French colonial rule
in Indochina. The agreement created the independent nations of Laos and Cambodia
and divided Vietnam along the 17th parallel until an election in 1956 would reunify the
country.

Gettysburg, Battle of Fought in southern Pennsylvania, July 1–3, 1863; the Confederate defeat
and the simultaneous loss at Vicksburg spelled the end of the South’s chances in the
Civil War.

Ghost Dance movement This spiritual and political movement came from a Paiute Indian
named Wovoka (or Jack Wilson). He believed that a messiah would come and rescue
the Indians and restore their lands. To hasten the arrival of the messiah, the Indians
needed to take up a ceremonial dance at each new moon.

Newt Gingrich (1943–) He led the Republican insurgency in Congress in the mid 1990s
through mobilizing religious and social conservatives. Along with other Republican
congressmen, he created the Contract with America, which was a ten-point anti-big
government program. However, the program fizzled out after many of its bills were not
passed by Congress.

Gilded Age (1860–1896) An era of dramatic industrial and urban growth characterized by
loose government oversight over corporations, which fostered unfettered capitalism
and widespread political corruption.

The Gilded Age Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s 1873 novel, the title of which
became the popular name for the period from the end of the Civil War to the turn of
the century.

glasnost Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev instituted this reform, which brought about a loos-
ening of censorship.

Glorious Revolution In 1688, the Protestant Queen Mary and her husband, William of
Orange, took the British throne from King James II in a bloodless coup. Afterward, Par-
liament greatly expanded its power and passed the Bill of Rights and the Act of Tolera-
tion, both of which would influence attitudes and events in the colonies.

Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) He was a leader of the Republican right whose book, The Con-
science of a Conservative, was highly influential to that segment of the party. He pro-
posed eliminating the income tax and overhauling Social Security. In 1964, he ran as
A20 • GLOSSARY

the Republican presidential candidate and lost to President Johnson. He campaigned

against Johnson’s war on poverty, the tradition of New Deal, the nuclear test ban and
the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He advocated the wholesale bombing of North Vietnam.

Samuel Gompers (1850–1924) He served as the president of the American Federation of

Labor from its inception until his death. He focused on achieving concrete economic
gains such as higher wages, shorter hours, and better working conditions.

“good neighbor” policy Proclaimed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his first inaugural
address in 1933, it sought improved diplomatic relations between the United States and
its Latin American neighbors.

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931–) In the late 1980s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to
reform the Soviet Union through his programs of perestroika and glasnost. He pursued
a renewal of détente with America and signed new arms-control agreements with Pres-
ident Reagan. Gorbachev chose not to involve the Soviet Union in the internal affairs of
other Communist countries, which removed the threat of armed Soviet crackdowns on
reformers and protesters in Eastern Europe. Gorbachev’s decision allowed the velvet
revolutions of Eastern Europe to occur without outside interference. Eventually the
political, social, and economic upheaval he had unleashed would lead to the break-up
of the Soviet Union.

Albert Gore Jr. (1948–) He served as a senator of Tennessee and then as President Clinton’s
vice president. In the 2000 presidential election, he was the Democratic candidate and
campaigned on preserving Social Security, subsidizing prescription-medicine
expenses for the elderly, and protecting the environment. His opponent was Governor
George W. Bush, who promoted compassionate conservatism and the transferring of
power from the federal government to the states. The election ended in controversy.
The close election came down to Florida’s electoral votes. The final tally in Florida
gave Bush a slight lead, but it was so small that a recount was required by state law.
While the votes were being recounted, a legal battle was being waged to stop the
recount. Finally, the case, Bush v. Gore, was presented to the Supreme Court who ruled
5–4 to stop the recount and Bush was declared the winner.

Jay Gould (1836–1892) As one of the biggest railroad robber barons, he was infamous for buy-
ing rundown railroads, making cosmetic improvements and then reselling them for a
profit. He used corporate funds for personal investments and to bribe politicians and
judges.

gradualism This strategy for ending slavery involved promoting the banning of slavery in the
new western territories and encouraging the release of slaves from slavery. Supporters
of this method believed that it would bring about the gradual end of slavery.

Granger movement Political movement that grew out of the Patrons of Husbandry, an educa-
tional and social organization for farmers founded in 1867; the Grange had its greatest
success in the Midwest of the 1870s, lobbying for government control of railroad and
grain elevator rates and establishing farmers’ cooperatives.

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) After distinguishing himself in the western theater of the Civil
War, he was appointed general in chief of the Union army in 1864. Afterward, he
 Glossary • A21

defeated General Robert E. Lee through a policy of aggressive attrition. He constantly

attacked Lee’s army until it was grind down. Lee surrendered to Grant on April 9th,
1865 at the Appomattox Court House. In 1868, he was elected President and his tenure
suffered from scandals and fiscal problems including the debate on whether or not
greenbacks, paper money, should be removed from circulation.

Great Awakening Fervent religious revival movement in the 1720s through the 1740s that was
spread throughout the colonies by ministers like New England Congregationalist
Jonathan Edwards and English revivalist George Whitefield.

great migration After World War II, rural southern blacks began moving to the urban North
and Midwest in large numbers in search of better jobs, housing, and greater social equal-
ity. The massive influx of African American migrants overwhelmed the resources of
urban governments and sparked racial conflicts. In order to cope with the new migrants
and alleviate racial tension, cities constructed massive public-housing projects that seg-
regated African Americans into overcrowded and poor neighborhoods.

Great Compromise (Connecticut Compromise) Mediated the differences between the New
Jersey and Virginia delegations to the Constitutional Convention by providing for a
bicameral legislature, the upper house of which would have equal representation and
the lower house of which would be apportioned by population.

Great Depression Worst economic depression in American history; it was spurred by the
stock market crash of 1929 and lasted until the Second World War.

Great Sioux War In 1874, Lieutenant Colonel Custard led an exploratory expedition into the
Black Hills, which the United States government had promised to the Sioux Indians.
Miners soon followed and the army did nothing to keep them out. Eventually, the army
attacked the Sioux Indians and the fight against them lasted for fifteen months before
the Sioux Indians were forced to give up their land and move onto a reservation.

Great Society Term coined by President Lyndon B. Johnson in his 1965 State of the Union
address, in which he proposed legislation to address problems of voting rights, poverty,
diseases, education, immigration, and the environment.

Horace Greeley (1811–1872) In reaction to Radical Reconstruction and corruption in Presi-

dent Ulysses S. Grant’s administration, a group of Republicans broke from the party to
form the Liberal Republicans. In 1872, the Liberal Republicans chose Horace Greeley as
their presidential candidate who ran on a platform of favoring civil service reform and
condemning the Republican’s Reconstruction policy.

greenbacks Paper money issued during the Civil War. After the war ended, a debate emerged on
whether or not to remove the paper currency from circulation and revert back to hard-
money currency (gold coins). Opponents of hard-money feared that eliminating the
greenbacks would shrink the money supply, which would lower crop prices and make it
more difficult to repay long-term debts. President Ulysses S. Grant, as well as hard-
currency advocates, believed that gold coins were morally preferable to paper currency.

Greenback party Formed in 1876 in reaction to economic depression, the party favored
issuance of unsecured paper money to help farmers repay debts; the movement for free
coinage of silver took the place of the greenback movement by the 1880s.
A22 • GLOSSARY

General Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) He was appointed by Congress to command the Amer-
ican army fighting in the South during the Revolutionary War. Using his patience and
his skills of managing men, saving supplies, and avoiding needless risks, he waged a suc-
cessful war of attrition against the British.

Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) and Angelina Grimké (1805–1879) These two sisters gave anti-
slavery speeches to crowds of mixed gender that caused some people to condemn them
for engaging in unfeminine activities. The sisters rejected this opinion and made the
role of women in the anti-slavery movement a prominent issue. In 1840, William Lloyd
Garrison convinced the Anti-Slavery Society to allow women equal participation in the
organization. A group of members that did not agree with this decision left the Anti-
Slavery Society to form the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.

Half-Way Covenant Allowed baptized children of church members to be admitted to a

“halfway” membership in the church and secure baptism for their own children in turn,
but allowed them neither a vote in the church, nor communion.

Alexander Hamilton (1755–1804) His belief in a strong federal government led him to
become a contributor to The Federalist and leader of the Federalists. As the first secre-
tary of the Treasury, he laid the foundation for American capitalism through his cre-
ation of a federal budget, funded debt, a federal tax system, a national bank, a customs
service, and a coast guard. His “Reports on Public Credit” and “Reports on Manufac-
tures” outlined his vision for economic development and government finances in
America. He died in a duel against Aaron Burr.

Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) In the 1920 presidential election, he was the Republican
nominee who promised Americans a “return to normalcy,” which would mean a return
to conservative values and a turning away from President Wilson’s internationalism.
His message resonated with voters’ conservative postwar mood; and he won the
election. Once in office, Harding’s administration dismantled many of the social and
economic components of progressivism and pursued a pro-business agenda. Harding
appointed four pro-business Supreme Court Justices and his administration cut taxes,
increased tariffs and promoted a lenient attitude towards government regulation of
corporations. However, he did speak out against racism and ended the exclusion of
African Americans from federal positions. His administration did suffer from a series
of scandals as the result of him appointing members of the Ohio gang to government
positions.

Harlem Renaissance African American literary and artistic movement of the 1920s and 1930s
centered in New York City’s Harlem district; writers Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer,
Zora Neale Hurston, and Countee Cullen were among those active in the movement.

Hartford Convention Meeting of New England Federalists on December 15, 1814, to protest
the War of 1812; proposed seven constitutional amendments (limiting embargoes and
changing requirements for officeholding, declaration of war, and admission of new
states), but the war ended before Congress could respond.
 Glossary • A23

Patrick Henry (1736–1799) He inspired the Virginia Resolves, which declared that English-
men could only be taxed by their elected representatives. In March of 1775, he met with
other colonial leaders to discuss the goals of the upcoming Continental Congress and
famously declared “Give me liberty or give me death.” During the ratification process of
the U.S. Constitution, he became one of the leaders of the anti-federalists.

Alger Hiss (1904–1996) During the second Red Scare, Alger Hiss, who had served in several
government departments, was accused of being a spy for the Soviet Union and was con-
victed of lying about espionage. The case was politically damaging to the Truman
administration because the president called the charges against Hiss a “red herring.”
Richard Nixon, then a California congressman, used his persistent pursuit of the case
and his anti-Communist rhetoric to raise his national profile and to win election to the
Senate.

Adolph Hitler “Führer” (1889–1945) The leader of the Nazis who advocated a violent anti-
Semitic, anti-Marxist, pan-German ideology. He started World War II in Europe and
orchestrated the systematic murder of some 6 million Jews along with more than a mil-
lion others.

HIV/AIDS Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is a virus that attacks the body’s T-cells,
which are necessary to help the immune system fight off infection and disease.
Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) occurs after the HIV virus has
destroyed the body’s immune system. HIV is transferred when body fluids, such as
blood or semen, which carry the virus, enter the body of an uninfected person. The
virus appeared in America in the early 1980s. The Reagan administration was slow to
respond to the “AIDS Epidemic,” because effects of the virus were not fully understood
and they deemed the spread of the disease as the result of immoral behavior.

Homestead Act (1862) Authorized Congress to grant 160 acres of public land to a western set-
tler, who had only to live on the land for five years to establish title.

Homestead steel strike A violent labor conflict at the Homestead Steel Works near Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, that occurred when its president, Henry Clay Frick, refused to renew the
union contract with Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. The strike,
which began on June 29, 1892, culminated in an attempt on Frick’s life and was swiftly
put down by state militias. The strike marks one of the great setbacks in the emerging
industrial-union movement.

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) Prior to becoming president, Hoover served as the secretary of
commerce in both the Harding and Coolidge administrations. During his tenure at the
Commerce Department, he pursued new markets for business and encouraged business
leaders to share information as part of the trade-association movement. The Great
Depression hit while he was president. Hoover believed that the nation’s business struc-
ture was sound and sought to revive the economy through boosting the nation’s confi-
dence. He also tried to restart the economy with government constructions projects,
lower taxes and new federal loan programs, but nothing worked.

House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) Formed in 1938 to investigate subver-

sives in the government; best-known investigations were of Hollywood notables and of
A24 • GLOSSARY

former State Department official Alger Hiss, who was accused in 1948 of espionage and
Communist party membership.

Sam Houston (1793–1863) During Texas’s fight for independence from Mexico, Sam Houston
was the commander in chief of the Texas forces, and he led the attack that captured Gen-
eral Antonio López de Santa Anna. After Texas gained its independence, he was name its
first president.

Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives Jacob Riis was an early muckraking journalist who
exposed the slum conditions in New York City in his book How the Other Half Lives.

General William Howe (1729–1814) As the commander of the British army in the Revolu-
tionary War, he seized New York City from Washington’s army, but failed to capture it.
He missed several more opportunities to quickly end the rebellion, and he resigned his
command after the British defeat at Saratoga.

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) The former dictator of Iraq who became the head of state in
1979. In 1980, he invaded Iran and started the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq War. In 1990, he
invaded Kuwait, which caused the Gulf War of 1991. In 2003, he was overthrown and
captured when the United States invaded. He was sentenced to death by hanging in 2006.

Anne Hutchinson (1591–1643) The articulate, strong-willed, and intelligent wife of a promi-
nent Boston merchant, who espoused her belief in direct divine revelation. She quar-
reled with Puritan leaders over her beliefs; and they banished her from the colony.

impressment The British navy used press-gangs to kidnap men in British and colonial ports
who were then forced to serve in the British navy.

“Indian New Deal” This phrase refers to the reforms implemented for Native Americans dur-
ing the New Deal era. John Collier, the commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs
(BIA), increased the access Native Americans had to relief programs and employed
more Native Americans at the BIA. He worked to pass the Indian Reorganization Act.
However, the version of the act passed by Congress was a much-diluted version of Col-
lier’s original proposal and did not greatly improve the lives of Native Americans.

indentured servant Settler who signed on for a temporary period of servitude to a master in
exchange for passage to the New World; Virginia and Pennsylvania were largely peopled
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by English indentured servants.

Indian Removal Act (1830) Signed by President Andrew Jackson, the law permitted the nego-
tiation of treaties to obtain the Indians’ lands in exchange for their relocation to what
became Oklahoma.

Indochina This area of Southeast Asian consists of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam and was
once controlled by France as a colony. After the Viet Minh defeated the French, the
Geneva Accords were signed, which ended French colonial rule. The agreement created
the independent nations of Laos and Cambodia and divided Vietnam along the 17th par-
allel until an election would reunify the country. Fearing a communist take over, the
United States government began intervening in the region during the Truman administra-
tion, which led to President Johnson’s full-scale military involvement in Vietnam.
 Glossary • A25

industrial war A new concept of war enabled by industrialization that developed from the
early 1800s through the Atomic Age. New technologies, including automatic weaponry,
forms of transportation like the railroad and airplane, and communication technolo-
gies such as the telegraph and telephone, enabled nations to equip large, mass-
conscripted armies with chemical and automatic weapons to decimate opposing armies
in a “total war.”

Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) A radical union organized in Chicago in 1905, nick-
named the Wobblies; its opposition to World War I led to its destruction by the federal gov-
ernment under the Espionage Act.

internationalists Prior to the United States’ entry in World War II, internationalists believed
that America’s national security depended on aiding Britain in its struggle against
Germany.

interstate highway system In the late 1950s, construction began on a national network of
interstate superhighways for the purpose of commerce and defense. The interstate
highways would enable the rapid movement of military convoys and the evacuation of
cities after a nuclear attack.

Iranian Hostage Crisis In 1979, a revolution in Iran placed the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini,
a fundamental religious leader, in power. In November 1979, revolutionaries seized the
American embassy in Tehran and held those inside hostage. President Carter struggled
to get the hostages. He tried pressuring Iran through appeals to the United Nations,
freezing Iranian assets in the United States and imposing a trade embargo. During an
aborted rescue operation, a helicopter collided with a transport plane and killed eight
U.S. soldiers. Finally, Carter unfroze several billion dollars in Iranian assets, and the
hostages were released after being held for 444 days; but not until Ronald Reagan had
become president of the United States.

Iran-Contra affair Scandal of the second Reagan administration involving sale of arms to Iran
in partial exchange for release of hostages in Lebanon and use of the arms money to aid
the Contras in Nicaragua, which had been expressly forbidden by Congress.

Irish Potato Famine In 1845, an epidemic of potato rot brought a famine to rural Ireland that
killed over 1 million peasants and instigated a huge increase in the number or Irish
immigrating to America. By 1850, the Irish made up 43 percent of the foreign-born
population in the United States; and in the 1850s, they made up over half the popula-
tion of New York City and Boston.

iron curtain Term coined by Winston Churchill to describe the cold war divide between west-
ern Europe and the Soviet Union’s Eastern European satellites.

Iroquois League An alliance of the Iroquois tribes that used their strength to force Europeans
to work with them in the fur trade and to wage war across what is today eastern North
America.

Andrew Jackson (1767–1837) As a major general in the Tennessee militia, he defeated the
Creek Indians, invaded the panhandle of Spanish Florida and won the Battle of New
Orleans. In 1818, his successful campaign against Spanish forces in Florida gave the
A26 • GLOSSARY

United States the upper hand in negotiating for Florida with Spain. As president, he
vetoed bills for the federal funding of internal improvements and the re-chartering of
the Second National Bank. When South Carolina nullified the Tariffs of 1828 and 1832,
Jackson requested that Congress pass a “force bill” that would authorize him to use the
army to compel the state to comply with the tariffs. He forced eastern Indians to move
west of the Mississippi River so their lands could be used by white settlers. Groups of
those who opposed Jackson come together to form a new political part called the Whigs.

Jesse Jackson (1941–) An African American civil rights activist who had been one of Martin
Luther King Jr.’s chief lieutenants. He is most famous for founding the social justice
organization the Rainbow Coalition. In 1988, he ran for the Democratic presidential
nomination, which became a race primarily between him and Michael Dukakis.
Dukakis won the nomination, but lost the election to Republican nominee Vice Presi-
dent George H. W. Bush.

Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson (1824–1863) He was a Confederate general who was known for
his fearlessness in leading rapid marches, bold flanking movements, and furious
assaults. He earned his nickname at the Battle of the First Bull Run for standing coura-
geously against Union fire. During the battle of Chancellorsville, his own men acci-
dently mortally wounded him.

William James (1842–1910) He was the founder of Pragmatism and one of the fathers of
modern psychology. He believed that ideas gained their validity not from their inherent
truth, but from their social consequences and practical application.

Jay’s Treaty Treaty with Britain negotiated in 1794 by Chief Justice John Jay; Britain agreed to
vacate forts in the Northwest Territories, and festering disagreements (border with
Canada, prewar debts, shipping claims) would be settled by commission.

Jazz Age A term coined by F. Scott Fitzgerald to characterize the spirit of rebellion and spon-
taneity that spread among young Americans during the 1920s, epitomized by the emer-
gence of jazz music and the popularity of carefree, improvisational dances, such as the
Charleston and the Black Bottom.

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) He was a plantation owner, author, the drafter of the Declara-
tion Independence, ambassador to France, leader of the Republican party, secretary of
state, and the third president of the United States. As president, he purchased the
Louisiana territory from France, withheld appointments made by President Adams
leading to Marybury v. Madison, outlawed foreign slave trade, and was committed to a
“wise and frugal” government.

Jesuits A religious order founded in 1540 by Ignatius Loyola. They sought to counter the spread
of Protestantism during the Protestant Reformation and spread the Catholic faith
through work as missionaries. Roughly 3,500 served in New Spain and New France.

“Jim Crow” laws In the New South, these laws mandated the separation of races in various
public places that served as a way for the ruling whites to impose their will on all areas
of black life.

Andrew Johnson (1808–1875) As President Abraham Lincoln’s vice president, he was elevated
to the presidency after Lincoln’s assassination. In order to restore the Union after the
 Glossary • A27

Civil War, he issued an amnesty proclamation and required former Confederate states
to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment. He fought Radical Republicans in Congress over
whether he or Congress had the authority to restore states rights to the former Confed-
erate states. This fight weakened both his political and public support. In 1868, the Rad-
ical Republicans attempted to impeach Johnson but fell short on the required number
of votes needed to remove him from office.

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) Former member of the United States House of Representa-
tives and the former Majority Leader of the United States Senate, Vice President Lyn-
don Johnson, assumed the presidency after President Kennedy’s assassination. He was
able to push through Congress several pieces of Kennedy’s legislation that had been
stalled including the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He declared “war on poverty” and pro-
moted his own social program called the Great Society, which sought to end poverty
and racial injustice. In 1965, he signed the Immigration and Nationality Service Act,
which abolished the discriminatory quotas system that had been the immigration
policy since the 1920s. Johnson greatly increased America’s role in Vietnam. By 1969,
there were 542,000 U.S. troops fighting in Vietnam and a massive anti-war movement
had developed in America. In 1968, Johnson announced that he would not run for
re-election.

Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) Law sponsored by Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas to allow
settlers in newly organized territories north of the Missouri border to decide the slavery
issue for themselves; fury over the resulting nullification of the Missouri Compromise
of 1820 led to violence in Kansas and to the formation of the Republican party.

Florence Kelley (1859–1932) As the head of the National Consumer’s League, she led the cru-
sade to promote state laws to regulate the number of working hours imposed on women
who were wives and mothers.

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) While working as an American diplomat, he devised the strat-
egy of containment, which called for the halting of Soviet expansion. It became Amer-
ica’s choice strategy throughout the cold war.

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) Elected president in 1960, he was interested in bringing new
ideas to the White House. Despite the difficulties he had in getting his legislation
through Congress, he did establish the Alliance for Progress programs to help Latin
America, the Peace Corps, the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, and funding for urban
renewal projects and the space program. He mistakenly proceeded with the Bay of Pigs
invasion, but he successfully handled the Cuban missile crisis. In Indochina, his
administration became increasingly involved in supporting local governments
through aid, advisors, and covert operations. In 1963, he was assassinated by Lee Har-
vey Oswald in Dallas, Texas.

Kent State During the spring of 1970, students on college campuses across the country
protested the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. At Kent State University,
the National Guard attempted to quell the rioting students. The guardsmen panicked
and shot at rock-throwing demonstrators. Four student bystanders were killed.
A28 • GLOSSARY

Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions (1798–1799) Passed in response to the Alien and Sedition
Acts, the resolutions advanced the state-compact theory that held states could nullify
an act of Congress if they deemed it unconstitutional.

Francis Scott Key (1779–1843) During the War of 1812, he watched British forces bombard
Fort McHenry, but fail to take it. Seeing the American flag still flying over the fort at
dawn inspired him to write “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which became the American
national anthem.

Keynesian economics A theory of economics developed by John Maynard Keynes. He argued

that increased government spending, even if it increased the nation’s deficit, during an
economic downturn was necessary to reinvigorate a nation’s economy. This view was
held by Harry Hopkins and Harold Ickes who advised President Franklin Roosevelt
during the Great Depression.

Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) As an important leader of the civil rights movement, he
urged people to use nonviolent civil disobedience to demand their rights and bring
about change. He successfully led the Montgomery bus boycott. While in jail for his role
in demonstrations, he wrote his famous “Letter from Birmingham City Jail,” in which he
defended his strategy of nonviolent protest. In 1963, he delivered his famous “I Have a
Dream Speech” from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial as a part of the March on Wash-
ington. A year later, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1968, he was assassinated.

King William’s War (War of the League of Augsburg) First (1689–1697) of four colonial wars
between England and France.

King Philip (?–1676) or Metacomet The chief of the Wampanoages, who the colonists called
King Philip. He resented English efforts to convert Indians to Christianity and waged a
war against the English colonists in which he was killed.

Henry Kissinger (1923–) He served as the secretary of state and national security advisor in
the Nixon administration. He negotiated with North Vietnam for an end to the Viet-
nam War. In 1973, an agreement was signed between America, North and South Viet-
nam, and the Viet Cong to end the war. The cease-fire did not last; and South Vietnam
fell to North Vietnam. He helped organize Nixon’s historic trips to China and the Soviet
Union. In the Middle East, he negotiated a cease-fire between Israel and its neighbors
following the Yom Kippur War and solidified Israel’s promise to return to Egypt most
of the land it had taken during the 1967 war.

Knights of Labor Founded in 1869, the first national union picked up many members after the
disastrous 1877 railroad strike, but lasted under the leadership of Terence V. Powderly,
only into the 1890s; supplanted by the American Federation of Labor.

Know-Nothing party Nativist, anti-Catholic third party organized in 1854 in reaction to

large-scale German and Irish immigration; the party’s only presidential candidate was
Millard Fillmore in 1856.

Ku Klux Klan Organized in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866 to terrorize former slaves who voted and
held political offices during Reconstruction; a revived organization in the 1910s and 1920s
stressed white, Anglo-Saxon, fundamentalist Protestant supremacy; the Klan revived a
third time to fight the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s in the South.
 Glossary • A29

Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834) A wealthy French idealist excited by the American cause, he
offered to serve in Washington’s army for free in exchange for being named a major
general. He overcame Washington’s initial skepticism to become one of his most trusted
aides.

Land Ordinance of 1785 Directed surveying of the Northwest Territory into townships of
thirty-six sections (square miles) each, the sale of the sixteenth section of which was to
be used to finance public education.

Bartolomé de Las Casas (1484–1566) A Catholic missionary who renounced the Spanish prac-
tice of coercively converting Indians and advocated the better treatment for them. In
1552, he wrote A Brief Relation of the Destruction of the Indies, which described the Span-
ish’s cruel treatment of the Indians.

League of Nations Organization of nations to mediate disputes and avoid war established
after the First World War as part of the Treaty of Versailles; President Woodrow Wilson’s
“Fourteen Points’’ speech to Congress in 1918 proposed the formation of the league.

Mary Elizabeth Lease (1850–1933) She was a leader of the farm protest movement who advo-
cated violence if change could not be obtained at the ballot box. She believed that the
urban-industrial East was the enemy of the working class.

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Even though he had served in the United States Army for thirty
years, he chose to fight on the side of the Confederacy and took command of the Army
of North Virginia. Lee was excellent at using his field commanders; and his soldiers
respected him. However, General Ulysses S. Grant eventually wore down his army, and
Lee surrendered to Grant at the Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.

Lend-Lease Act (1941) Permitted the United States to lend or lease arms and other supplies to
the Allies, signifying increasing likelihood of American involvement in the Second
World War.

Levittown First low-cost, mass-produced development of suburban tract housing built by

William Levitt on Long Island, New York, in 1947.

Lexington and Concord, Battle of The first shots fired in the Revolutionary War, on April 19,
1775, near Boston; approximately 100 Minutemen and 250 British soldiers were killed.

Liberator William Lloyd Garrison started this anti-slavery newspaper in 1831 in which he
renounced gradualism and called for abolition.

Queen Liliuokalani (1838–1917) In 1891, she ascended to the throne of the Hawaiian royal
family and tried to eliminate white control of the Hawaiian government. Two years
later, Hawaii’s white population revolted and seized power with the support of Ameri-
can marines.

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) His participation in the Lincoln-Douglas debates gave him a
national reputation and he was nominated as the Republican party candidate for presi-
dent in 1860. Shortly after he was elected president, southern states began succeeding
from the Union and in April of 1861 he declared war on the succeeding states. On Janu-
ary 1, 1863, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves. At the
end of the war, he favored a reconstruction strategy for the former Confederate states that
A30 • GLOSSARY

did not radically alter southern social and economic life. However, before his plans could
be finalized, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln at Ford’s Theater on April 14, 1865.

Lincoln-Douglas debates Series of senatorial campaign debates in 1858 focusing on the issue
of slavery in the territories; held in Illinois between Republican Abraham Lincoln, who
made a national reputation for himself, and incumbent Democratic senator Stephen A.
Douglas, who managed to hold onto his seat.

John Locke (1632–1704) An English philosopher whose ideas were influential during the
Enlightenment. He argued in his Essay on Human Understanding (1690) that humanity
is largely the product of the environment, the mind being a blank tablet, tabula rasa, on
which experience is written.

Henry Cabot Lodge (1850–1924) He was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Com-
mittee who favored limiting America’s involvement in the League of Nations’ covenant
and sought to amend the Treaty of Versailles.

de Lôme letter Spanish ambassador Depuy de Lôme wrote a letter to a friend in Havana in
which he described President McKinley as “weak” and a seeker of public admira-
tion. This letter was stolen and published in the New York Journal, which increased
the American public’s dislike of Spain and moved the two countries closer to war.

Lone Star Republic After winning independence from Mexico, Texas became its own nation
that was called the Lone Star Republic. In 1836, Texans drafted themselves a constitu-
tion, legalized slavery, banned free blacks, named Sam Houston president, and voted for
the annexation to the United States. However, quarrels over adding a slave state and
fears of instigating a war with Mexico delayed Texas’s entrance into the Union until
December 29, 1845.

Huey P. Long (1893–1935) He began his political career in Louisiana where he developed a
reputation for being an unscrupulous reformer. As a U.S. senator, he became a critic of
President Roosevelt’s New Deal Plan and offered his alternative called the Share-the-
Wealth program. He was assassinated in 1935.

Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations (the Board of Trade) William III created this
organization in 1696 to investigate the enforcement of the Navigations Act, recommend
ways to limit colonial manufactures, and encourage the production of raw materials in the
colonies that were needed in Britain.

Louisiana Purchase President Thomas Jefferson’s 1803 purchase from France of the impor-
tant port of New Orleans and 828,000 square miles west of the Mississippi River to the
Rocky Mountains; it more than doubled the territory of the United States at a cost of
only $15 million.

Lowell “girls” Young female factory workers at the textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts,
which in the early 1820s provided its employees with prepared meals, dormitories,
moral discipline, and educational opportunities.

Lowell System Lowell mills were the first to bring all the processes of spinning and weaving
cloth together under one roof and have every aspect of the production mechanized. In
addition, the Lowell mills were designed to be model factory communities that pro-
 Glossary • A31

vided the young women employees with meals, a boardinghouse, moral discipline, and
educational and cultural opportunities.

Martin Luther (1483–1546) A German monk who founded the Lutheran church. He protested
abuses in the Catholic Church by posting his Ninety-five Theses, which began the
Protestant Reformation.

General Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) During World War II, he and Admiral Chester
Nimitz dislodged the Japanese military from the Pacific Islands they had occupied. Fol-
lowing the war, he was in charge of the occupation of Japan. After North Korea invaded
South Korea, Truman sent the U.S. military to defend South Korea under the command
of MacArthur. Later in the war, Truman expressed his willingness to negotiate the
restoration of prewar boundaries which MacArthur attempted to undermine. Truman
fired MacArthur for his open insubordination.

James Madison (1751–1836) He participated in the Constitutional Convention during

which he proposed the Virginia Plan. He believed in a strong federal government and
was a leader of the Federalists and a contributor to The Federalist. However, he also pre-
sented to Congress the Bill of Rights and drafted the Virginia Resolutions. As the secre-
tary of state, he withheld a commission for William Marbury, which led to the
landmark Marbury v. Madison decision. During his presidency, he declared war on
Britain in response to violations of American shipping rights, which started the War of
1812.

Alfred Thayer Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783 Alfred Thayer
Mahan was an advocate for sea power and Western imperialism. In 1890, he published
The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783 in which he argued that a nation’s
greatness and prosperity comes from maritime power. He believed that America’s “des-
tiny” was to control the Caribbean, build the Panama Canal, and spread Western civi-
lization across the Pacific.

Malcolm X (1925–1964) The most articulate spokesman for black power. Originally, the chief
disciple of Elijah Muhammad, the black Muslim leader in the United States, Malcolm X
broke away from him and founded his own organization committed to establishing
relations between African Americans and the nonwhite peoples of the world. Near the
end of his life, he began to preach a biracial message of social change. In 1964, he was
assassinated by members of a rival group of black Muslims.

Manchuria incident The northeast region of Manchuria was an area contested between China
and Russia. In 1931, the Japanese claimed that they needed to protect their extensive
investments in the area and moved their army into Manchuria. They quickly conquered
the region and set up their own puppet empire. China asked both the United States and
the League of Nations for help and neither responded.

Manifest Destiny Imperialist phrase first used in 1845 to urge annexation of Texas; used there-
after to encourage American settlement of European colonial and Indian lands in the
Great Plains and Far West.
A32 • GLOSSARY

Horace Mann (1796–1859) He believed the public school system was the best way to achieve
social stability and equal opportunity. As a reformer of education, he sponsored a state
board of education, the first state-supported “normal” school for training teachers, a
state association for teachers, the minimum school year of six months, and led the drive
for a statewide school system.

Marbury v. Madison (1803) First U.S. Supreme Court decision to declare a federal law—the Judi-
ciary Act of 1801—unconstitutional; President John Adams’s “midnight appointment’’ of
Federalist judges prompted the suit.

March on Washington Civil rights demonstration on August 28, 1963, where the Reverend
Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream’’ speech on the steps of the Lincoln
Memorial.

George C. Marshall (1880–1959) As the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he orchestrated
the Allied victories over Germany and Japan in the Second World War. In 1947, he
became President Truman’s secretary of state and proposed the massive reconstruction
program for western Europe called the Marshall Plan.

Chief Justice John Marshall (1755–1835) During his long tenure as chief justice of the
supreme court (1801–1835), he established the foundations for American jurispru-
dence, the authority of the Supreme Court, and the constitutional supremacy of the
national government over states.

Marshall Plan U.S. program for the reconstruction of post–Second World War Europe through
massive aid to former enemy nations as well as allies; proposed by General George C. Marshall
in 1947.

massive resistance In reaction to the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954, U.S. Senator
Harry Byrd encouraged southern states to defy federally mandated school integration.

massive retaliation A doctrine of nuclear strategy in which the United States committed itself
to retaliate with “massive retaliatory power” (nuclear weapons) in the event of an
attack. Developed by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles during the Eisenhower
administration to prevent communist aggression from the Soviet Union and China.

Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (1908–1957) In 1950, this senator became the shrewdest and
most ruthless exploiter of America’s anxiety of communism. He claimed that the
United States government was full of Communists and led a witch hunt to find them,
but he was never able to uncover a single communist agent.
George B. McClellan (1826–1885) In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln appointed him head
of the Army of the Potomac and, later, general in chief of the U.S. Army. He built his
army into well trained and powerful force. However, he often delayed taking action
against the enemy even though Lincoln wanted him to attack. After failing to achieve a
decisive victory against the Confederacy, Lincoln removed McClellan from command
in 1862.
Cyrus Hall McCormick (1809–1884) In 1831, he invented a mechanical reaper to harvest wheat,
which transformed the scale of agriculture. By hand a farmer could only harvest a half an
acre a day, while the McCormick reaper allowed two people to harvest twelve acres of
wheat a day.
 Glossary • A33

William McKinley (1843–1901) As a congressman, he was responsible for the McKinley Tariff
of 1890, which raised the duties on manufactured products to their highest level ever.
Voters disliked the tariff and McKinley, as well as other Republicans, lost their seats in
Congress the next election. However, he won the presidential election of 1896 and
raised the tariffs again. In 1898, he annexed Hawaii and declared war on Spain. The war
concluded with the Treaty of Paris, which gave America control over Puerto Rico,
Guam, and the Philippines. Soon America was fighting Filipinos, who were seeking
independence for their country. In 1901, McKinley was assassinated.

Robert McNamara (1916–) He was the secretary of defense for both President Kennedy and
President Johnson and a supporter of America’s involvement in Vietnam.

McNary-Haugen Bill Vetoed by President Calvin Coolidge in 1927 and 1928, the bill to aid
farmers would have artificially raised agricultural prices by selling surpluses overseas
for low prices and selling the reduced supply in the United States for higher prices.

Andrew W. Mellon (1855–1937) As President Harding’s secretary of the Treasury, he sought to

generate economic growth through reducing government spending and lowering taxes.
However, he insisted that the tax reductions mainly go to the rich because he believed
the wealthy would reinvest their money and spur economic growth. In order to bring
greater efficiency and nonpartisanship to the government’s budget process, he per-
suaded Congress to pass the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, which created a new
Bureau of the Budget and a General Accounting Office.

mercantile system A nationalistic program that assumed that the total amount of the world’s
gold and silver remained essentially fixed with only a nation’s share of that wealth sub-
ject to change.

James Meredith (1933–) In 1962, the governor of Mississippi defied a Supreme Court ruling
and refused to allow James Meredith, an African American, to enroll at the University of
Mississippi. Federal marshals were sent to enforce the law which led to clashes between
a white mob and the marshals. Federal troops intervened and two people were killed
and many others were injured. A few days later, Meredith was able to register at the
university.

Merrimack (ship renamed the Virginia) and the Monitor First engagement between ironclad
ships; fought at Hampton Roads, Virginia, on March 9, 1862.

Metacomet (?–1676) or King Philip The chief of the Wampanoages, who the colonists called
King Philip. He resented English efforts to convert Indians to Christianity and waged a
war against the English colonists in which he was killed.

militant nonviolence After the success of the Montgomery bus boycott, people were inspired by
Martin Luther King Jr.’s use of this nonviolent form of protest. Throughout the civil rights
movement, demonstrators used this method of protest to challenge racial segregation in
the South.

Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) He was the Vietnamese communist resistance leader who drove the
French and the United States out of Vietnam. After the Geneva Accords divided the region
into four countries, he controlled North Vietnam, and ultimately became the leader of all
of Vietnam at the conclusion of the Vietnam War.
A34 • GLOSSARY

minstrelsy A form of entertainment that was popular from the 1830s to the 1870s. The perfor-
mances featured white performers who were made up as African Americans or black-
face. They performed banjo and fiddle music, “shuffle” dances and lowbrow humor that
reinforced racial stereotypes.

Minutemen Special units organized by the militia to be ready for quick mobilization.

Miranda v. Arizona (1966) U.S. Supreme Court decision required police to advise persons in
custody of their rights to legal counsel and against self-incrimination.

Mississippi Plan In 1890, Mississippi instituted policies that led to a near-total loss of voting
rights for blacks and many poor whites. In order to vote, the state required that citizens
pay all their taxes first, be literate, and have been residents of the state for two years and
one year in an electoral district. Convicts were banned from voting. Seven other states
followed this strategy of disenfranchisement.

Missouri Compromise Deal proposed by Kentucky senator Henry Clay to resolve the slave/
free imbalance in Congress that would result from Missouri’s admission as a slave state;
in the compromise of March 20, 1820, Maine’s admission as a free state offset Missouri,
and slavery was prohibited in the remainder of the Louisiana Territory north of the
southern border of Missouri.

Model T Ford Henry Ford developed this model of car so that it was affordable for everyone.
Its success led to an increase in the production of automobiles which stimulated other
related industries such steel, oil, and rubber. The mass use of automobiles increased the
speed goods could be transported, encouraged urban sprawl, and sparked real estate
booms in California and Florida.

modernism As both a mood and movement, modernism recognized that Western civilization
had entered an era of change. Traditional ways of thinking and creating art were being
rejected and replaced with new understandings and forms of expression.

Molly Maguires Secret organization of Irish coal miners that used violence to intimidate mine
officials in the 1870s.

Monroe Doctrine President James Monroe’s declaration to Congress on December 2, 1823,

that the American continents would be thenceforth closed to colonization but that the
United States would honor existing colonies of European nations.

Montgomery bus boycott Sparked by Rosa Parks’s arrest on December 1, 1955, a successful
year-long boycott protesting segregation on city buses; led by the Reverend Martin
Luther King Jr.

Moral Majority Televangelist Jerry Falwell’s political lobbying organization, the name of
which became synonymous with the religious right—conservative evangelical Protes-
tants who helped ensure President Ronald Reagan’s 1980 victory.

J. Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913) As a powerful investment banker, he would acquire, reorga-

nize, and consolidate companies into giant trusts. His biggest achievement was the con-
solidation of the steel industry into the United States Steel Corporation, which was the
first billion-dollar corporation.

James Monroe (1758–1831) He served as secretary of state and war under President Madison
and was elected president. As the latter, he signed the Transcontinental Treaty with
 Glossary • A35

Spain which gave the United States Florida and expanded the Louisiana territory’s
western border to the Pacific coast. In 1823, he established the Monroe Doctrine. This
foreign policy proclaimed the American continents were no longer open to coloniza-
tion and America would be neutral in European affairs.

Robert Morris (1734–1806) He was the superintendent of finance for the Congress of the Con-
federation during the final years of the Revolutionary War. He envisioned a national
finance plan of taxation and debt management, but the states did not approve the neces-
sary amendments to the Articles of Confederation need to implement the plan.

Samuel F. B. Morse (1791–1872) In 1832, he invented the telegraph and revolutionized the
speed of communication.

mountain men Inspired by the fur trade, these men left civilization to work as trappers and
reverted to a primitive existence in the wilderness. They were the first whites to find
routes through the Rocky Mountains, and they pioneered trails that settlers later used
to reach the Oregon country and California in the 1840s.

muckrakers Writers who exposed corruption and abuses in politics, business, meat-packing,
child labor, and more, primarily in the first decade of the twentieth century; their pop-
ular books and magazine articles spurred public interest in progressive reform.

Mugwumps Reform wing of the Republican party that supported Democrat Grover Cleveland
for president in 1884 over Republican James G. Blaine, whose influence peddling had
been revealed in the Mulligan letters of 1876.

mulattoes People of mixed racial ancestry, whose status in the Old South was somewhere
between that of blacks and whites.

Benito Mussolini “Il Duce” (1883–1945) The Italian founder of the Fascist party who came to
power in Italy in 1922 and allied himself with Adolf Hitler and the Axis powers during
the Second World War.

My Lai Massacre In 1968, Lieutenant William Calley and his soldiers massacred 347 Viet-
namese civilians in the village of My Lai. Twenty-five army officers were charged with
complicity in the massacre and its cover-up but only Calley was convicted. Later, Presi-
dent Nixon granted him parole.

North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Approved in 1993, the North American
Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico allowed goods to travel across their
borders free of tariffs; critics argued that American workers would lose their jobs to
cheaper Mexican labor.

National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) Passed on the last of the Hundred Days; it created
public-works jobs through the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and estab-
lished a system of self-regulation for industry through the National Recovery Adminis-
tration, which was ruled unconstitutional in 1935.

National Recovery Administration This organization’s two goals were to stabilize business
and generate purchasing power for consumers. The first goal was to be achieved
through the implementation industry-wide codes that set wages and prices, which
A36 • GLOSSARY

would reduce the chaotic competition. To provide consumers with purchasing power,
the administration would provide jobs, define workplace standards, and raise wages.

National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi) Founded in the 1920s, this party gained
control over Germany under the leadership of Adolf Hitler in 1933 and continued in
power until Germany’s defeat at the end of the Second World War. It advocated a vio-
lent anti-Semitic, anti-Marxist, pan-German ideology. The Nazi party systematically
murdered some 6 million Jews along with more than a million others.

nativism Anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic feeling in the 1830s through the 1850s; the largest
group was New York’s Order of the Star-Spangled Banner, which expanded into the
American, or Know-Nothing, party in 1854. In the 1920, there was a surge in nativism
as Americans grew to fear immigrants who might be political radicals. In response, new
strict immigration regulations were established.

nativist A native-born American who saw immigrants as a threat to his way of life and
employment. During the 1880s, nativist groups worked to stop the flow of immigrates
into the United States. Of these groups, the most successful was the American Protec-
tive Association who promoted government restrictions on immigration, tougher natu-
ralization requirements, the teaching of English in schools and workplaces that refused
to employ foreigners or Catholics.

Navigation Acts Passed by the English Parliament to control colonial trade and bolster the
mercantile system, 1650–1775; enforcement of the acts led to growing resentment by
colonists.

new conservatism The political philosophy of those who led the conservative insurgency of
the early 1980s. This brand of conservatism was personified in Ronald Reagan who
believed in less government, supply-side economics, and “family values.”

First New Deal Franklin D. Roosevelt’s campaign promise, in his speech to the Democratic
National Convention of 1932, to combat the Great Depression with a “new deal for the
American people;’’ the phrase became a catchword for his ambitious plan of economic
programs.

New France The name used for the area of North America that was colonized by the French.
Unlike Spanish or English colonies, New France had a small number of colonists, which
forced them to initially seek good relations with the indigenous people they encountered.
New Freedom Democrat Woodrow Wilson’s political slogan in the presidential campaign of
1912; Wilson wanted to improve the banking system, lower tariffs, and, by breaking up
monopolies, give small businesses freedom to compete.
New Frontier John F. Kennedy’s program, stymied by a Republican Congress and his abbrevi-
ated term; his successor Lyndon B. Johnson had greater success with many of the same
concepts.
New Jersey Plan The delegations to the Constitutional Convention were divided between two
plans on how to structure the government: New Jersey wanted one legislative body with
equal representation for each state.

New Nationalism Platform of the Progressive party and slogan of former President Theodore
Roosevelt in the presidential campaign of 1912; stressed government activism, includ-
 Glossary • A37

ing regulation of trusts, conservation, and recall of state court decisions that had nulli-
fied progressive programs.

“New Negro” In the 1920s, a slow and steady growth of black political influence occurred in
northern cities where African Americans were freer to speak and act. This political
activity created a spirit of protest that expressed itself culturally in the Harlem Renais-
sance and politically in “new Negro” nationalism.

New Netherland Dutch colony conquered by the English to become four new colonies New
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.

New South Atlanta Constitution editor Henry W. Grady’s 1886 term for the prosperous post–
Civil War South: democratic, industrial, urban, and free of nostalgia for the defeated plan-
tation South.

William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal In the late 1890s, the New York Journal and its
rival, the New York World, printed sensationalism on the Cuban revolution as part of
their heated competition for readership. The New York Journal printed a negative letter
from the Spanish ambassador about President McKinley and inflammatory coverage of
the sinking of the Maine in Havana Harbor. These two events roused the American
public’s outcry against Spain.

Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World In the late 1890s, the New York World and its rival, New York
Journal, printed sensationalism on the Cuban revolution as part of their heated compe-
tition for readership.

Admiral Chester Nimitz (1885–1966) During the Second World War, he was the commander
of central Pacific. Along with General Douglas MacArthur, he dislodged the Japanese
military from the Pacific Islands they had occupied.

Nineteenth Amendment (1920) Granted women the right to vote.

Richard M. Nixon (1913–1994) He first came to national prominence as a congressman involved

in the investigation of Alger Hiss. Later he served as vice president during the Eisenhower
administration. In 1960, he ran as the Republican nominee for president and lost to John
Kennedy. In 1968, he ran and won the presidency against Democratic nominee Hubert
Humphrey. During his campaign, he promised to bring about “peace with honor” in Viet-
nam. He told southern conservatives that he would slow the federal enforcement of civil
rights laws and appoint pro-southern justices to the Supreme Court. After being elected, he
fulfilled the latter promise attempted to keep the former. He opened talks with the North
Vietnamese and began a program of Vietnamization of the war. He also bombed Cambo-
dia. In 1973, America, North and South Vietnam, and the Viet Cong agreed to end the war
and the United States withdrew. However, the cease-fire was broken, and the South Viet-
nam fell to North Vietnam. In 1970, Nixon changed U.S. foreign policy. He declared that
the America was no longer the world’s policemen and he would seek some partnerships
with Communist countries. With his historic visit to China, he ended twenty years of
diplomatically isolating China and he began taking steps towards cultural exchanges and
trade. In 1972, Nixon travelled to Moscow and signed agreements with the Soviet Union
on arms control and trade. That same year, Nixon was reelected, but the Watergate scandal
erupted shortly after his victory. When his knowledge of the break-in and subsequent
cover-up was revealed, Nixon resigned the presidency under threat of impeachment.
A38 • GLOSSARY

No Child Left Behind President George W. Bush’s education reform plan that required states
to set and meet learning standards for students and make sure that all students were
“proficient” in reading and writing by 2014. States had to submit annual reports of
students’ standardized test scores. Teachers were required to be “proficient” in their
subject area. Schools who failed to show progress would face sanctions. States criti-
cized the lack of funding for remedial programs and noted that poor school districts
would find it very difficult to meet the new guidelines.

Lord North (1732–1792) The first minister of King George III’s cabinet whose efforts to sub-
due the colonies only brought them closer to revolution. He helped bring about the Tea
Act of 1773, which led to the Boston Tea Party. In an effort to discipline Boston, he
wrote, and Parliament passed, four acts that galvanized colonial resistance.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Defensive alliance founded in 1949 by ten west-
ern European nations, the United States, and Canada to deter Soviet expansion in
Europe.

Northwest Ordinance Created the Northwest Territory (area north of the Ohio River and west
of Pennsylvania), established conditions for self-government and statehood, included a
Bill of Rights, and permanently prohibited slavery.

nullification Concept of invalidation of a federal law within the borders of a state; first
expounded in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions (1798), cited by South Carolina in
its Ordinance of Nullification (1832) of the Tariff of Abominations, used by southern
states to explain their secession from the Union (1861), and cited again by southern
states to oppose the Brown v. Board of Education decision (1954).

Nuremberg trials At the site of the annual Nazi party rallies, twenty-one major German
offenders faced an international military tribunal for Nazi atrocities. After a ten-month
trial, the court acquitted three and sentenced eleven to death, three to life imprison-
ment, and four to shorter terms.

Barack Obama (1961–) In the 2008 presidential election, Senator Barack Obama mounted an
innovative Internet based and grassroots orientated campaign that garnered him
enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination. As the nation’s economy nose-
dived in the fall of 2008, Obama linked the Republican economic philosophy with the
country’s dismal financial state and promoted a message of “change” and “politics of
hope,” which resonated with voters. He decisively won the presidency and became Amer-
ica’s first person of colored to be elected president.

Occupy Wall Street A grassroots movement protesting a capitalist system that fostered social
and economic inequality. Begun in Zuccotti Park, New York City, during 2011, the
movement spread rapidly across the nation, triggering a national conversation about
income inequality and protests of the government’s “bailouts” of the banks and corpo-
rations allegedly responsible for the Great Recession.

Sandra Day O’Connor (1930–) She was the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court of the
United States and was appointed by President Reagan. Reagan’s critics charged that her
 Glossary • A39

appointment was a token gesture and not a sign of any real commitment to gender
equality.
Ohio gang In order to escape the pressures of the White House, President Harding met with a
group of people, called the “Ohio gang,” in a house on K Street in Washington D.C.
Members of this gang were given low-level positions in the American government and
they used their White House connection to “line their pockets” by granting government
contracts without bidding, which led to a series of scandals, most notably the Teapot
Dome Scandal.
Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) In 1858, he constructed New York’s Central Park, which
led to a growth in the movement to create urban parks. He went on to design parks for
Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and many other cities.
Opechancanough (?–1644) The brother and successor of Powhatan who led his tribe in an
attempt to repel the English settlers in Virginia in 1622.
Open Door Policy In hopes of protecting the Chinese market for U.S. exports, Secretary of
State John Hay unilaterally announced in 1899 that Chinese trade would be open to all
nations.
Operation Desert Shield After Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, President George H.
W. Bush sent American military forces to Saudi Arabia on a strictly defensive mission.
They were soon joined by a multinational coalition. When the coalition’s mission
changed to the retaking of Kuwait, the operation was renamed Desert Storm.
Operation Desert Storm Multinational allied force that defeated Iraq in the Gulf War of
January 1991.
Operation Overlord The Allies’ assault on Hitler’s “Atlantic Wall,” a seemingly impregnable
series of fortifications and minefields along the French coastline that German forces
had created using captive Europeans for laborers.
J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) He led the group of physicists at the laboratory in Los
Alamos, New Mexico, who constructed the first atomic bomb.
Oregon Country The Convention of 1818 between Britain and the United States established
the Oregon Country as being west of the crest of the Rocky Mountains and the two
countries were to jointly occupy it. In 1824, the United States and Russia signed a treaty
that established the line of 54°40′ as the southern boundary of Russia’s territorial claim
in North America. A similar agreement between Britain and Russia finally gave the Ore-
gon Country clearly defined boarders, but it remained under joint British and Ameri-
can control.
Oregon fever Enthusiasm for emigration to the Oregon Country in the late 1830s and early
1840s.
Osceola (1804?–1838) He was the leader of the Seminole nation who resisted the federal
Indian removal policy through a protracted guerilla war. In 1837, he was treacherously
seized under a flag of truce and imprisoned at Fort Moultrie, where he was left to die.
Overland (Oregon) Trails Trail Route of wagon trains bearing settlers from Independence,
Missouri, to the Oregon Country in the 1840s to 1860s.
A40 • GLOSSARY

A. Mitchell Palmer (1872–1936) As the attorney general, he played an active role in govern-
ment’s response to the Red Scare. After several bombings across America, including
one at Palmer’s home, he and other Americans became convinced that there was a
well-organized Communist terror campaign at work. The federal government
launched a campaign of raids, deportations, and collecting files on radical individuals.

Panic of 1819 Financial collapse brought on by sharply falling cotton prices, declining demand
for American exports, and reckless western land speculation.

panning A method of mining that used a large metal pan to sift gold dust and nuggets from
riverbeds during the California gold rush of 1849.

Rosa Parks (1913–2005) In 1955, she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus in
Montgomery, Alabama, which a local ordinance required of blacks. She was arrested for
disobeying the ordinance. In response, black community leaders organized the Mont-
gomery bus boycott.

paternalism A moral position developed during the first half of the nineteenth century which
claimed that slaves were deprived of liberty for their own “good.” Such a rationalization
was adopted by some slave owners to justify slavery.

Alice Paul (1885–1977) She was a leader of the women’s suffrage movement and head of the
Congressional Committee of National Women Suffrage Association. She instructed
female suffrage activists to use more militant tactics, such as picketing state legislatures,
chaining themselves to public buildings, inciting police to arrest them, and undertaking
hunger strikes.

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) He was a champion of the upbeat and feel-good theology
that was popular in the 1950s religious revival. He advocated getting rid of any depress-
ing or negative thoughts and replacing them with “faith, enthusiasm and joy,” which
would make an individual popular and well liked.

“peculiar institution” This term was used to describe slavery in America because slavery so
fragrantly violated the principle of individual freedom that served as the basis for the
Declaration of Independence.

Pentagon Papers Informal name for the Defense Department’s secret history of the Vietnam
conflict; leaked to the press by former official Daniel Ellsberg and published in the New
York Times in 1971.

Pequot War Massacre in 1637 and subsequent dissolution of the Pequot Nation by Puritan set-
tlers, who seized the Indians’ lands.

perestroika Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced these political and economic reforms,
which included reconstructing the state bureaucracy, reducing the privileges of the
political elite, and shifting from a centrally planned economy to a mixed economy.

Commodore Matthew Perry (1794–1858) In 1854, he negotiated the Treaty of Kanagawa,

which was the first step in starting a political and commercial relationship between the
United States and Japan.

John J. Pershing (1860–1948) After Pancho Villa had conducted several raids into Texas and
New Mexico, President Woodrow Wilson sent troops under the command of General
 Glossary • A41

John J. Pershing into Mexico to stop Villa. However, after a year of chasing Villa and not
being able to catch him, they returned to the United States. During the First World War,
Pershing commanded the first contingent of U.S. soldiers sent to Europe and advised the
War Department to send additional American forces.

“pet banks” During President Andrew Jackson’s fight with the national bank, Jackson resolved
to remove all federal deposits from it. To comply with Jackson’s demands, Secretary of
Treasury Taney continued to draw on government’s accounts in the national bank, but
deposit all new federal receipts in state banks. The state banks that received these
deposits were called “pet banks.”

Pilgrims Puritan Separatists who broke completely with the Church of England and sailed to
the New World aboard the Mayflower, founding Plymouth Colony on Cape Cod in
1620.

Dien Bien Phu The defining battle in the war between French colonialists and the Viet Minh.
The Viet Minh’s victory secured North Vietnam for Ho Chi Minh and was crucial in
compelling the French to give up Indochina as a colony.

Gifford Pinchot (1865–1946) As the head of the Division of Forestry, he implemented a con-
servation policy that entailed the scientific management of natural resources to serve
the public interest. His work helped start the conservation movement. In 1910, he
exposed to the public the decision of Richard A. Ballinger’s, President Taft’s secretary of
the interior, to open up previously protected land for commercial use. Pinchot was
fired, but the damage to Taft’s public image resulted in the loss of many pro-Taft candi-
dates in 1910 congressional election.

Elizabeth Lucas Pinckney (1722? –1793) One of the most enterprising horticulturists in colo-
nial America, she began managing her family’s three plantations in South Carolina at
the age of sixteen. She had tremendous success growing indigo, which led to many
other plantations growing the crop as well.

Pinckney’s Treaty Treaty with Spain negotiated by Thomas Pinckney in 1795; established
United States boundaries at the Mississippi River and the 31st parallel and allowed
open transportation on the Mississippi.

Francisco Pizarro (1478?–1541) In 1531, he lead his Spanish soldiers to Peru and conquered
the Inca Empire.

planters In the antebellum South, the owner of a large farm worked by twenty or more slaves.

political “machine” A network of political activists and elected officials, usually controlled by
a powerful “boss,” that attempts to manipulate local politics

James Knox Polk “Young Hickory” (1795–1849) As president, his chief concern was the
expansion of the United States. In 1846, his administration resolved the dispute with
Britain over the Oregon Country border. Shortly, after taking office, Mexico broke off
relations with the United States over the annexation of Texas. Polk declared war on
Mexico and sought to subvert Mexican authority in California. The United States
defeated Mexico; and the two nations signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in which
Mexico gave up any claims on Texas north of the Rio Grande River and ceded New
Mexico and California to the United States.
A42 • GLOSSARY

Pontiac’s Rebellion The Peace Treaty of 1763 gave the British all French land east of the Missis-
sippi River. This area included the territory of France’s Indian allies who were not con-
sulted about the transfer of their lands to British control. In an effort to recover their
autonomy, Indians captured British forts around the Great Lakes and in the Ohio Valley
as well as attacked settlements in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.

popular sovereignty Allowed settlers in a disputed territory to decide the slavery issue for
themselves.

Populist/People’s party Political success of Farmers’ Alliance candidates encouraged the for-
mation in 1892 of the People’s party (later renamed the Populist party); active until
1912, it advocated a variety of reform issues, including free coinage of silver, income
tax, postal savings, regulation of railroads, and direct election of U.S. senators.

Pottawatomie Massacre In retaliation for the “sack of Lawrence,” John Brown and his abolition-
ist cohorts hacked five men to death in the pro-slavery settlement of Pottawatomie, Kansas,
on May 24, 1856, triggering a guerrilla war in the Kansas Territory that cost 200 settler lives.

Chief Powhatan Wahunsonacock He was called Powhatan by the English after the name of his
tribe, and was the powerful, charismatic chief of numerous Algonquian-speaking towns
in eastern Virginia representing over 10,000 Indians.

pragmatism William James founded this philosophy in the early 1900s. Pragmatists believed
that ideas gained their validity not from their inherent truth, but from their social con-
sequences and practical application.

Proclamation of 1763 Royal directive issued after the French and Indian War prohibiting set-
tlement, surveys, and land grants west of the Appalachian Mountains; although it was
soon over-ridden by treaties, colonists continued to harbor resentment.

proprietary colonies A colony owned by an individual, rather than a joint-stock company.

pueblos The Spanish term for the adobe cliff dwellings of the indigenous people of the south-
western United States.

Pullman strike Strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company in the company town of Pull-
man, Illinois, on May 11, 1894, by the American Railway Union under Eugene V. Debs;
the strike was crushed by court injunctions and federal troops two months later.

Puritans English religious group that sought to purify the Church of England; founded the Mass-
achusetts Bay Colony under John Winthrop in 1630.

Quakers George Fox founded the Quaker religion in 1647. They rejected the use of formal
sacraments and ministry, refused to take oaths and embraced pacifism. Fleeing persecu-
tion, they settled and established the colony of Pennsylvania.

Radical Republicans Senators and congressmen who, strictly identifying the Civil War with
the abolitionist cause, sought swift emancipation of the slaves, punishment of the
rebels, and tight controls over the former Confederate states after the war.
 Glossary • A43

Raleigh’s Roanoke Island Colony English expedition of 117 settlers, including Virginia Dare,
the first English child born in the New World; colony disappeared from Roanoke Island
in the Outer Banks sometime between 1587 and 1590.

A. Philip Randolph (1889–1979) He was the head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
who planned a march on Washington D.C. to demand an end to racial discrimination in
the defense industries. To stop the march, Roosevelt administration negotiated an agree-
ment with the Randolph group. The demonstration would be called off and an executive
order would be issued that forbid discrimination in defense work and training programs
and set up the Fair Employment Practices Committee.

range wars In the late 1800s, conflicting claims over land and water rights triggered violent
disputes between farmers and ranchers in parts of the western United States.

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) In 1980, the former actor and governor of California was elected
president. In office, he reduced social spending, cut taxes, and increased defense spend-
ing. He was criticized for cutting important programs, such as housing and school
lunches and increasing the federal deficit. By 1983, prosperity had returned to America
and Reagan’s economic reforms appeared to be working, but in October of 1987 the
stock market crashed. Some blamed the federal debt, which had tripled in size since Rea-
gan had taken office. In the early 1980s, HIV/AIDS cases were beginning to be reported
in America, but the Reagan administration chose to do little about the growing epi-
demic. Reagan believed that most of the world’s problems came from the Soviet Union,
which he called the “evil empire.” In response, he conducted a major arms build up. Then
in 1987, he signed an arms-control treaty with the Soviet Union. He authorized covert
CIA operations in Central America. In 1986, the Iran-Contra scandal came to light
which revealed arms sales were being conducted with Iran in a partial exchange for the
release of hostages in Lebanon. The arms money was being used to aid the Contras.

Reaganomics Popular name for President Ronald Reagan’s philosophy of “supply side’’ eco-
nomics, which combined tax cuts, less government spending, and a balanced budget
with an unregulated marketplace.

Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) Federal program established in 1932 under Pres-
ident Herbert Hoover to loan money to banks and other institutions to help them avert
bankruptcy.

First Red Scare Fear among many Americans after the First World War of Communists in par-
ticular and noncitizens in general, a reaction to the Russian Revolution, mail bombs,
strikes, and riots.
redeemers In post–Civil War southern politics, redeemers were supporters of postwar Demo-
cratic leaders who supposedly saved the South from Yankee domination and the con-
straints of a purely rural economy.

Dr. Walter Reed (1851–1902) His work on yellow fever in Cuba led to the discovery that the
fever was carried by mosquitoes. This understanding helped develop more effective
controls of the worldwide disease.

Reform Darwinism A social philosophy that challenged the ruthlessness of Social Darwinism by
asserting that humans could actively shape the process of evolutionary social development
through cooperation and innovation.
A44 • GLOSSARY

Reformation European religious movement that challenged the Catholic Church and resulted
in the beginnings of Protestant Christianity. During this period, Catholics and Protes-
tants persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, and killed each other in large numbers.

reparations As a part of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was required to confess its responsi-
bility for the First World War and make payments to the victors for the entire expense
of the war. These two requirements created a deep bitterness among Germans.

Alexander Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures First Secretary of the Treasury Alexander

Hamilton’s 1791 analysis that accurately foretold the future of American industry and
proposed tariffs and subsidies to promote it.

Republicans First used during the early nineteenth century to describe supporters of a strict
interpretation of the Constitution, which they believed would safeguard individual
freedoms and states’ rights from the threats posed by a strong central government. The
idealist Republican vision of sustaing an agrarian-oriented union was developed largely
by Thomas Jefferson.

“return to normalcy” In the 1920 presidential election, Republican nominee Warren G. Hard-
ing campaigned on the promise of a “return to normalcy,” which would mean a return
to conservative values and a turning away from President Wilson’s internationalism.

Paul Revere (1735–1818) On the night of April 18, 1775, British soldiers marched towards
Concord to arrest American Revolutionary leaders and seize their depot of supplies.
Paul Revere famously rode through the night and raised the alarm about the approach-
ing British troops.

Roaring Twenties In 1920s, urban America experienced an era of social and intellectual revo-
lution. Young people experimented with new forms of recreation and sexuality as well
as embraced jazz music. Leading young urban intellectuals expressed a disdain for old-
fashioned rural and small-town values. The Eastern, urban cultural shift clashed with
conservative and insular midwestern America, which increased the tensions between
the two regions.

Jackie Robinson (1919–1972) In 1947, he became the first African American to play major
league baseball. He won over fans and players and stimulated the integration of other
professional sports.

rock-and-roll music Alan Freed, a disc jockey, noticed white teenagers were buying rhythm
and blues records that had been only purchased by African Americans and Hispanic
Americans. Freed began playing these records, but called them rock-and-roll records as
a way to overcome the racial barrier. As the popularity of the music genre increased, it
helped bridge the gap between “white” and “black” music.

John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) In 1870, he founded the Standard Oil Company of Ohio,
which was his first step in creating his vast oil empire. Eventually, he perfected the idea
of a holding company: a company that controlled other companies by holding all or at
least a majority of their stock. During his lifetime, he donated over $500 million in
charitable contributions.

Romanticism Philosophical, literary, and artistic movement of the nineteenth century that
was largely a reaction to the rationalism of the previous century; Romantics valued emo-
tion, mysticism, and individualism.
 Glossary • A45

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) She redefined the role of the presidential spouse and was the
first woman to address a national political convention, write a nationally syndicated col-
umn and hold regular press conferences. She travelled throughout the nation to promote
the New Deal, women’s causes, organized labor, and meet with African American leaders.
She was her husband’s liaison to liberal groups and brought women activists and
African American and labor leaders to the White House.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) Elected during the Great Depression, Roosevelt
sought to help struggling Americans through his New Deal programs that created
employment and social programs, such as Social Security. Prior to American’s entry into
the Second World War, he supported Britain’s fight against Germany through the lend-
lease program. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he declared war on Japan and Ger-
many and led the country through most of the Second World War before dying of
cerebral hemorrhage. In 1945, he met with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin at the
Yalta Conference to determine the shape of the post-war world.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) As the assistant secretary of the navy, he supported expan-
sionism, American imperialism and war with Spain. He led the First Volunteer Cavalry,
or Rough Riders, in Cuba during the war of 1898 and used the notoriety of this military
campaign for political gain. As President McKinley’s vice president, he succeeded
McKinley after his assassination. His forceful foreign policy became known as “big stick
diplomacy.” Domestically, his policies on natural resources helped start the conversa-
tion movement. Unable to win the Republican nomination for president in 1912, he
formed his own party of progressive Republicans called the “Bull Moose” party.
Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (1904) President Theodore Roosevelt
announced in what was essentially a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine that the United
States could intervene militarily to prevent interference from European powers in the
Western Hemisphere.

Rough Riders The First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, led in battle in the Spanish-American War by
Theodore Roosevelt; they were victorious in their only battle near Santiago, Cuba; and
Roosevelt used the notoriety to aid his political career.

Nicola Sacco (1891–1927) In 1920, he and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian immigrants who
were arrested for stealing $16,000 and killing a paymaster and his guard. Their trial
took place during a time of numerous bombings by anarchists and their judge was
openly prejudicial. Many liberals and radicals believe that the conviction of Sacco and
Vanzetti was based on their political ideas and ethnic origin rather than the evidence
against them.
“salutary neglect” Edward Burke’s description of Robert Walpole’s relaxed policy towards the
American colonies, which gave them greater independence in pursuing both their eco-
nomic and political interests.
Sandinista Cuban-sponsored government that came to power in Nicaragua after toppling a cor-
rupt dictator. The State Department believed that the Sandinistas were supplying the leftist
Salvadoran rebels with Cuban and Soviet arms. In response, the Reagan administration
ordered the CIA to train and supply guerrilla bands of anti-Communist Nicaraguans called
Contras. A cease-fire agreement between the Contras and Sandinistas was signed in 1988.
A46 • GLOSSARY

Margaret Sanger (1883–1966) As a birth-control activist, she worked to distribute birth con-
trol information to working-class women and opened the nation’s first family-planning
clinic in 1916. She organized the American Birth Control League, which eventually
changed its name to Planned Parenthood.
General Antonio López de Santa Anna (1794–1876) In 1834, he seized political power in
Mexico and became a dictator. In 1835, Texans rebelled against him and he led his army
to Texas to crush their rebellion. He captured the missionary called the Alamo and
killed all of its defenders, which inspired Texans to continue to resistance and Ameri-
cans to volunteer to fight for Texas. The Texans captured Santa Anna during a surprise
attack and he bought his freedom by signing a treaty recognizing Texas’s independence.
Saratoga, Battle of Major defeat of British general John Burgoyne and more than 5,000 British
troops at Saratoga, New York, on October 17, 1777.
scalawags White southern Republicans—some former Unionists—who served in Reconstruc-
tion governments.
Phyllis Schlafly (1924–) A right-wing Republican activist who spearheaded the anti-feminism
movement. She believed feminist were “anti-family, anti-children, and pro-abortion.”
She worked against the equal-rights amendment for women and civil rights protection
for gays.
Winfield Scott (1786–1866) During the Mexican War, he was the American general who cap-
tured Mexico City, which ended the war. Using his popularity from his military success,
he ran as a Whig party candidate for President.
Sears, Roebuck and Company By the end of the nineteenth century, this company dominated
the mail-order industry and helped create a truly national market. Its mail-order cata-
log and low prices allowed people living in rural areas and small towns to buy products
that were previously too expensive or available only to city dwellers.
secession Shortly after President Abraham Lincoln was elected, southern states began dissolv-
ing their ties with the United States because they believed Lincoln and the Republican
party were a threat to slavery.
second Bank of the United States In 1816, the second Bank of the United States was estab-
lished in order to bring stability to the national economy, serve as the depository for
national funds, and provide the government with the means of floating loans and
transferring money across the country.
Second Great Awakening Religious revival movement of the early decades of the nineteenth
century, in reaction to the growth of secularism and rationalist religion; began the pre-
dominance of the Baptist and Methodist churches.
Second New Deal To rescue his New Deal program form judicial and political challenges, Presi-
dent Roosevelt launched a second phase of the New Deal in 1935. He was able to con-
vince Congress to pass key pieces of legislation including the National Labor Relations
act and Social Security Act. Roosevelt called the latter the New Deal’s “supreme achieve-
ment” and pensioners started receiving monthly checks in 1940.
Seneca Falls Convention First women’s rights meeting and the genesis of the women’s suffrage
movement; held in July 1848 in a church in Seneca Falls, New York, by Elizabeth Cady
Stanton and Lucretia Coffin Mott.
 Glossary • A47

“separate but equal’’ Principle underlying legal racial segregation, which was upheld in Plessy
v. Ferguson (1896) and struck down in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

separation of powers The powers of government are split between three separate branches
(executive, legislative, and judicial) who check and balance each other.

September 11 On September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorists, who were members of al Qaeda ter-
rorist organization, hijacked four commercial airliners. Two were flown into the World
Trade Center and a third into the Pentagon. A fourth plane was brought down in
Shanksville, Pennsylvania, when its passengers attacked the cockpit. In response, Presi-
dent George W. Bush launched his “war on terrorism.” His administration assembled an
international coalition to fight terrorism, and they invaded Afghanistan after the coun-
try’s government would not turn over al Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden. However,
bin Laden evaded capture. Fearful of new attacks, Bush created the Office of Homeland
Security and the Transportation Security Administration. Bush and Congress passed
the U.S.A. Patriot Act, which allowed government agencies to try suspected terrorists in
secret military courts and eavesdrop on confidential conversations.

settlement houses Product of the late nineteenth-century movement to offer a broad array of
social services in urban immigrant neighborhoods; Chicago’s Hull House was one of
hundreds of settlement houses that operated by the early twentieth century.

Shakers Founded by Mother Ann Lee Stanley in England, the United Society of Believers in
Christ’s Second Appearing settled in Watervliet, New York, in 1774 and subsequently
established eighteen additional communes in the Northeast, Indiana, and Kentucky.

sharecropping Type of farm tenancy that developed after the Civil War in which landless
workers—often former slaves—farmed land in exchange for farm supplies and a share of
the crop; differed from tenancy in that the terms were generally less favorable.

Share-the-Wealth program Huey Long, a critic of President Roosevelt, offered this program
as an alternative to the New Deal. The program proposed to confiscate large personal
fortunes, which would be used to guarantee every poor family a cash grant of $5,000
and every worker an annual income of $2,500. Under this program, Long promised to
provide pensions, reduce working hours, pay veterans’ bonuses, and ensures a college
education to every qualified student.

Shays’s Rebellion Massachusetts farmer Daniel Shays and 1,200 compatriots, seeking debt
relief through issuance of paper currency and lower taxes, stormed the federal arsenal
at Springfield in the winter of 1787 but were quickly repulsed.

William T. Sherman’s “March to the Sea” Union General William T. Sherman believed that there
was a connection between the South’s economy, morale, and ability to wage war. During
his March through Georgia, he wanted to demoralize the civilian populace and destroy
the resources they needed to fight. His army seized food and livestock that the Confeder-
ate Army might have used as well as wrecked railroads and mills and burned plantations.

Sixteenth Amendment (1913) Legalized the federal income tax.

Alfred E. Smith (1873–1944) In the 1928 presidential election, he won the Democratic nomi-
nation, but failed to win the presidency. Rural voters distrusted him for being Catholic
and the son of Irish immigrants as well as his anti-Prohibition stance.
A48 • GLOSSARY

Captain John Smith (1580–1631) A swashbuckling soldier of fortune with rare powers of
leadership and self-promotion, he was appointed to the resident council to manage
Jamestown.

Joseph Smith (1805–1844) In 1823, he claimed that the Angel Moroni showed him the loca-
tion of several gold tablets on which the Book of Mormon was written. Using the Book
of Mormon as his gospel, he founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or
Mormons. Joseph and his followers upset non-Mormons living near them so they
began looking for a refuge from persecution. In 1839, they settled in Commerce, Illi-
nois, which they renamed Nauvoo. In 1844, Joseph and his brother were arrested and
jailed for ordering the destruction of a newspaper that opposed them. While in jail, an
anti-Mormon mob stormed the jail and killed both of them.

social Darwinism Application of Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection to society; used
the concept of the “survival of the fittest” to justify class distinctions and to explain poverty.

social gospel Preached by liberal Protestant clergymen in the late nineteenth and early twenti-
eth centuries; advocated the application of Christian principles to social problems gen-
erated by industrialization.

social justice An important part of the Progressive’s agenda, social justice sought to solve
social problems through reform and regulation. Methods used to bring about social
justice ranged from the founding of charities to the legislation of a ban on child labor.

Sons of Liberty Organized by Samuel Adams, they were colonialists with a militant view
against the British government’s control of the colonies.

Hernando de Soto (1500?–1542) A conquistador who explored the west coast of Florida, west-
ern North Carolina, and along the Arkansas river from 1539 till his death in 1542.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) Civil rights organization founded in

1957 by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders.

“southern strategy” This strategy was a major reason for Richard Nixon’s victory in the 1968
presidential election. To gain support in the South, Nixon assured southern conserva-
tives that he would slow the federal enforcement of civil rights laws and appoint pro-
southern justices to the Supreme Court. As president, Nixon fulfilled these promises.

Spanish flu Unprecedentedly lethal influenza epidemic of 1918 that killed more than 22 mil-
lion people worldwide.

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) As the first major proponent of social Darwinism, he argued
that human society and institutions are subject to the process of natural selection and
that society naturally evolves for the better. Therefore, he was against any form of gov-
ernment interference with the evolution of society, like business regulations, because it
would help the “unfit” to survive.

spirituals Songs, often encoded, which enslaved peoples used to express their frustration at
being kept in bondage and forged their own sense of hope and community.

spoils system The term—meaning the filling of federal government jobs with persons loyal to
the party of the president—originated in Andrew Jackson’s first term; the system was
replaced in the Progressive Era by civil service.
 Glossary • A49

stagflation During the Nixon administration, the economy experienced inflation and a reces-
sion at the same time, which is syndrome that defies the orthodox laws of economics.
Economists named this phenomenon “stagflation.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) The Bolshevik leader who succeeded Lenin as the leader of the
Soviet Union in 1924 and ruled the country until his death. During his totalitarian rule
of the Soviet Union, he used purges and a system of forced labor camps to maintain
control over the country. During the Yalta Conference, he claimed vast areas of Eastern
Europe for Soviet domination. After the end of the Second World War, the alliance
between the Soviet Union and the Western powers altered into the tension of the cold
war and Stalin erected the “iron curtain” between Eastern and Western Europe.

Stalwarts Conservative Republican party faction during the presidency of Rutherford B.

Hayes, 1877–1881; led by Senator Roscoe B. Conkling of New York, Stalwarts opposed
civil service reform and favored a third term for President Ulysses S. Grant.

Stamp Act Congress Twenty-seven delegates from nine of the colonies met from October 7 to
25, 1765 and wrote a Declaration of the Rights and Grievances of the Colonies, a peti-
tion to the King and a petition to Parliament for the repeal of the Stamp Act.

Standard Oil Company of Ohio John D. Rockefeller found this company in 1870, which grew
to monopolize 90 to 95 percent of all the oil refineries in the country. It was also a “ver-
tical monopoly” in that the company controlled all aspects of production and the ser-
vices it needed to conduct business. For example, Standard Oil produced their own oil
barrels and cans as well as owned their own pipelines, railroad tank cars, and oil-storage
facilities.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) She was a prominent reformer and advocate for the
rights of women, and she helped organize the Seneca Falls Convention to discuss
women’s rights. The convention was the first of its kind and produced the Declaration
of Sentiments, which proclaimed the equality of men and women.

staple crop, or cash crop A profitable market crop, such as cotton or tobacco.

Thaddeus Stevens (1792–1868) As one of the leaders of the Radical Republicans, he argued
that the former Confederate states should be viewed as conquered provinces, which
were subject to the demands of the conquerors. He believed that all of southern society
needed to be changed, and he supported the abolition of slavery and racial equality.

Adlai E. Stevenson (1900–1965) In the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections, he was the
Democratic nominee who lost to Dwight Eisenhower. He was also the U.S. Ambassador
to the United Nations and is remembered for his famous speech in 1962 before the UN
Security Council that unequivocally demonstrated that the Soviet Union had built
nuclear missile bases in Cuba.

Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars’’) Defense Department’s plan during the Reagan
administration to build a system to destroy incoming missiles in space.
Levi Strauss (1829–1902) A Jewish tailor who followed miners to California during the gold
rush and began making durable work pants that were later dubbed blue jeans or Levi’s.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) Major organization of the New Left, founded at the
University of Michigan in 1960 by Tom Hayden and Al Haber.
A50 • GLOSSARY

suburbia The postwar era witnessed a mass migration to the suburbs. As the population in
cities areas grew, people began to spread further out within the urban areas, which cre-
ated new suburban communities. By 1970 more people lived in the suburbs (76 mil-
lion) than in central cities (64 million).

Sunbelt The label for an arc that stretched from the Carolinas to California. During the post-
war era, much of the urban population growth occurred in this area.

the “surge” In early 2007, President Bush decided he would send a “surge” of new troops to
Iraq and implement a new strategy. U.S. forces would shift their focus from offensive
operations to the protection of Iraqi civilians from attacks by terrorist insurgents and
sectarian militias. While the “surge” reduced the violence in Iraq, Iraqi leaders were still
unable to develop a self-sustaining democracy.

Taliban A coalition of ultraconservative Islamists who rose to power in Afghanistan after the Sovi-
ets withdrew. The Taliban leaders gave Osama bin Laden a safe haven in their country in
exchange for aid in fighting the Northern Alliance, who were rebels opposed to the Taliban.
After September 11 terrorist attacks, the United States asked the Taliban to turn over bin
Laden. After they refused, America invaded Afghanistan, but bin Laden evaded capture.

Tammany Hall The “city machine” used by “Boss” Tweed to dominate politics in New York
City until his arrest in 1871.

Tariff of 1816 First true protective tariff, intended strictly to protect American goods against
foreign competition.

Tariff of 1832 This tariff act reduced the duties on many items, but the tariffs on cloth and
iron remained high. South Carolina nullified it along with the tariff of 1828. President
Andrew Jackson sent federal troops to the state and asked Congress to grant him the
authority to enforce the tariffs. Henry Clay presented a plan of gradually reducing the
tariffs until 1842, which Congress passed and ended the crisis.

Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) In 2008 President George W. Bush signed into law
the bank bailout fund called Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which required
the Treasury Department to spend $700 billion to keep banks and other financial
institutions from collapsing.

Zachary Taylor (1784–1850) During the Mexican War, he scored two quick victories against
Mexico, which made him very popular in America. President Polk chose him as the
commander in charge of the war. However, after he was not put in charge of the cam-
paign to capture Mexico City, he chose to return home. Later he used his popularity
from his military victories to be elected the president as a member of the Whig party.

Taylorism In his book The Principles of Scientific Management, Frederick W. Taylor explained a
management system that claimed to be able to reduce waste through the scientific
analysis of the labor process. This system called Taylorism, promised to find the opti-
mum technique for the average worker and establish detailed performance standards
for each job classification.
 Glossary • A51

Tea Party A decentralized, nationwide movement of limited-government conservatives that

emerged during the early twenty-first century. Its members sent thousands of tea bags
into congressional offices to draw a parallel between President Obama’s “tax-and-spend”
liberalism and the British tax policies that led to the famous Boston Tea Party of 1773.

Teapot Dome Harding administration scandal in which Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall
profited from secret leasing to private oil companies of government oil reserves at
Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and Elk Hills, California.

Tecumseh (1768–1813) He was a leader of the Shawnee tribe who tried to unite all Indians into
a confederation that could defend their hunting grounds. He believed that no land ces-
sions could be made without the consent of all the tribes since they held the land in com-
mon. His beliefs and leadership made him seem dangerous to the American government
and they waged war on him and his tribe. He was killed at the Battle of the Thames.

Tejanos Texas settlers of Spanish or Mexican descent.

Teller Amendment On April 20, 1898, a joint resolution of Congress declared Cuba indepen-
dent and demanded the withdrawal of Spanish forces. The Teller amendment was
added to this resolution, and it declaimed any designs the United States had on Cuban
territory.

Tenochtitlán The capital city of the Aztec Empire. The city was built on marshy islands on the
western side of Lake Tetzcoco, which is the site of present-day Mexico City.

Tet offensive Surprise attack by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese during the Vietnamese
New Year of 1968; turned American public opinion strongly against the war in Vietnam.

Thirteenth Amendment This amendment to the U.S. Constitution freed all slaves in the
United States. After the Civil War ended, the former confederate states were required to
ratify this amendment before they could be readmitted to the Union.

Gulf of Tonkin incident On August 2 and 4 of 1964, North Vietnamese vessels attacked two
American destroyers in Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam. President John-
son described the attacks as unprovoked. In reality, the U.S. ships were monitoring
South Vietnamese attacks on North Vietnamese islands that America advisors had
planned. The incident spurred the Tonkin Gulf resolution.

Tonkin Gulf resolution (1964) Passed by Congress in reaction to supposedly unprovoked

attacks on American warships off the coast of North Vietnam; it gave the president
unlimited authority to defend U.S. forces and members of SEATO.

Tories Term used by Patriots to refer to Loyalists, or colonists who supported the Crown after
the Declaration of Independence.

Trail of Tears Cherokees’ own term for their forced march, 1838–1839, from the southern
Appalachians to Indian lands (later Oklahoma); of 15,000 forced to march, 4,000 died
on the way.
Transcendentalism Philosophy of a small group of mid-nineteenth-century New England
writers and thinkers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Mar-
garet Fuller; they stressed “plain living and high thinking.”
A52 • GLOSSARY

Transcontinental railroad First line across the continent from Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacramento,
California, established in 1869 with the linkage of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific
railroads at Promontory, Utah.

triangular trade Means by which exports to one country or colony provided the means for
imports from another country or colony. For example, merchants from colonial New
England shipped rum to West Africa and used it to barter for slaves who were then
taken to the West Indies. The slaves were sold or traded for materials that the ships
brought back to New England including molasses which is need to make rum.

Treaty of Ghent The signing of this treaty in 1814 ended the War of 1812 without solving any of
the disputes between Britain and the United States.

Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) As President Roosevelt’s vice president, he succeeded him

after his death near the end of the Second World War. After the war, Truman wrestled
with the inflation of both prices and wages, and his attempts to bring them both under
control led to clashes with organized labor and Republicans. He did work with Con-
gress to pass the National Security Act, which made the Joint Chiefs of Staff a perma-
nent position and created the National Military Establishment and the Central
Intelligence Agency. He banned racial discrimination in the hiring of federal employ-
ees and ended racial segregation in the armed forces. In foreign affairs, he established
the Truman Doctrine to contain communism and the Marshall Plan to rebuild
Europe. After North Korea invaded South Korea, Truman sent the U.S. military to
defend South Korea under the command of General Douglas MacArthur. Later in the
war, Truman expressed his willingness to negotiate the restoration of prewar bound-
aries which MacArthur attempted to undermine. Truman fired MacArthur for his
open insubordination.

Truman Doctrine President Harry S. Truman’s program of post–Second World War aid to Euro-
pean countries—particularly Greece and Turkey—in danger of being undermined by
communism.

Sojourner Truth (1797?–1883) She was born into slavery, but New York State freed her in
1827. She spent the 1840s and 1850s travelling across the country and speaking to audi-
ences about her experiences as slave and asking them to support abolition and women’s
rights.

Harriet Tubman (1820–1913) She was born a slave, but escaped to the North. Then she
returned to the South nineteen times and guided 300 slaves to freedom.

Frederick Jackson Turner An influential historian who authored the “Frontier Thesis” in 1893,
arguing that the existence of an alluring frontier and the experience of persistent west-
ward expansion informed the nation’s democratic politics, unfettered economy, and
rugged individualism.

Nat Turner (1800–1831) He was the leader of the only slave revolt to get past the planning
stages. In August of 1831, the revolt began with the slaves killing the members of
Turner’s master’s household. Then they attacked other neighboring farmhouses and
recruited more slaves until the militia crushed the revolt. At least fifty-five whites were
killed during the uprising and seventeen slaves were hanged afterwards.
 Glossary • A53

Tuskegee Airmen During the Second World War, African Americans in the armed forces usu-
ally served in segregated units. African American pilots were trained at a separate flight
school in Tuskegee, Alabama, and were known as Tuskegee Airmen.

Mark Twain (1835–1910) Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in Missouri, he became a

popular humorous writer and lecturer and established himself as one of the great
American authors. Like other authors of the local-color movement, his stories
expressed the nostalgia people had for rural culture and old folkways as America
became increasingly urban. His two greatest books, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, drew heavily on his childhood in Missouri.

“Boss” Tweed (1823–1878) An infamous political boss in New York City, Tweed used his “city
machine,” the Tammany Hall ring, to rule, plunder and sometimes improve the city’s
government. His political domination of New York City ended with his arrest in 1871
and conviction in 1873.

Twenty-first Amendment (1933) Repealed prohibition on the manufacture, sale, and trans-
portation of alcoholic beverages, effectively nullifying the Eighteenth Amendment.

Underground Railroad Operating in the decades before the Civil War, the “railroad’’ was a
clandestine system of routes and safehouses through which slaves were led to freedom
in the North.

Unitarianism Late eighteenth-century liberal offshoot of the New England Congregationalist

church; Unitarianism professed the oneness of God and the goodness of rational man.

United Nations Security Council A major agency within the United Nations which remains in
permanent session and has the responsibility of maintaining international peace and secu-
rity. Originally, it consisted of five permanent members, (United States, Soviet Union,
Britain, France, and the Republic of China), and six members elected to two-year terms.
After 1965, the number of rotating members was increased to ten. In 1971, the Republic of
China was replaced with the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union was replaced
by the Russian Federation in 1991.

Unterseeboot (or U-boat) A military submarine operated by the German government in the
First World War, used to attack enemy merchant ships in war zone waters. The sinking of
the ocean liner Lusitania by a German submarine caused a public outcry in America,
which contributed to the demands to expand the United States’ military.

Utopian communities These communities flourished during the Jacksonian era and were
attempts to create the ideal community. They were social experiments conducted in rel-
ative isolation, so they had little impact on the world outside of their communities. In
most cases, the communities quickly ran out of steam and ended.

Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794–1877) In the 1860s, he consolidated several separate railroad com-
panies into one vast entity, New York Central Railroad.

Bartolomeo Vanzetti (1888–1927) In 1920, he and Nicola Sacco were Italian immigrants who
were arrested for stealing $16,000 and killing a paymaster and his guard. Their trial
A54 • GLOSSARY

took place during a time of numerous bombings by anarchists and their judge was
openly prejudicial. Many liberals and radicals believe that the conviction of Sacco and
Vanzetti was based on their political ideas and ethnic origin rather than the evidence
against them.

Amerigo Vespucci (1455–1512) Italian explorer who reached the New World in 1499 and was
the first to suggest that South America was a new continent. Afterward, European map-
makers used a variant of his first name, America, to label the New World.

Viet Cong In 1956, these guerrilla forces began attacking South Vietnam’s government and in
1960 the resistance groups coalesced as the National Liberation Front.

Vietnamization President Nixon’s policy of equipping and training the South Vietnamese so
that they could assume ground combat operations in the place of American soldiers.
Nixon hoped that a reduction in U.S. forces in Vietnam would defuse the anti-war
movement.

Vikings Norse people from Scandinavia who sailed to Newfoundland about A.D. 1001.

Francisco Pancho Villa (1877–1923) While the leader of one of the competing factions in the
Mexican civil war, he provoked the United States into intervening. He hoped attacking
the United States would help him build a reputation as an opponent of the United
States, which would increase his popularity and discredit Mexican President Carranza.

Virginia Company A joint stock enterprise that King James I chartered in 1606. The company
was to spread Christianity in the New World as well as find ways to make a profit in it.

Virginia Plan The delegations to the Constitutional Convention were divided between two
plans on how to structure the government: Virginia called for a strong central govern-
ment and a two-house legislature apportioned by population.

George Wallace (1919–1998) An outspoken defender of segregation. As the governor of

Alabama, he once attempted to block African American students from enrolling at the
University of Alabama. He ran as the presidential candidate for the American Indepen-
dent party in 1968. He appealed to voters who were concerned about rioting anti-war
protestors, the welfare system, and the growth of the federal government.

war hawks In 1811, congressional members from the southern and western districts who
clamored for a war to seize Canada and Florida were dubbed “war hawks.”

Warren Court The U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren, 1953–1969, decided
such landmark cases as Brown v. Board of Education (school desegregation), Baker v.
Carr (legislative redistricting), and Gideon v. Wainwright and Miranda v. Arizona
(rights of criminal defendants).

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) He founded a leading college for African Americans in

Tuskegee, Alabama, and become the foremost black educator in America by the 1890s.
He believed that the African American community should establish an economic base
for its advancement before striving for social equality. His critics charged that his phi-
losophy sacrificed educational and civil rights for dubious social acceptance and eco-
nomic opportunities.
 Glossary • A55

George Washington (1732–1799) In 1775, the Continental Congress named him the comman-
der in chief of the Continental Army. He had previously served as an officer in the French
and Indian War, but had never commanded a large unit. Initially, his army was poorly
supplied and inexperienced, which led to repeated defeats. Washington realized that he
could only defeat the British through wearing them down, and he implemented a strategy
of evasion and selective confrontations. Gradually, the army developed into an effective
force and, with the aid of the French, defeated the British. In 1787, he was the presiding
officer over the Constitutional Convention, but participated little in the debates. In 1789,
the Electoral College chose Washington to be the nation’s first president. He assembled a
cabinet of brilliant minds, which included Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and
Alexander Hamilton. Together, they would lay the foundations of American government
and capitalism. Washington faced the nation’s first foreign and domestic crises. In 1793,
the British and French were at war. Washington chose to keep America neutral in the
conflict even though France and the United States had signed a treaty of alliance. A year
later, the Whiskey Rebellion erupted in Pennsylvania, and Washington sent militiamen to
suppress the rebels. After two terms in office, Washington chose to step down; and the
power of the presidency was peacefully passed to John Adams.

Watergate Washington office and apartment complex that lent its name to the 1972–1974
scandal of the Nixon administration; when his knowledge of the break-in at the Water-
gate and subsequent cover-up was revealed, Nixon resigned the presidency under threat
of impeachment.

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) As a representative from New Hampshire, he led the New Federal-
ists in opposition to the moving of the second national bank from Boston to Philadelphia.
Later, he served as representative and a senator for Massachusetts and emerged as a cham-
pion of a stronger national government. He also switched from opposing to supporting
tariffs because New England had built up its manufactures with the understanding tariffs
would protect them from foreign competitors.

Webster-Ashburton Treaty Settlement in 1842 of U.S.–Canadian border disputes in Maine,

New York, Vermont, and in the Wisconsin Territory (now northern Minnesota).

Webster-Hayne debate U.S. Senate debate of January 1830 between Daniel Webster of Massa-
chusetts and Robert Hayne of South Carolina over nullification and states’ rights.

Ida B. Wells (1862–1931) After being denied a seat on a railroad car because she was black, she
became the first African American to file a suit against such discrimination. As a journal-
ist, she criticized Jim Crow laws, demanded that blacks have their voting rights restored
and crusaded against lynching. In 1909, she helped found the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
western front The military front that stretched from the English Channel through Belgium
and France to the Alps during the First World War.
Whig party Founded in 1834 to unite factions opposed to President Andrew Jackson, the party
favored federal responsibility for internal improvements; the party ceased to exist by
the late 1850s, when party members divided over the slavery issue.
Whigs Another name for revolutionary Patriots.
Whiskey Rebellion Violent protest by western Pennsylvania farmers against the federal excise
tax on corn whiskey, 1794.
A56 • GLOSSARY

Eli Whitney (1765–1825) He invented the cotton gin which could separate cotton from its
seeds. One machine operator could separate fifty times more cotton than worker could
by hand, which led to an increase in cotton production and prices. These increases gave
planters a new profitable use for slavery and a lucrative slave trade emerged from the
coastal South to the Southwest.

George Whitefield (1714–1770) A true catalyst of the Great Awakening, he sought to reignite
religious fervor in the American congregations. During his tour of the American
Colonies in 1739, he gave spellbinding sermons and preached the notion of “new
birth”—a sudden, emotional moment of conversion and salvation.

Wilderness Road Originally an Indian path through the Cumberland Gap, it was used by
over 300,000 settlers who migrated westward to Kentucky in the last quarter of the
eighteenth century.

Roger Williams (1603–1683) Puritan who believed that the purity of the church required a
complete separation between church and state and freedom from coercion in matters of
faith. In 1636, he established the town of Providence, the first permanent settlement in
Rhode Island and the first to allow religious freedom in America.

Wendell L. Willkie (1892–1944) In the 1940 presidential election, he was the Republican nom-
inee who ran against President Roosevelt. He supported aid to the Allies and criticized
the New Deal programs. Voters looked at the increasingly dangerous world situation
and chose to keep President Roosevelt in office for a third term.

Wilmot Proviso Proposal to prohibit slavery in any land acquired in the Mexican War, but
southern senators, led by John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, defeated the measure in
1846 and 1847.

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) In the 1912 presidential election, Woodrow Wilson ran under
the slogan of New Freedom, which promised to improve of the banking system, lower
tariffs, and break up monopolies. He sought to deliver on these promises through pas-
sage of the Underwood-Simmons Tariff, the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, and new anti-
trust laws. Though he was weak on implementing social change and showed a little
interest in the plight of African Americans, he did eventually support some labor
reform. At the beginning of the First World War, Wilson kept America neutral, but pro-
vided the Allies with credit for purchases of supplies. However, the sinking of U.S. mer-
chant ships and the news of Germany encouraging Mexico to attack America caused
Wilson to ask Congress to declare war on Germany. Following the war, Wilson sup-
ported the entry of America into the League of Nations and the ratification of the
Treaty of Versailles; but Congress would not approve the entry or ratification.

John Winthrop Puritan leader and Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony who resolved
to use the colony as a refuge for persecuted Puritans and as an instrument of building a
“wilderness Zion” in America.

Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Services (WAVES) During the Second World
War, the increased demand for labor shook up old prejudices about gender roles in
workplace and in the military. Nearly 200,000 women served in the Women’s Army
Corps or its naval equivalent, Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service
(WAVES).
 Glossary • A57

Women’s Army Corps (WAC) During the Second World War, the increased demand for labor
shook up old prejudices about gender roles in workplace and in the military. Nearly
200,000 women served in the Women’s Army Corps or its naval equivalent, Women
Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES).

Woodstock In 1969, roughly a half a million young people converged on a farm near Bethel,
New York, for a three-day music festival that was an expression of the flower children’s
free spirit.

Wounded Knee, Battle of Last incident of the Indians Wars took place in 1890 in the Dakota
Territory, where the U.S. Cavalry killed over 200 Sioux men, women, and children who
were in the process of surrender.

XYZ affair French foreign minister Tallyrand’s three anonymous agents demanded payments to
stop French plundering of American ships in 1797; refusal to pay the bribe led to two years of
sea war with France (1798–1800).

Yalta Conference Meeting of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin at a
Crimean resort to discuss the postwar world on February 4–11, 1945; Soviet leader
Joseph Stalin claimed large areas in eastern Europe for Soviet domination.

yellow journalism A type of journalism, epitomized in the 1890s by the newspaper empires of
William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, that intentionally manipulates public
opinion through sensational headlines about both real and invented events.

yeomen Small landowners (the majority of white families in the South) who farmed their own
land and usually did not own slaves.

surrender at Yorktown Last battle of the Revolutionary War; General Lord Charles Cornwallis
along with over 7,000 British troops surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia, on October 17,
1781.

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Following Joseph Smith’s death, he became the leader of the
Mormons and promised Illinois officials that the Mormons would leave the state. In
1846, he led the Mormons to Utah and settled near the Salt Lake. After the United States
gained Utah as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, he became the governor of the
territory and kept the Mormons virtually independent of federal authority.

youth culture The youth of the 1950s had more money and free time than any previous genera-
tion which allowed a distinct youth culture to emerge. A market emerged for products
and activities that were specifically for young people such as transistor radios, rock
records, Seventeen magazine, and Pat Boone movies.
THE DECLARATION OF
I N D E P E N D E N C E (1 7 7 6 )

APPENDIX
 THE DECLARATION OF
INDEPENDENCE (1776)

WHEN 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 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 orga-
nizing 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 accord-
ingly all experience hath shown, 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 suffer-
ance 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.

A61
A62 • APPENDIX

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 dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that
purpose obstructing the Laws of 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 of many cases, of the benefits 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
 The Declaration of Independence (1776) • A63

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 in vested
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 attention 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 circum-
stances 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 must have been
deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acqui-
esce 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
A64 • APPENDIX

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 Inde-
pendent 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.
The foregoing Declaration was, by order of Congress, engrossed, and
signed by the following members:

John Hancock
NEW HAMPSHIRE NEW JERSEY VIRGINIA
Josiah Bartlett Richard Stockton George Wythe
William Whipple John Witherspoon Richard Henry Lee
Matthew Thornton Francis Hopkinson Thomas Jefferson
John Hart Benjamin Harrison
MASSACHUSETTS BAY Abraham Clark Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Samuel Adams Francis Lightfoot Lee
John Adams PENNSYLVANIA Carter Braxton
Robert Treat Paine Robert Morris
Elbridge Gerry Benjamin Rush NORTH CAROLINA
Benjamin Franklin William Hooper
RHODE ISLAND John Morton Joseph Hewes
Stephen Hopkins George Clymer John Penn
William Ellery James Smith
George Taylor SOUTH CAROLINA
CONNECTICUT James Wilson Edward Rutledge
Roger Sherman George Ross Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Samuel Huntington Thomas Lynch, Jr.
William Williams DELAWARE Arthur Middleton
Oliver Wolcott Caesar Rodney
George Read GEORGIA
NEW YORK Thomas M’Kean Button Gwinnett
William Floyd Lyman Hall
Philip Livingston MARYLAND George Walton
Francis Lewis Samuel Chase
Lewis Morris William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll, of
Carrollton
 The Declaration of Independence (1776) • A65

Resolved, that copies of the declaration be sent to the several assemblies,

conventions, and committees, or councils of safety, and to the several com-
manding officers of the continental troops; that it be proclaimed in each of
the united states, at the head of the army.
 ARTICLES OF
CONFEDERATION (1778)

TO ALL TO WHOM these Presents shall come, we the undersigned Delegates of

the States affixed to our Names send greeting.

Whereas the Delegates of the United States of America in Congress

assembled did on the fifteenth day of November in the Year of our Lord One
Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy-seven, and in the Second Year of the
Independence of America agree to certain articles of Confederation and per-
petual Union between the States of Newhampshire, Massachusetts-bay,
Rhodeisland and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North-Carolina, South-Carolina
and Georgia in the Words following, viz.

Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the States of

Newhampshire, Massachusetts-bay, Rhodeisland and Providence Planta-
tions, Connecticut, New-York, New-Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Mary-
land, Virginia, North-Carolina, South-Carolina and Georgia.

ARTICLE I. The stile of this confederacy shall be “The United States of America.”

ARTICLE II. Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence,
and every power, jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation
expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.

ARTICLE III. The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friend-
ship with each other, for their common defence, the security of their liberties,
and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other,
against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on
account of religion, sovereignty, trade or any other pretence whatever.

A66
 Articles of Confederation (1778) • A67

ARTICLE IV. The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and inter-
course among the people of the different States in this Union, the free inhab-
itants of each of these States, paupers, vagabonds and fugitives from justice
excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in
the several States; and the people of each State shall have free ingress and
regress to and from any other State, and shall enjoy therein all the privileges
of trade and commerce, subject to the same duties, impositions and restric-
tions as the inhabitants thereof respectively, provided that such restrictions
shall not extend so far as to prevent the removal of property imported into
any State, to any other State of which the owner is an inhabitant; provided
also that no imposition, duties or restriction shall be laid by any State, on the
property of the United States, or either of them.
If any person guilty of, or charged with treason, felony, or other high mis-
demeanor in any State, shall flee from justice, and be found in any of the
United States, he shall upon demand of the Governor or Executive power,
of the State from which he fled, be delivered up and removed to the State
having jurisdiction of his offence.
Full faith and credit shall be given in each of these States to the records,
acts and judicial proceedings of the courts and magistrates of every other
State.

ARTICLE V. For the more convenient management of the general interests of

the United States, delegates shall be annually appointed in such manner as
the legislature of each State shall direct, to meet in Congress on the first
Monday in November, in every year, with a power reserved to each State, to
recall its delegates, or any of them, at any time within the year, and to send
others in their stead, for the remainder of the year.
No State shall be represented in Congress by less than two, nor by more
than seven members; and no person shall be capable of being a delegate for
more than three years in any term of six years; nor shall any person, being a
delegate, be capable of holding any office under the United States, for which
he, or another for his benefit receives any salary, fees or emolument of any
kind.
Each State shall maintain its own delegates in a meeting of the States, and
while they act as members of the committee of the States.
In determining questions in the United States, in Congress assembled,
each State shall have one vote.
Freedom of speech and debate in Congress shall not be impeached or
questioned in any court, or place out of Congress, and the members of Con-
gress shall be protected in their persons from arrests and imprisonments,
A68 • APPENDIX

during the time of their going to and from, and attendance on Congress,
except for treason, felony, or breach of the peace.

ARTICLE VI. No State without the consent of the United States in Congress
assembled, shall send any embassy to, or receive any embassy from, or enter
into any conference, agreement, alliance or treaty with any king, prince or state;
nor shall any person holding any office of profit or trust under the United
States, or any of them, accept of any present, emolument, office or title of any
kind whatever from any king, prince or foreign state; nor shall the United States
in Congress assembled, or any of them, grant any title of nobility.
No two or more States shall enter into any treaty, confederation or
alliance whatever between them, without the consent of the United States in
Congress assembled, specifying accurately the purposes for which the same
is to be entered into, and how long it shall continue.
No State shall lay any imposts or duties, which may interfere with any
stipulations in treaties, entered into by the United States in Congress assem-
bled, with any king, prince or state, in pursuance of any treaties already pro-
posed by Congress, to the courts of France and Spain.
No vessels of war shall be kept up in time of peace by any State, except such
number only, as shall be deemed necessary by the United States in Congress
assembled, for the defence of such State, or its trade; nor shall any body of
forces be kept up by any State, in time of peace, except such number only, as
in the judgment of the United States, in Congress assembled, shall be deemed
requisite to garrison the forts necessary for the defence of such State; but
every State shall always keep up a well regulated and disciplined militia, suffi-
ciently armed and accoutred, and shall provide and constantly have ready
for use, in public stores, a due number of field pieces and tents, and a proper
quantity of arms, ammunition and camp equipage.
No State shall engage in any war without the consent of the United States
in Congress assembled, unless such State be actually invaded by enemies, or
shall have received certain advice of a resolution being formed by some
nation of Indians to invade such State, and the danger is so imminent as not
to admit of a delay, till the United States in Congress assembled can be con-
sulted: nor shall any State grant commissions to any ships or vessels of war,
nor letters of marque or reprisal, except it be after a declaration of war by the
United States in Congress assembled, and then only against the kingdom or
state and the subjects thereof, against which war has been so declared, and
under such regulations as shall be established by the United States in Con-
gress assembled, unless such State be infested by pirates, in which case ves-
sels of war may be fitted out for that occasion, and kept so long as the danger
 Articles of Confederation (1778) • A69

shall continue, or until the United States in Congress assembled shall deter-
mine otherwise.

ARTICLE VII. When land-forces are raised by any State of the common
defence, all officers of or under the rank of colonel, shall be appointed by the
Legislature of each State respectively by whom such forces shall be raised, or
in such manner as such State shall direct, and all vacancies shall be filled up
by the State which first made the appointment.

ARTICLE VIII. All charges of war, and all other expenses that shall be incurred
for the common defence or general welfare, and allowed by the United States
in Congress assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which
shall be supplied by the several States, in proportion to the value of all land
within each State, granted to or surveyed for any person, as such land and
the buildings and improvements thereon shall be estimated according to
such mode as the United States in Congress assembled, shall from time to
time direct and appoint.
The taxes for paying that proportion shall be laid and levied by the
authority and direction of the Legislatures of the several States within the
time agreed upon by the United States in Congress assembled.

ARTICLE IX. The United States in Congress assembled, shall have the sole and
exclusive right and power of determining on peace and war, except in the cases
mentioned in the sixth article—of sending and receiving ambassadors—
entering into treaties and alliances, provided that no treaty of commerce shall
be made whereby the legislative power of the respective States shall be
restrained from imposing such imposts and duties on foreigners, as their own
people are subjected to, or from prohibiting the exportation or importation of
and species of goods or commodities whatsoever—of establishing rules for
deciding in all cases, what captures on land or water shall be legal, and in what
manner prizes taken by land or naval forces in the service of the United States
shall be divided or appropriated—of granting letters of marque and reprisal in
times of peace—appointing courts for the trial of piracies and felonies com-
mitted on the high seas and establishing courts for receiving and determining
finally appeals in all cases of captures, provided that no member of Congress
shall be appointed a judge of any of the said courts.
The United States in Congress assembled shall also be the last resort on
appeal in all disputes and differences now subsisting or that hereafter may
arise between two or more States concerning boundary, jurisdiction or any
other cause whatever; which authority shall always be exercised in the manner
A70 • APPENDIX

following. Whenever the legislative or executive authority or lawful agent of

any State in controversy with another shall present a petition to Congress,
stating the matter in question and praying for a hearing, notice thereof shall
be given by order of Congress to the legislative or executive authority of the
other State in controversy, and a day assigned for the appearance of the par-
ties by their lawful agents, who shall then be directed to appoint by joint
consent, commissioners or judges to constitute a court for hearing and
determining the matter in question: but if they cannot agree, Congress shall
name three persons out of each of the United States, and from the list of
such persons each party shall alternately strike out one, the petitioners
beginning, until the number shall be reduced to thirteen; and from that
number not less than seven, nor more than nine names as Congress shall
direct, shall in the presence of Congress be drawn out by lot, and the persons
whose names shall be so drawn or any five of them, shall be commissioners
or judges, to hear and finally determine the controversy, so always as a major
part of the judges who shall hear the cause shall agree in the determination:
and if either party shall neglect to attend at the day appointed, without
reasons, which Congress shall judge sufficient, or being present shall refuse
to strike, the Congress shall proceed to nominate three persons out of
each State, and the Secretary of Congress shall strike in behalf of such party
absent or refusing; and the judgment and sentence of the court to be
appointed, in the manner before prescribed, shall be final and conclusive;
and if any of the parties shall refuse to submit to the authority of such court,
or to appear or defend their claim or cause, the court shall nevertheless pro-
ceed to pronounce sentence, or judgment, which shall in like manner be
final and decisive, the judgment or sentence and other proceedings being in
either case transmitted to Congress, and lodged among the acts of Congress
for the security of the parties concerned: provided that every commissioner,
before he sits in judgment, shall take an oath to be administered by one of the
judges of the supreme or superior court of the State where the case shall be
tried, “well and truly to hear and determine the matter in question, according
to the best of his judgment, without favour, affection or hope of reward:”
provided also that no State shall be deprived of territory for the benefit of
the United States.
All controversies concerning the private right of soil claimed under differ-
ent grants of two or more States, whose jurisdiction as they may respect such
lands, and the states which passed such grants are adjusted, the said grants
or either of them being at the same time claimed to have originated
antecedent to such settlement of jurisdiction, shall on the petition of either
party to the Congress of the United States, be finally determined as near as
 Articles of Confederation (1778) • A71

may be in the same manner as is before prescribed for deciding disputes

respecting territorial jurisdiction between different States.
The United States in Congress assembled shall also have the sole and
exclusive right and power of regulating the alloy and value of coin struck by
their own authority, or by that of the respective States—fixing the standard
of weights and measures throughout the United States—regulating the trade
and managing all affairs with the Indians, not members of any of the States,
provided that the legislative right of any State within its own limits be not
infringed or violated—establishing and regulating post-offices from one
State to another, throughout all of the United States, and exacting such
postage on the papers passing thro’ the same as may be requisite to defray the
expenses of the said office—appointing all officers of the land forces, in the
service of the United States, excepting regimental officers—appointing all
the officers of the naval forces, and commissioning all officers whatever in
the service of the United States—making rules for the government and regu-
lation of the said land and naval forces, and directing their operations.
The United States in Congress assembled shall have authority to appoint a
committee, to sit in the recess of Congress, to be denominated “a Committee
of the States,” and to consist of one delegate from each State; and to appoint
such other committees and civil officers as may be necessary for managing
the general affairs of the United States under their direction—to appoint one
of their number to preside, provided that no person be allowed to serve in the
office of president more than one year in any term of three years; to ascertain
the necessary sums of money to be raised for the service of the United States,
and to appropriate and apply the same for defraying the public expenses—to
borrow money, or emit bills on the credit of the United States, transmitting
every half year to the respective States an account of the sums of money so
borrowed or emitted,—to build and equip a navy—to agree upon the num-
ber of land forces, and to make requisitions from each State for its quota, in
proportion to the number of white inhabitants in such State; which requisi-
tion shall be binding, and thereupon the Legislature of each State shall appoint
the regimental officers, raise the men and cloath, arm and equip them in a sol-
dier like manner, at the expense of the United States; and the officers and men
so cloathed, armed and equipped shall march to the place appointed, and
within the time agreed on by the United States in Congress assembled: but if
the United States in Congress assembled shall, on consideration of circum-
stances judge proper that any State should not raise men, or should raise a
smaller number of men than the quota thereof, such extra number shall be
raised, officered, cloathed, armed and equipped in the same manner as the
quota of such State, unless the legislature of such State shall judge that such
A72 • APPENDIX

extra number cannot be safely spared out of the same, in which case they
shall raise officer, cloath, arm and equip as many of such extra number as
they judge can be safely spared. And the officers and men so cloathed, armed
and equipped, shall march to the place appointed, and within the time
agreed on by the United States in Congress assembled.
The United States in Congress assembled shall never engage in a war, nor
grant letters of marque and reprisal in time of peace, nor enter into any
treaties or alliances, nor coin money, nor regulate the value thereof, nor
ascertain the sums and expenses necessary for the defence and welfare of the
United States, or any of them, nor emit bills, nor borrow money on the
credit of the United States, nor appropriate money, nor agree upon the num-
ber of vessels to be built or purchased, or the number of land or sea forces to
be raised, nor appoint a commander in chief of the army or navy, unless nine
States assent to the same: nor shall a question on any other point, except for
adjourning from day to day be determined, unless by the votes of a majority
of the United States in Congress assembled.
The Congress of the United States shall have power to adjourn to any time
within the year, and to any place within the United States, so that no period
of adjournment be for a longer duration than the space of six months, and
shall publish the journal of their proceedings monthly, except such parts
thereof relating to treaties, alliances or military operations, as in their judg-
ment require secresy; and the yeas and nays of the delegates of each State on
any question shall be entered on the Journal, when it is desired by any dele-
gate; and the delegates of a State, or any of them, at his or their request shall
be furnished with a transcript of the said journal, except such parts as are
above excepted, to lay before the Legislatures of the several States.

ARTICLE X. The committee of the States, or any nine of them, shall be autho-
rized to execute, in the recess of Congress, such of the powers of Congress as
the United States in Congress assembled, by the consent of nine States, shall
from time to time think expedient to vest them with; provided that no
power be delegated to the said committee, for the exercise of which, by the
articles of confederation, the voice of nine States in the Congress of the
United States assembled is requisite.

ARTICLE XI. Canada acceding to this confederation, and joining in the mea-
sures of the United States, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the
advantages of this Union: but no other colony shall be admitted into the
same, unless such admission be agreed to by nine States.
 Articles of Confederation (1778) • A73

ARTICLE XII. All bills of credit emitted, monies borrowed and debts con-
tracted by, or under the authority of Congress, before the assembling of the
United States, in pursuance of the present confederation, shall be deemed
and considered as a charge against the United States, for payment and satis-
faction whereof the said United States, and the public faith are hereby
solemnly pledged.

ARTICLE XIII. Every State shall abide by the determinations of the United
States in Congress assembled, on all questions which by this confederation
are submitted to them. And the articles of this confederation shall be invio-
lably observed by every State, and the Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any
alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alter-
ation be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards
confirmed by the Legislatures of every State.
And whereas it has pleased the Great Governor of the world to incline the
hearts of the Legislatures we respectively represent in Congress, to approve
of, and to authorize us to ratify the said articles of confederation and perpet-
ual union. Know ye that we the undersigned delegates, by virtue of the power
and authority to us given for that purpose, do by these presents, in the name
and in behalf of our respective constituents, fully and entirely ratify and con-
firm each and every of the said articles of confederation and perpetual union,
and all and singular the matters and things therein contained: and we do
further solemnly plight and engage the faith of our respective constituents,
that they shall abide by the determinations of the United States in Congress
assembled, on all questions, which by the said confederation are submitted to
them. And that the articles thereof shall be inviolably observed by the States
we respectively represent, and that the Union shall be perpetual.
In witness thereof we have hereunto set our hands in Congress. Done at
Philadelphia in the State of Pennsylvania the ninth day of July in the year of
our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-eight, and in the third
year of the independence of America.
 THE CONSTITUTION OF THE
UNITED STATES (1787)

WE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES, in order to form a more perfect

Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the com-
mon defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Lib-
erty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution
for the United States of America.

A RT I C L E . I .

Section. 1. All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress

of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Represen-
tatives.

Section. 2. The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members

chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors
in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most
numerous Branch of the State Legislature.
No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age
of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and
who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall
be chosen.
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several
States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective
Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free
Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding
Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration
shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of
the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such

A74
 The Constitution of The United States (1787) • A75

Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not
exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one
Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New
Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-
Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New
Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten,
North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.
When vacancies happen in the Representation from any state, the Execu-
tive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies.
The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Offi-
cers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.

Section. 3. The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators
from each State, chosen by the legislature thereof, for six Years; and each
Senator shall have one Vote.
Immediately after they shall be assembled in Consequence of the first
Election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three Classes. The
Seats of the Senators of the first Class shall be vacated at the Expiration of
the second Year, of the second Class at the Expiration of the fourth Year, and
of the third Class at the Expiration of the sixth Year, so that one third maybe
chosen every second Year; and if Vacancies happen by Resignation, or other-
wise, during the Recess of the Legislature of any State, the Executive thereof
may make temporary Appointments until the next Meeting of the Legisla-
ture, which shall then fill such Vacancies.
No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of
thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall
not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.
The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate,
but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.
The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tem-
pore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the
Office of President of the United States.
The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When
sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the
President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no
Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the
Members present.
Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to
removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of
honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall
A76 • APPENDIX

nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Pun-

ishment, according to Law.

Section. 4. The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators
and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature
thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regula-
tions, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such Meeting
shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by Law appoint a
different Day.

Section. 5. Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qual-
ifications of its own Members, and a Majority of each shall constitute a Quo-
rum to do Business; but a smaller Number may adjourn from day to day, and
may be authorized to compel the Attendance of absent Members, in such
Manner, and under such Penalties as each House may provide.
Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Mem-
bers for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel
a Member.
Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time
publish the same, excepting such Parts as may in their Judgment require
Secrecy; and the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on any ques-
tion shall, at the Desire of one fifth of those Present, be entered on the Journal.
Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Con-
sent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, not to any other Place
than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.

Section. 6. The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation

for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of
the United States. They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach
of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Ses-
sion of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the
same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be ques-
tioned in any other Place.
No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was
elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United
States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have
been encreased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under
the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance
in Office.
 The Constitution of The United States (1787) • A77

Section. 7. All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Repre-
sentatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on
other Bills.
Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the
Senate shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the
United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with
his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall
enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If
after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the
Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by
which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that
House, it shall become a Law. But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses
shall be determined by yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting
for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respec-
tively. If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sun-
days excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a
Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their
Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.
Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the Senate
and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of
Adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States; and
before the Same shall take Effect, shall be approved by him, or being disap-
proved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and House of
Representatives, according to the Rules and Limitations prescribed in the
Case of a Bill.

Section. 8. The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties,
Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence
and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises
shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several
States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the
subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the
Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and cur-
rent Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;
A78 • APPENDIX

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for lim-
ited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective
Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas,
and Offences against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules
concerning Captures on land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use
shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval
Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union,
suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for
governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the
United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the
Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline
prescribed by Congress.
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such
District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of Particular
States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government
of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased
by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for
the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful
Buildings;—And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into
Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Consti-
tution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or
Officer thereof.

Section. 9. The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States

now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Con-
gress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or
duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for
each Person.
The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless
when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
 The Constitution of The United States (1787) • A79

No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to

the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.
No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.
No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue
to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or
from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.
No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of
Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the
Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time
to time.
No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person
holding any Office of Profit or trust under them, shall, without the Consent
of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any
kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

Section 10. No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation;
grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make
any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any
Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Con-
tracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or
Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for
executing its inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and
Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the
Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revi-
sion and Controul of the Congress.
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Ton-
nage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agree-
ment or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in
War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit
of delay.

A RT I C L E . I I .

Section. 1. The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United

States of America. He shall hold his Office during the term of four Years,
and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected,
as follows:
A80 • APPENDIX

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may
direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and
Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no
Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit
under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for
two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same
State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted
for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and
certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United
States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate
shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all
the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having
the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a
Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more
than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes,
then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of
them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five
highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President.
But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Repre-
sentation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose
shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a
Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after
the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of
Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain
two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by
Ballot the Vice President.
The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the
Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same
throughout the United States.
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States,
at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the
Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who
shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years
a Resident within the United States.
In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death,
Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said
Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may
by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability,
both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then
 The Constitution of The United States (1787) • A81

act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be
removed, or a President shall be elected.
The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensa-
tion, which shall neither be encreased or diminished during the Period for
which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period
any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.
Before he enters on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following
Oath or Affirmation:—“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully
execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of
my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United
States.”

Section. 2. The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and

Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when
called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opin-
ion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Depart-
ments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices,
and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against
the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to
make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he
shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall
appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the
supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appoint-
ments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established
by Law; but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior
Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or
in the Heads of Departments.
The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen
during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire
at the End of their next Session.

Section. 3. He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the
State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as
he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions,
convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement
between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn
them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and
other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,
and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.
A82 • APPENDIX

Section. 4. The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United
States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction
of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

A RT I C L E . I I I .

Section. 1. The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one
supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time
to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior
Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behavior, and shall, at stated
Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be dimin-
ished during their Continuance in Office.

Section. 2. The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity,
arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties
made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;—to all Cases affecting
Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;—to all Cases of admi-
ralty and maritime Jurisdiction;—the Controversies to which the United
States shall be a Party;—to Controversies between two or more States;—
between a State and Citizens of another State;—between Citizens of differ-
ent States;—between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under
Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and
foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.
In all cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls,
and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have orig-
inal Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme
Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such
Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.
The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury;
and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have
been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be
at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.

Section. 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War
against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Wit-
nesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but
no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture
except during the Life of the Person attainted.
 The Constitution of The United States (1787) • A83

A R T I C L E . I V.

Section. 1. Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public
Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Con-
gress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records
and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.

Section. 2. The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and
Immunities of Citizens in the several States.
A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who
shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the
executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be
removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws
thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regu-
lation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be de-
livered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be
due.

Section. 3. New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but
no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other
State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts
of States, without the consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as
well as of the Congress.
The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful
Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belong-
ing to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so con-
strued as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular
States.

Section. 4. The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a
Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against
Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when
the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

A R T I C L E . V.

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary,
shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the
A84 • APPENDIX

Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for
proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents
and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures
of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths
thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the
Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year
One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first
and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State,
without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

A RT I C L E . V I .

All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of
this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Con-
stitution, as under the Confederation.
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made
in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under
the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land;
and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Con-
stitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members
of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of
the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirma-
tion, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as
a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

A RT I C L E . V I I .

The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the
Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same.
Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the
Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven
hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of
America the Twelfth. In witness thereof We have hereunto subscribed our
Names,

Go. WASHINGTON—Presdt.
and deputy from Virginia.
 The Constitution of The United States (1787) • A85

冦
John Langdon Geo: Read
New Hampshire 冦 Nicholas Gilman Gunning Bedford jun
Delaware John Dickinson
Nathaniel Gorham
Massachusetts 冦 Rufus King
Richard Bassett
Jaco: Broom
Wm Saml Johnson
冦 Roger Sherman James McHenry
冦
Connecticut
Maryland Dan of St Thos Jenifer
Danl Carroll
New York: . . . Alexander Hamilton
John Blair—
冦 James Madison Jr.
冦
Wil: Livingston Virginia
David A. Brearley.
New Jersey
Wm Paterson.

冦
Wm Blount
Jona: Dayton North Carolina Richd Dobbs Spaight.
Hu Williamson

冦
B Franklin
Thomas Mifflin

冦
J. Rutledge
Robt Morris Charles Cotesworth
Geo. Clymer South Carolina Pinckney
Pennsylvania
Thos FitzSimons Charles Pinckney
Jared Ingersoll Pierce Butler.
James Wilson
Gouv Morris William Few
Georgia 冦 Abr Baldwin
 AMENDMENTS TO THE
CONSTITUTION

ARTICLES IN ADDITION TO, and Amendment of the Constitution of the

United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the Legislatures
of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution.

AMENDMENT I.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or pro-

hibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of
the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition
the Government for a redress of grievances.

AMENDMENT II.

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

AMENDMENT III.

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the con-
sent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

A M E N D M E N T I V.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and

A86
 Amendments to the Constitution • A87

no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or

affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the
persons or things to be seized.

A M E N D M E N T V.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime,

unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases aris-
ing in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in
time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same
offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in
any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, lib-
erty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be
taken for public use, without just compensation.

AMENDMENT VI.

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

AMENDMENT VII.

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

AMENDMENT VIII.

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel
and unusual punishments inflicted.
A88 • APPENDIX

AMENDMENT IX.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be con-

strued to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

AMENDMENT X.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor pro-
hibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the
people. [The first ten amendments went into effect December 15, 1791.]

AMENDMENT XI.

The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to
any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the
United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any
Foreign State. [January 8, 1798.]

AMENDMENT XII.

The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for Pres-
ident and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of
the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person
voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-
President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as Presi-
dent, and of all persons voted for as Vice President, and of the number of
votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to
the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of
the Senate;—The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate
and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall
then be counted;—The person having the greatest number of votes for
President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole
number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then
from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list
of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose
immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the
votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one
vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from
 Amendments to the Constitution • A89

two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a
choice. And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President
whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth
day of March next following, then the Vice-President shall act as President, as
in the case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President.—
The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be
the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of
Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two
highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a
quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number
of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a
choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President
shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States. [September
25, 1804.]

AMENDMENT XIII.

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.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate
legislation. [December 18, 1865.]

A M E N D M E N T X I V.

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to
the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State
wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State
deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor
deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States

according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of per-
sons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at
any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the
United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial offi-
cers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any
of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and
A90 • APPENDIX

citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation
in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be
reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear
to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector

of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the
United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a
member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of
any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to sup-
port the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or
rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But
Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by
law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for ser-
vices in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But nei-
ther the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation
incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any
claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations
and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legisla-

tion, the provisions of this article. [July 28, 1868.]

A M E N D M E N T XV.

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—

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropri-
ate legislation.—[March 30, 1870.]

A M E N D M E N T XV I .

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes,
from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several
 Amendments to the Constitution • A91

States, and without regard to any census or enumeration. [February

25, 1913.]

A M E N D M E N T XV I I .

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two senators from
each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator
shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifi-
cations requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State
legislature.
When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate,
the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such
vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the exec-
utive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the
vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.
This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term
of any senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.
[May 31, 1913.]

A M E N D M E N T XV I I I .

After one year from the ratification of this article, the manufacture,
sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation
thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all terri-
tory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby
prohibited.
The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to
enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an
amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as
provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the sub-
mission thereof to the States by Congress. [January 29, 1919.]

AMENDMENT XIX.

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 sex.
A92 • APPENDIX

The Congress shall have power by appropriate legislation to enforce the

provisions of this article. [August 26, 1920.]

A M E N D M E N T XX .

Section 1. The terms of the President and Vice-President shall end at noon
on the twentieth day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representa-
tives at noon on the third day of January, of the years in which such terms
would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their
successors shall then begin.

Section 2. The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such
meeting shall begin at noon on the third day of January, unless they shall by
law appoint a different day.

Section 3. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President,
the President-elect shall have died, the Vice-President-elect shall become
President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for
the beginning of his term, or if the President-elect shall have failed to qual-
ify, then the Vice-President-elect shall act as President until a President shall
have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein
neither a President-elect nor a Vice-President-elect shall have qualified,
declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is
to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a Presi-
dent or Vice-President shall have qualified.

Section 4. The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of
the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President
whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case
of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice-
President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them.

Section 5. Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October fol-
lowing the ratification of this article.

Section 6. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an
amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the sev-
eral States within seven years from the date of its submission. [February 6, 1933.]
 Amendments to the Constitution • A93

A M E N D M E N T XX I .

Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the

United States is hereby repealed.

Section 2. The transportation or importation into any State, Territory or

possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating
liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.

Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as
an amendment to the Constitution by convention in the several States, as
provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the sub-
mission thereof to the States by the Congress. [December 5, 1933.]

A M E N D M E N T XX I I .

Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than
twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President,
for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected Pres-
ident shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this
Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this
Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who
may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term
within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of Presi-
dent or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

Section 2. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as
an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the
several states within seven years from the date of its submission to the States
by the Congress. [February 27, 1951.]

A M E N D M E N T XX I I I .

Section 1. The District constituting the seat of government of the United

States shall appoint in such manner as the Congress may direct:
A number of electors of President and Vice-President equal to the whole
number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District
would be entitled if it were a State, but in no event more than the least
A94 • APPENDIX

populous State; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the States, but
they shall be considered, for the purposes of the election of President and
Vice-President, to be electors appointed by a State; and they shall meet in
the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of
amendment.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appro-
priate legislation. [March 29, 1961.]

A M E N D M E N T XX I V.

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or
other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or
Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be
denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to
pay any poll tax or other tax.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropri-
ate legislation. [January 23, 1964.]

A M E N D M E N T XXV.

Section 1. In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death
or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

Section 2. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of Vice President, the

President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confir-
mation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

Section 3. Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of

the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written
declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,
and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such pow-
ers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.

Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal
officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may
 Amendments to the Constitution • A95

by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the
Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the
President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice
President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as
Acting President.
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of
the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written dec-
laration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his
office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers
of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law
provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Sen-
ate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration
that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.
Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight
hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one
days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in
session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble,
determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to
discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall con-
tinue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President
shall resume the powers and duties of his office. [February 10, 1967.]

A M E N D M E N T XXV I .

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of
age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or
by any State on account of age.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropri-
ate legislation [June 30, 1971.]

A M E N D M E N T XXV I I .

No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Rep-
resentatives shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have
intervened. [May 8, 1992.]
 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
A96
•

Number % of Elec- % Voter

of Popular Popular toral Partici-
Year States Candidates Parties Vote Vote Vote pation
APPENDIX

1789 11 GEORGE WASHINGTON No party 69

John Adams designations 34
Other candidates 35
1792 15 GEORGE WASHINGTON No party 132
John Adams designations 77
George Clinton 50
Other candidates 5
1796 16 JOHN ADAMS Federalist 71
Thomas Jefferson Democratic- 68
Republican
Thomas Pinckney Federalist 59
Aaron Burr Democratic- 30
Republican
Other candidates 48
1800 16 THOMAS JEFFERSON Democratic- 73
Republican
Aaron Burr Democratic- 73
Republican
John Adams Federalist 65
Charles C. Pinckney Federalist 64
John Jay Federalist 1
1804 17 THOMAS JEFFERSON Democratic- 162
Republican
Charles C. Pinckney Federalist 14
1808 17 JAMES MADISON Democratic- 122
Republican
Charles C. Pinckney Federalist 47
George Clinton Democratic- 6
Republican
1812 18 JAMES MADISON Democratic- 128
Republican
DeWitt Clinton Federalist 89
1816 19 JAMES MONROE Democratic- 183
Republican
Rufus King Federalist 34
1820 24 JAMES MONROE Democratic- 231
Republican
John Quincy Adams Independent 1
1824 24 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS Democratic- 108,740 30.5 84 26.9
Republican
Andrew Jackson Democratic- 153,544 43.1 99
Republican
Henry Clay Democratic- 47,136 13.2 37
Republican
William H. Crawford Democratic- 46,618 13.1 41
Republican
1828 24 ANDREW JACKSON Democratic 647,286 56.0 178 57.6
John Quincy Adams National- 508,064 44.0 83
Republican
Presidential Elections
A97 •
 A98

Number % of Elec- % Voter

•

of Popular Popular toral Partici-

Year States Candidates Parties Vote Vote Vote pation
1832 24 ANDREW JACKSON Democratic 688,242 54.5 219 55.4
A PPENDIX

Henry Clay National- 473,462 37.5 49

Republican
William Wirt Anti-Masonic 冦 101,051 8.0 7
John Floyd Democratic 11
1836 26 MARTIN VAN BUREN Democratic 765,483 50.9 170 57.8
William H. Harrison Whig 73
Hugh L. White Whig 739,795 49.1 26
Daniel Webster Whig 14
W. P. Mangum Whig 11
冦
1840 26 WILLIAM H. HARRISON Whig 1,274,624 53.1 234 80.2
Martin Van Buren Democratic 1,127,781 46.9 60
1844 26 JAMES K. POLK Democratic 1,338,464 49.6 170 78.9
Henry Clay Whig 1,300,097 48.1 105
James G. Birney Liberty 62,300 2.3
1848 30 ZACHARY TAYLOR Whig 1,360,967 47.4 163 72.7
Lewis Cass Democratic 1,222,342 42.5 127
Martin Van Buren Free Soil 291,263 10.1
1852 31 FRANKLIN PIERCE Democratic 1,601,117 50.9 254 69.6
Winfield Scott Whig 1,385,453 44.1 42
John P. Hale Free Soil 155,825 5.0
1856 31 JAMES BUCHANAN Democratic 1,832,955 45.3 174 78.9
John C. Frémont Republican 1,339,932 33.1 114
Millard Fillmore American 871,731 21.6 8
1860 33 ABRAHAM LINCOLN Republican 1,865,593 39.8 180 81.2
Stephen A. Douglas Democratic 1,382,713 29.5 12
John C. Breckinridge Democratic 848,356 18.1 72
John Bell Constitutional 592,906 12.6 39
Union
1864 36 ABRAHAM LINCOLN Republican 2,206,938 55.0 212 73.8
George B. McClellan Democratic 1,803,787 45.0 21
1868 37 ULYSSES S. GRANT Republican 3,013,421 52.7 214 78.1
Horatio Seymour Democratic 2,706,829 47.3 80
1872 37 ULYSSES S. GRANT Republican 3,596,745 55.6 286 71.3
Horace Greeley Democratic 2,843,446 43.9 66
1876 38 Rutherford B. Hayes Republican 4,036,572 48.0 185 81.8
Samuel J. Tilden Democratic 4,284,020 51.0 184
1880 38 JAMES A. GARFIELD Republican 4,453,295 48.5 214 79.4
Winfield S. Hancock Democratic 4,414,082 48.1 155
James B. Weaver Greenback- 308,578 3.4
Labor
1884 38 GROVER CLEVELAND Democratic 4,879,507 48.5 219 77.5
James G. Blaine Republican 4,850,293 48.2 182
Benjamin F. Butler Greenback- 175,370 1.8
Labor
John P. St. John Prohibition 150,369 1.5
1888 38 BENJAMIN HARRISON Republican 5,477,129 47.9 233 79.3
Grover Cleveland Democratic 5,537,857 48.6 168
Clinton B. Fisk Prohibition 249,506 2.2
Anson J. Streeter Union Labor 146,935 1.3
Presidential Elections
A99 •
 Number % of Elec- % Voter
A100
•

of Popular Popular toral Partici-

Year States Candidates Parties Vote Vote Vote pation
1892 44 GROVER CLEVELAND Democratic 5,555,426 46.1 277 74.7
A PPENDIX

Benjamin Harrison Republican 5,182,690 43.0 145

James B. Weaver People’s 1,029,846 8.5 22
John Bidwell Prohibition 264,133 2.2
1896 45 WILLIAM MCKINLEY Republican 7,102,246 51.1 271 79.3
William J. Bryan Democratic 6,492,559 47.7 176
1900 45 WILLIAM MCKINLEY Republican 7,218,491 51.7 292 73.2
William J. Bryan Democratic; 6,356,734 45.5 155
Populist
John C. Wooley Prohibition 208,914 1.5
1904 45 THEODORE ROOSEVELT Republican 7,628,461 57.4 336 65.2
Alton B. Parker Democratic 5,084,223 37.6 140
Eugene V. Debs Socialist 402,283 3.0
Silas C. Swallow Prohibition 258,536 1.9
1908 46 WILLIAM H. TAFT Republican 7,675,320 51.6 321 65.4
William J. Bryan Democratic 6,412,294 43.1 162
Eugene V. Debs Socialist 420,793 2.8
Eugene W. Chafin Prohibition 253,840 1.7
1912 48 WOODROW WILSON Democratic 6,296,547 41.9 435 58.8
Theodore Roosevelt Progressive 4,118,571 27.4 88
William H. Taft Republican 3,486,720 23.2 8
Eugene V. Debs Socialist 900,672 6.0
Eugene W. Chafin Prohibition 206,275 1.4
1916 48 WOODROW WILSON Democratic 9,127,695 49.4 277 61.6
Charles E. Hughes Republican 8,533,507 46.2 254
A. L. Benson Socialist 585,113 3.2
J. Frank Hanly Prohibition 220,506 1.2
1920 48 WARREN G. HARDING Republican 16,143,407 60.4 404 49.2
James M. Cox Democratic 9,130,328 34.2 127
Eugene V. Debs Socialist 919,799 3.4
P. P. Christensen Farmer-Labor 265,411 1.0
1924 48 CALVIN COOLIDGE Republican 15,718,211 54.0 382 48.9
John W. Davis Democratic 8,385,283 28.8 136
Robert M. La Follette Progressive 4,831,289 16.6 13
1928 48 HERBERT C. HOOVER Republican 21,391,993 58.2 444 56.9
Alfred E. Smith Democratic 15,016,169 40.9 87
1932 48 FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT Democratic 22,809,638 57.4 472 56.9
Herbert C. Hoover Republican 15,758,901 39.7 59
Norman Thomas Socialist 881,951 2.2
1936 48 FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT Democratic 27,752,869 60.8 523 61.0
Alfred M. Landon Republican 16,674,665 36.5 8
William Lemke Union 882,479 1.9
1940 48 FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT Democratic 27,307,819 54.8 449 62.5
Wendell L. Willkie Republican 22,321,018 44.8 82
1944 48 FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT Democratic 25,606,585 53.5 432 55.9
Thomas E. Dewey Republican 22,014,745 46.0 99
Presidential Elections
A101 •
 Number % of Elec- % Voter
A102
•

of Popular Popular toral Partici-

Year States Candidates Parties Vote Vote Vote pation
1948 48 HARRY S. TRUMAN Democratic 24,179,345 49.6 303 53.0
A PPENDIX

Thomas E. Dewey Republican 21,991,291 45.1 189

J. Strom Thurmond States’ Rights 1,176,125 2.4 39
Henry A. Wallace Progressive 1,157,326 2.4
1952 48 DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER Republican 33,936,234 55.1 442 63.3
Adlai E. Stevenson Democratic 27,314,992 44.4 89
1956 48 DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER Republican 35,590,472 57.6 457 60.6
Adlai E. Stevenson Democratic 26,022,752 42.1 73
1960 50 JOHN F. KENNEDY Democratic 34,226,731 49.7 303 62.8
Richard M. Nixon Republican 34,108,157 49.5 219
1964 50 LYNDON B. JOHNSON Democratic 43,129,566 61.1 486 61.9
Barry M. Goldwater Republican 27,178,188 38.5 52
1968 50 RICHARD M. NIXON Republican 31,785,480 43.4 301 60.9
Hubert H. Humphrey Democratic 31,275,166 42.7 191
George C. Wallace American 9,906,473 13.5 46
Independent
1972 50 RICHARD M. NIXON Republican 47,169,911 60.7 520 55.2
George S. McGovern Democratic 29,170,383 37.5 17
John G. Schmitz American 1,099,482 1.4
1976 50 JIMMY CARTER Democratic 40,830,763 50.1 297 53.5
Gerald R. Ford Republican 39,147,793 48.0 240
1980 50 RONALD REAGAN Republican 43,901,812 50.7 489 52.6
Jimmy Carter Democratic 35,483,820 41.0 49
John B. Anderson Independent 5,719,437 6.6
Ed Clark Libertarian 921,188 1.1
1984 50 RONALD REAGAN Republican 54,451,521 58.8 525 53.1
Walter F. Mondale Democratic 37,565,334 40.6 13
1988 50 GEORGE H. W. BUSH Republican 47,917,341 53.4 426 50.1
Michael Dukakis Democratic 41,013,030 45.6 111
1992 50 BILL CLINTON Democratic 44,908,254 43.0 370 55.0
George H. W. Bush Republican 39,102,343 37.4 168
H. Ross Perot Independent 19,741,065 18.9
1996 50 BILL CLINTON Democratic 47,401,185 49.0 379 49.0
Bob Dole Republican 39,197,469 41.0 159
H. Ross Perot Independent 8,085,295 8.0
2000 50 GEORGE W. BUSH Republican 50,455,156 47.9 271 50.4
Al Gore Democrat 50,997,335 48.4 266
Ralph Nader Green 2,882,897 2.7
2004 50 GEORGE W. BUSH Republican 62,040,610 50.7 286 60.7
John F. Kerry Democrat 59,028,444 48.3 251
2008 50 BARACK OBAMA Democrat 69,456,897 52.92% 365 63.0
John McCain Republican 59,934,814 45.66% 173
Presidential Elections

Candidates receiving less than 1 percent of the popular vote have been omitted. Thus the percentage of popular vote given for any election year may not total
•

100 percent.
Before the passage of the Twelfth Amendment in 1804, the electoral college voted for two presidential candidates; the runner-up became vice president.
A103
 ADMISSION OF STATES
A104
•

Order of Date of Order of Date of

Admission State Admission Admission State Admission
1 Delaware December 7, 1787 26 Michigan January 26, 1837
A PPENDIX

2 Pennsylvania December 12, 1787 27 Florida March 3, 1845

3 New Jersey December 18, 1787 28 Texas December 29, 1845
4 Georgia January 2, 1788 29 Iowa December 28, 1846
5 Connecticut January 9, 1788 30 Wisconsin May 29, 1848
6 Massachusetts February 7, 1788 31 California September 9, 1850
7 Maryland April 28, 1788 32 Minnesota May 11, 1858
8 South Carolina May 23, 1788 33 Oregon February 14, 1859
9 New Hampshire June 21, 1788 34 Kansas January 29, 1861
10 Virginia June 25, 1788 35 West Virginia June 30, 1863
11 New York July 26, 1788 36 Nevada October 31, 1864
12 North Carolina November 21, 1789 37 Nebraska March 1, 1867
13 Rhode Island May 29, 1790 38 Colorado August 1, 1876
14 Vermont March 4, 1791 39 North Dakota November 2, 1889
15 Kentucky June 1, 1792 40 South Dakota November 2, 1889
16 Tennessee June 1, 1796 41 Montana November 8, 1889
17 Ohio March 1, 1803 42 Washington November 11, 1889
18 Louisiana April 30, 1812 43 Idaho July 3, 1890
19 Indiana December 11, 1816 44 Wyoming July 10, 1890
20 Mississippi December 10, 1817 45 Utah January 4, 1896
21 Illinois December 3, 1818 46 Oklahoma November 16, 1907
22 Alabama December 14, 1819 47 New Mexico January 6, 1912
23 Maine March 15, 1820 48 Arizona February 14, 1912
24 Missouri August 10, 1821 49 Alaska January 3, 1959
25 Arkansas June 15, 1836 50 Hawaii August 21, 1959
 Population of the United States • A105

POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES

Number Population
of % per Square
Year States Population Increase Mile
1790 13 3,929,214 4.5
1800 16 5,308,483 35.1 6.1
1810 17 7,239,881 36.4 4.3
1820 23 9,638,453 33.1 5.5
1830 24 12,866,020 33.5 7.4
1840 26 17,069,453 32.7 9.8
1850 31 23,191,876 35.9 7.9
1860 33 31,443,321 35.6 10.6
1870 37 39,818,449 26.6 13.4
1880 38 50,155,783 26.0 16.9
1890 44 62,947,714 25.5 21.1
1900 45 75,994,575 20.7 25.6
1910 46 91,972,266 21.0 31.0
1920 48 105,710,620 14.9 35.6
1930 48 122,775,046 16.1 41.2
1940 48 131,669,275 7.2 44.2
1950 48 150,697,361 14.5 50.7
1960 50 179,323,175 19.0 50.6
1970 50 203,235,298 13.3 57.5
1980 50 226,504,825 11.4 64.0
1985 50 237,839,000 5.0 67.2
1990 50 250,122,000 5.2 70.6
1995 50 263,411,707 5.3 74.4
2000 50 281,421,906 6.8 77.0
2005 50 296,410,404 5.3 77.9
2010 50 308,745,538 9.7 87.4
 IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES, FISCAL YEARS 1820–2011
A106
•

Year Number Year Number Year Number Year Number

1820–1989 .................... 55,457,531 1871–80 .......................... 2,812,191 1921–30 .......................... 4,107,209 1971–80 .......................... 4,493,314
1871 ............................ 321,350 1921 ............................ 805,228 1971 ............................ 370,478
1820 ............................ 8,385 1872 ............................ 404,806 1922 ............................ 309,556 1972 ............................ 384,685
A PPENDIX

1873 ............................ 459,803 1923 ............................ 522,919 1973 ............................ 400,063

1821–30 ........................ 143,439 1874 ............................ 313,339 1924 ............................ 706,896 1974 ............................ 394,861
1821 ............................ 9,127 1875 ............................ 227,498 1925 ............................ 294,314 1975 ............................ 386,914
1822 ............................ 6,911 1876 ............................ 169,986 1926 ............................ 304,488 1976 ............................ 398,613
1823 ............................ 6,354 1877 ............................ 141,857 1927 ............................ 335,175 1976 ............................ 103,676
1824 ............................ 7,912 1878 ............................ 138,469 1928 ............................ 307,255 1977 ............................ 462,315
1825 ............................ 10,199 1879 ............................ 177,826 1929 ............................ 279,678 1978 ............................ 601,442
1826 ............................ 10,837 1880 ............................ 457,257 1930 ............................ 241,700 1979 ............................ 460,348
1827 ............................ 18,875 1980 ............................ 530,639
1828 ............................ 27,382 1881–90 .......................... 5,246,613 1931–40 .......................... 528,431
1829 ............................ 22,520 1881 ............................ 669,431 1931 ............................ 97,139 1981–90 .......................... 7,338,062
1830 ............................ 23,322 1882 ............................ 788,992 1932 ............................ 35,576 1981 ............................ 596,600
1883 ............................ 603,322 1933 ............................ 23,068 1982 ............................ 594,131
1831–40 ........................ 599,125 1884 ............................ 518,592 1934 ............................ 29,470 1983 ............................ 559,763
1831 ............................ 22,633 1885 ............................ 395,346 1935 ............................ 34,956 1984 ............................ 543,903
1832 ............................ 60,482 1886 ............................ 334,203 1936 ............................ 36,329 1985 ............................ 570,009
1833 ............................ 58,640 1887 ............................ 490,109 1937 ............................ 50,244 1986 ............................ 601,708
1834 ............................ 65,365 1888 ............................ 546,889 1938 ............................ 67,895 1987 ............................ 601,516
1835 ............................ 45,374 1889 ............................ 444,427 1939 ............................ 82,998 1988 ............................ 643,025
1836 ............................ 76,242 1890 ............................ 455,302 1940 ............................ 70,756 1989 ............................ 1,090,924
1837 ............................ 79,340 1990 ............................ 1,536,483
1838 ............................ 38,914 1891–1900 ...................... 3,687,564 1941–50 .......................... 1,035,039
1839 ............................ 68,069 1891 ............................ 560,319 1941 ............................ 51,776 1991–2000 ...................... 9,090,857
1840 ............................ 84,066 1892 ............................ 579,663 1942 ............................ 28,781 1991 ............................ 1,827,167
1893 ............................ 439,730 1943 ............................ 23,725 1992 ............................ 973,977
1841–50 ........................ 1,713,251 1894 ............................ 285,631 1944 ............................ 28,551 1993 ............................ 904,292
1841 ............................ 80,289 1895 ............................ 258,536 1945 ............................ 38,119 1994 ............................ 804,416
1842 ............................ 104,565 1896 ............................ 343,267 1946 ............................ 108,721
 1843 ............................ 52,496 1897 ............................ 230,832 1947 ............................ 147,292 1995 ............................ 720,461
1844 ............................ 78,615 1898 ............................ 229,299 1948 ............................ 170,570 1996 ............................ 915,900
1845 ............................ 114,371 1899 ............................ 311,715 1949 ............................ 188,317 1997 ............................ 798,378
1846 ............................ 154,416 1900 ............................ 448,572 1950 ............................ 249,187 1998 ............................ 660,477
1847 ............................ 234,968 1999 ............................ 644,787
1848 ............................ 226,527 1901–10 .......................... 8,795,386 1951–60 .......................... 2,515,479 2000 ............................ 841,002
1849 ............................ 297,024 1901 ............................ 487,918 1951 ............................ 205,717 2001–10 ........................... 10,501,053
1850 ............................ 369,980 1902 ............................ 648,743 1952 ............................ 265,520 2001 ............................ 1,058,902
1903 ............................ 857,046 1953 ............................ 170,434 2002 ............................ 1,059,356
1851–60 ........................ 2,598,214 1904 ............................ 812,870 1954 ............................ 208,177 2003 ............................ 705,827
1851 ............................ 379,466 1905 ............................ 1,026,499 1955 ............................ 237,790 2004 ............................ 957,883
1852 ............................ 371,603 1906 ............................ 1,100,735 1956 ............................ 321,625 2005 ............................ 1,122,373
1853 ............................ 368,645 1907 ............................ 1,285,349 1957 ............................ 326,867 2006 ............................ 1,266,129
1854 ............................ 427,833 1908 ............................ 782,870 1958 ............................ 253,265 2007 ............................ 1,052,415
1855 ............................ 200,877 1909 ............................ 751,786 1959 ............................ 260,686 2008 ............................ 1,107,126
1856 ............................ 200,436 1910 ............................ 1,041,570 1960 ............................ 265,398 2009 ............................ 1,130,818
1857 ............................ 251,306 2010 ............................ 1,042,625
1858 ............................ 123,126 1911–20 .......................... 5,735,811 1961–70 .......................... 3,321,677 2011 ............................ 1,062,040
1859 ............................ 121,282 1911 ............................ 878,587 1961 ............................ 271,344
1860 ............................ 153,640 1912 ............................ 838,172 1962 ............................ 283,763
1913 ............................ 1,197,892 1963 ............................ 306,260
1861–70 ........................ 2,314,824 1914 ............................ 1,218,480 1964 ............................ 292,248
1861 ............................ 91,918 1915 ............................ 326,700 1965 ............................ 296,697
1862 ............................ 91,985 1916 ............................ 298,826 1966 ............................ 323,040
1863 ............................ 176,282 1917 ............................ 295,403 1967 ............................ 361,972
1864 ............................ 193,418 1918 ............................ 110,618 1968 ............................ 454,448
1865 ............................ 248,120 1919 ............................ 141,132 1969 ............................ 358,579
1866 ............................ 318,568 1920 ............................ 430,001 1970 ............................ 373,326
1867 ............................ 315,722
1868 ............................ 138,840
1869 ............................ 352,768
1870 ............................ 387,203
Immigration to the United States, Fiscal Years 1820–2011
•

Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

A107
 IMMIGRATION BY REGION AND SELECTED COUNTRY OF LAST RESIDENCE, FISCAL YEARS 1820–2011

A108
Region and country
of last residence 1820 to 1829 1830 to 1839 1840 to 1849 1850 to 1859 1860 to 1869 1870 to 1879 1880 to 1889 1890 to 1899

Total 128,502 538,381 1,427,337 2,814,554 2,081,261 2,742,137 5,248,568 3,694,294

Europe 99,272 422,771 1,369,259 2,619,680 1,877,726 2,251,878 4,638,677 3,576,411
Austria-Hungary — — — — 3,375 60,127 314,787 534,059
Austria — — — — 2,700 54,529 204,805 268,218
Hungary — — — — 483 5,598 109,982 203,350
Belgium 28 20 3,996 5,765 5,785 6,991 18,738 19,642
Bulgaria — — — — — — — 52
Czechoslovakia — — — — — — — —
Denmark 173 927 671 3,227 13,553 29,278 85,342 56,671
Finland — — — — — — — —
France 7,694 39,330 75,300 81,778 35,938 71,901 48,193 35,616
Germany 5,753 124,726 385,434 976,072 723,734 751,769 1,445,181 579,072
Greece 17 49 17 32 51 209 1,807 12,732
Ireland 51,617 170,672 656,145 1,029,486 427,419 422,264 674,061 405,710
Italy 430 2,225 1,476 8,643 9,853 46,296 267,660 603,761
Netherlands 1,105 1,377 7,624 11,122 8,387 14,267 52,715 29,349
Norway-Sweden 91 1,149 12,389 22,202 82,937 178,823 586,441 334,058
Norway — — — — 16,068 88,644 185,111 96,810
Sweden — — — — 24,224 90,179 401,330 237,248
Poland 19 366 105 1,087 1,886 11,016 42,910 107,793
Portugal 177 820 196 1,299 2,083 13,971 15,186 25,874
Romania — — — — — — 5,842 6,808
Russia 86 280 520 423 1,670 35,177 182,698 450,101
Spain 2,595 2,010 1,916 8,795 6,966 5,540 3,995 9,189
Switzerland 3,148 4,430 4,819 24,423 21,124 25,212 81,151 37,020
United Kingdom 26,336 74,350 218,572 445,322 532,956 578,447 810,900 328,759
Yugoslavia — — — — — — — —
Other Europe 3 40 79 4 9 590 1,070 145
 Asia 34 55 121 36,080 54,408 134,128 71,151 61,285
China 3 8 32 35,933 54,028 133,139 65,797 15,268
Hong Kong — — — — — — — 102
India 9 38 33 42 50 166 247 102
Iran — — — — — — — —
Israel — — — — — — — —
Japan — — — — 138 193 1,583 13,998
Jordan — — — — — — — —
Korea — — — — — — — —
Philippines — — — — — — — —
Syria — — — — — — — —
Taiwan — — — — — — — —
Turkey 19 8 45 94 129 382 2,478 27,510
Vietnam — — — — — — — —
Other Asia 3 1 11 11 63 248 1,046 4,407
America 9,655 31,905 50,516 84,145 130,292 345,010 524,826 37,350
Canada and Newfoundland 2,297 11,875 34,285 64,171 117,978 324,310 492,865 3,098
Mexico 3,835 7,187 3,069 3,446 1,957 5,133 2,405 734
Caribbean 3,061 11,792 11,803 12,447 8,751 14,285 27,323 31,480
Cuba — — — — — — — —
Dominican Republic — — — — — — — —
Haiti — — — — — — — —
Jamaica — — — — — — — —
Other Caribbean 3,061 11,792 11,803 12,447 8,751 14,285 27,323 31,480
Central America 57 94 297 512 70 173 279 649
Belize — — — — — — — —
Costa Rica — — — — — — — —
EI Salvador — — — — — — — —
Guatemala — — — — — — — —
Honduras — — — — — — — —
Nicaragua — — — — — — — —
Panama — — — — — — — —
Other Central America 57 94 297 512 70 173 279 649
South America 405 957 1,062 3,569 1,536 1,109 1,954 1,389
Argentina — — — — — — — —
Bolivia — — — — — — — —

A109
 Region and country

A110
of last residence 1820 to 1829 1830 to 1839 1840 to 1849 1850 to 1859 1860 to 1869 1870 to 1879 1880 to 1889 1890 to 1899

Brazil — — — — — — — —
Chile — — — — — — — —
Colombia — — — — — — — —
Ecuador — — — — — — — —
Guyana — — — — — — — —
Paraguay — — — — — — — —
Peru — — — — — — — —
Suriname — — — — — — — —
Uruguay — — — — — — — —
Venezuela — — — — — — — —
Other South America 405 957 1,062 3,569 1,536 1,109 1,954 1,389
Other America — — — — — — — —
Africa 15 50 61 84 407 371 763 432
Egypt — — — — 4 29 145 51
Ethiopia — — — — — — — —
Liberia 1 8 5 7 43 52 21 9
Morocco — — — — — — — —
South Africa — — — — 35 48 23 9
Other Africa 14 42 56 77 325 242 574 363
Oceania 3 7 14 166 187 9,996 12,361 4,704
Australia 2 1 2 15 — 8,930 7,250 3,098
New Zealand — — — — — 39 21 12
Other Oceania 1 6 12 151 187 1,027 5,090 1,594
Not Specified 19,523 83,593 7,366 74,399 18,241 754 790 14,112
 Total 8,202,388 6,347,380 4,295,510 699,375 856,608 2,499,268 3,213,749 6,244,379
Europe 7,572,569 4,985,411 2,560,340 444,399 472,524 1,404,973 1,133,443 668,866
Austria-Hungary 2,001,376 1,154,727 60,891 12,531 13,574 113,015 27,590 20,437
Austria 532,416 589,174 31,392 5,307 8,393 81,354 17,571 15,374
Hungary 685,567 565,553 29,499 7,224 5,181 31,661 10,019 5,063
Belgium 37,429 32,574 21,511 4,013 12,473 18,885 9,647 7,028
Bulgaria 34,651 27,180 2,824 1,062 449 97 598 1,124
Czechoslovakia — — 101,182 17,757 8,475 1,624 2,758 5,678
Denmark 61,227 45,830 34,406 3,470 4,549 10,918 9,797 4,847
Finland — — 16,922 2,438 2,230 4,923 4,310 2,569
France 67,735 60,335 54,842 13,761 36,954 50,113 46,975 32,066
Germany 328,722 174,227 386,634 119,107 119,506 576,905 209,616 85,752
Greece 145,402 198,108 60,774 10,599 8,605 45,153 74,173 37,729
Ireland 344,940 166,445 202,854 28,195 15,701 47,189 37,788 22,210
Italy 1,930,475 1,229,916 528,133 85,053 50,509 184,576 200,111 55,562
Netherlands 42,463 46,065 29,397 7,791 13,877 46,703 37,918 11,234
Norway-Sweden 426,981 192,445 170,329 13,452 17,326 44,224 36,150 13,941
Norway 182,542 79,488 70,327 6,901 8,326 22,806 17,371 3,835
Sweden 244,439 112,957 100,002 6,551 9,000 21,418 18,779 10,106
Poland — — 223,316 25,555 7,577 6,465 55,742 63,483
Portugal 65,154 82,489 44,829 3,518 6,765 13,928 70,568 42,685
Romania 57,322 13,566 67,810 5,264 1,254 914 2,339 24,753
Russia 1,501,301 1,106,998 61,604 2,463 605 453 2,329 33,311
Spain 24,818 53,262 47,109 3,669 2,774 6,880 40,793 22,783
Switzerland 32,541 22,839 31,772 5,990 9,904 17,577 19,193 8,316
United Kingdom 469,518 371,878 341,552 61,813 131,794 195,709 220,213 153,644
Yugoslavia — — 49,215 6,920 2,039 6,966 17,990 16,267
Other Europe 514 6,527 22,434 9,978 5,584 11,756 6,845 3,447
Asia 299,836 269,736 126,740 19,231 34,532 135,844 358,605 2,391,356
China 19,884 20,916 30,648 5,874 16,072 8,836 14,060 170,897
Hong Kong — — — — — 13,781 67,047 112,132
India 3,026 3,478 2,076 554 1,692 1,850 18,638 231,649
Iran — — 208 198 1,144 3,195 9,059 98,141
Israel — — — — 98 21,376 30,911 43,669

A111
 Region and country

A112
of last residence 1900 to 1909 1910 to 1919 1920 to 1929 1930 to 1939 1940 to 1949 1950 to 1959 1960 to 1969 1980 to 1989

Japan 139,712 77,125 42,057 2,683 1,557 40,651 40,956 44,150

Jordan — — — — — 4,899 9,230 28,928
Korea — — — — 83 4,845 27,048 322,708
Philippines — — — 391 4,099 17,245 70,660 502,056
Syria — — 5,307 2,188 1,179 1,091 2,432 14,534
Taiwan — — — — — 721 15,657 119,051
Turkey 127,999 160,717 40,450 1,327 754 2,980 9,464 19,208
Vietnam — — — — — 290 2,949 200,632
Other Asia 9,215 7,500 5,994 6,016 7,854 14,084 40,494 483,601
America 277,809 1,070,539 1,591,278 230,319 328,435 921,610 1,674,172 2,695,329
Canada and Newfoundland 123,067 708,715 949,286 162,703 160,911 353,169 433,128 156,313
Mexico 31,188 185,334 498,945 32,709 56,158 273,847 441,824 1,009,586
Caribbean 100,960 120,860 83,482 18,052 46,194 115,661 427,235 790,109
Cuba — — 12,769 10,641 25,976 73,221 202,030 132,552
Dominican Republic — — — 1,026 4,802 10,219 83,552 221,552
Haiti — — — 156 823 3,787 28,992 121,406
Jamaica — — — — — 7,397 62,218 193,874
Other Caribbean 100,960 120,860 70,713 6,229 14,593 21,037 50,443 120,725
Central America 7,341 15,692 16,511 6,840 20,135 40,201 98,560 339,376
Belize 77 40 285 193 433 1,133 4,185 14,964
Costa Rica — — — 431 1,965 4,044 17,975 25,017
El Salvador — — — 597 4,885 5,094 14,405 137,418
Guatemala — — — 423 1,303 4,197 14,357 58,847
Honduras — — — 679 1,874 5,320 15,078 39,071
Nicaragua — — — 405 4,393 7,812 10,383 31,102
Panama — — — 1,452 5,282 12,601 22,177 32,957
Other Central America 7,264 15,652 16,226 2,660 — — — —
 South America 15,253 39,938 43,025 9,990 19,662 78,418 250,754 399,862
Argentina — — — 1,067 3,108 16,346 49,384 23,442
Bolivia — — — 50 893 2,759 6,205 9,798
Brazil — — 4,627 1,468 3,653 11,547 29,238 22,944
Chile — — — 347 1,320 4,669 12,384 19,749
Colombia — — — 1,027 3,454 15,567 68,371 105,494
Ecuador — — — 244 2,207 8,574 34,107 48,015
Guyana — — — 131 596 1,131 4,546 85,886
Paraguay — — — 33 85 576 1,249 3,518
Peru — — — 321 1,273 5,980 19,783 49,958
Suriname — — — 25 130 299 612 1,357
Uruguay — — — 112 754 1,026 4,089 7,235
Venezuela — — — 1,155 2,182 9,927 20,758 22,405
Other South America 15,253 39,938 38,398 4,010 7 17 28 61
Other America — — 29 25 25,375 60,314 22,671 83
Africa 6,326 8,867 6,362 2,120 6,720 13,016 23,780 141,990
Egypt — — 1,063 781 1,613 1,996 5,581 26,744
Ethiopia — — — 10 28 302 804 12,927
Liberia — — — 35 37 289 841 6,420
Morocco — — — 73 879 2,703 2,880 3,471
South Africa — — — 312 1,022 2,278 4,360 15,505
Other Africa 6,326 8,867 5,299 909 3,141 5,448 9,314 76,923
Oceania 12,355 12,339 9,860 3,306 14,262 11,353 23,630 41,432
Australia 11,191 11,280 8,404 2,260 11,201 8,275 14,986 16,901
New Zealand — — 935 790 2,351 1,799 3,775 6,129
Other Oceania 1,164 1,059 521 256 710 1,279 4,869 18,402
Not Specified 33,493 488 930 — 135 12,472 119 305,406

A113
 A114
•

Region and country

of last residence 1990 to 1999 2000 to 2009 2010 2011

Total 9,775,398 10,299,430 1,042,625 1,062,040

A PPENDIX

Europe 1,348,612 1,349,609 95,429 90,712

Austria-Hungary 27,529 33,929 4,325 4,703
Austria 18,234 21,151 3,319 3,654
Hungary 9,295 12,778 1,006 1,049
Belgium 7,077 8,157 732 700
Bulgaria 16,948 40,003 2,465 2,549
Czechoslovakia 8,970 18,691 1,510 1,374
Denmark 6,189 6,049 545 473
Finland 3,970 3,970 414 398
France 35,945 45,637 4,339 3,967
Germany 92,207 122,373 7,929 7,072
Greece 25,403 16,841 966 1,196
Ireland 65,384 15,642 1,610 1,533
Italy 75,992 28,329 2,956 2,670
Netherlands 13,345 17,351 1,520 1,258
Norway-Sweden 17,825 19,382 1,662 1,530
Norway 5,211 4,599 363 405
Sweden 12,614 14,783 1,299 1,125
Poland 172,249 117,921 7,391 6,634
Portugal 25,497 11,479 759 878
Romania 48,136 52,154 3,735 3,679
Russia 433,427 167,152 7,502 8,548
Spain 18,443 17,695 2,040 2,319
Switzerland 11,768 12,173 868 861
United Kingdom 156,182 171,979 14,781 13,443
Yugoslavia 57,039 131,831 4,772 4,611
Other Europe 29,087 290,871 22,608 20,316
Asia 2,859,899 3,470,835 410,209 438,580
China 342,058 591,711 67,634 83,603
Hong Kong 116,894 57,583 3,263 3,149
India 352,528 590,464 66,185 66,331
Iran 76,899 76,755 9,078 9,015
Israel 41,340 54,081 5,172 4,389
Japan 66,582 84,552 7,100 6,751
Jordan 42,755 53,550 9,327 8,211
Korea 179,770 209,758 22,022 22,748
Philippines 534,338 545,463 56,399 55,251
Syria 22,906 30,807 7,424 7,983
Taiwan 132,647 92,657 6,785 6,206
Turkey 38,687 48,394 7,435 9,040
Vietnam 275,379 289,616 30,065 33,486
Other Asia 637,116 745,444 112,320 122,417
America 5,137,743 4,441,529 426,981 423,277
Canada and Newfoundland 194,788 236,349 19,491 19,506
Mexico 2,757,418 1,704,166 138,717 142,823
Caribbean 1,004,687 1,053,357 139,389 133,012
Cuba 159,037 271,742 33,372 36,261
Dominican Republic 359,818 291,492 53,890 46,036
Haiti 177,446 203,827 22,336 21,802
Jamaica 177,143 172,523 19,439 19,298
Other Caribbean 181,243 113,773 10,352 9,615
Central America 610,189 591,130 43,597 43,249
Belize 12,600 9,682 997 933
Costa Rica 17,054 21,571 2,306 2,230
El Salvador 273,017 251,237 18,547 18,477
Guatemala 126,043 156,992 10,263 10,795
Honduras 72,880 63,513 6,381 6,053
Immigration to the United States, Fiscal Years 1820–2011
A115 •
 Region and country
A116

of last residence 1990 to 1999 2000 to 2009 2010 2011

•

Nicaragua 80,446 70,015 3,476 3,314

Panama 28,149 18,120 1,627 1,447
Other Central America — -
South America 570,624 856,508 85,783 84,687
A PPENDIX

Argentina 30,065 47,955 4,312 4,335

Bolivia 18,111 21,921 2,211 2,113
Brazil 50,744 115,404 12,057 11,643
Chile 18,200 19,792 1,940 1,854
Colombia 137,985 236,570 21,861 22,130
Ecuador 81,358 107,977 11,463 11,068
Guyana 74,407 70,373 6,441 6,288
Paraguay 6,082 4,623 449 501
Peru 110,117 137,614 14,063 13,836
Suriname 2,285 2,363 202 167
Uruguay 6,062 9,827 1,286 1,521
Venezuela 35,180 82,087 9,497 9,229
Other South America 28 2 1 2
Other America 37 19 4 -
Africa 346,416 759,734 98,246 97,429
Egypt 44,604 81,564 9,822 9,096
Ethiopia 40,097 87,207 13,853 13,985
Liberia 13,587 23,316 2,924 3,117
Morocco 15,768 40,844 4,847 4,249
South Africa 21,964 32,221 2,705 2,754
Other Africa 210,396 494,582 64,095 64,228
Oceania 56,800 65,793 5,946 5,825
Australia 24,288 32,728 3,077 3,062
New Zealand 8,600 12,495 1,046 1,006
Other Oceania 23,912 20,570 1,823 1,757
Not Specified 25,928 211,930 5,814 6,217

— Represents zero or not available.

 Presidents, Vice Presidents, and Secretaries of State • A117

PRESIDENTS, VICE PRESIDENTS,

AND SECRETARIES OF STATE
President Vice President Secretary of State

1. George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson 1789

Federalist 1789 Federalist 1789 Edmund Randolph 1794
Timothy Pickering 1795

2. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Timothy Pickering 1797

Federalist 1797 Dem.-Rep. 1797 John Marshall 1800

3. Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr, James Madison 1801

Dem.-Rep. 1801 Dem.-Rep. 1801
George Clinton,
Dem.-Rep. 1805

4. James Madison, George Clinton, Robert Smith 1809

Dem.-Rep. 1809 Dem.-Rep. 1809 James Monroe 1811
Elbridge Gerry,
Dem.-Rep. 1813

5. James Monroe, Daniel D. Tompkins, John Q. Adams 1817

Dem.-Rep. 1817 Dem.-Rep. 1817

6. John Quincy Adams, John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay 1825

Dem.-Rep. 1825 Dem.-Rep. 1825

7. Andrew Jackson, John C. Calhoun, Martin Van Buren 1829

Democratic 1829 Democratic 1829 Edward Livingston 1831
Martin Van Buren, Louis McLane 1833
Democratic 1833 John Forsyth 1834

8. Martin Van Buren, Richard M. Johnson, John Forsyth 1837

Democratic 1837 Democratic 1837

9. William H. Harrison, John Tyler, Daniel Webster 1841

Whig 184 1 Whig 1841
A118 • A PPENDIX

President Vice President Secretary of State

10. John Tyler, Whig None Daniel Webster 1841

and Democratic Hugh S. Legaré 1843
1841 Abel P. Upshur 1843
John C. Calhoun
1844

11. James K. Polk, George M. Dallas, James Buchanan

Democratic 1845 Democratic 1845 1845

12. Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, John M. Clayton

Whig 184 9 Whig 1848 1849

13. Millard Fillmore, None Daniel Webster 1850

Whig 1850 Edward Everett
1852

14. Franklin Pierce, William R. King, William L. Marcy 1853

Democratic 1853 Democratic 1853

15. James Buchanan, John C. Lewis Cass 1857

Democratic 1857 Breckinridge, Jeremiah S. Black 1860
Democratic 1857

16. Abraham Lincoln, Hannibal Hamlin, William H. Seward 1861

Republican 1861 Republican 1861
Andrew Johnson,
Unionist 1865

17. Andrew Johnson, None William H. Seward 1865

Unionist 1865

18. Ulysses S. Grant, Schuyler Colfax, Elihu B. Washburne

Republican 1869 Republican 1869 1869
Henry Wilson, Hamilton Fish 1869
Republican 1873

19. Rutherford B. Hayes, William A. Wheeler, William M. Evarts 1877

Republican 1877 Republican 1877
 Presidents, Vice Presidents, and Secretaries of State • A119

President Vice President Secretary of State

20. James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, James G. Blaine 1881

Republican 1881 Republican 1881

21. Chester A. Arthur, None Frederick T. Frelinghuysen

Republican 1881 1881

22. Grover Cleveland, Thomas A. Hendricks, Thomas F. Bayard 1885

Democratic 1885 Democratic 1885

23. Benjamin Harrison, Levi P. Morton, James G. Blaine 1889

Republican 1889 Republican 1889 John W. Foster 1892

24. Grover Cleveland, Adlai E. Stevenson, Walter Q. Gresham 1893

Democratic 1893 Democratic 1893 Richard Olney 1895

25. William McKinley, Garret A. Hobart, John Sherman 1897

Republican 1897 Republican 1897 William R. Day 1898
Theodore Roosevelt, John Hay 1898
Republican 1901

26. Theodore Roosevelt, Charles Fairbanks, John Hay 1901

Republican 1901 Republican 1905 Elihu Root 1905
Robert Bacon 1909

27. William H. Taft, James S. Sherman, Philander C. Knox 1909

Republican 1909 Republican 1909

28. Woodrow Wilson, Thomas R. Marshall, William J. Bryan 1913

Democratic 1913 Democratic 1913 Robert Lansing 1915
Bainbridge Colby 1920

29. Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Charles E. Hughes 1921

Republican 1921 Republican 1921

30. Calvin Coolidge, Charles G. Dawes, Charles E. Hughes 1923

Republican 1923 Republican 1925 Frank B. Kellogg 1925
A120 • A PPENDIX

President Vice President Secretary of State

31. Herbert Hoover, Charles Curtis, Henry L. Stimson 1929

Republican 1929 Republican 1929

32. Franklin D. John Nance Garner, Cordell Hull 1933

Roosevelt, Democratic 1933 Edward R. Stettinius, Jr.
Democratic 1933 Henry A. Wallace, 1944
Democratic 1941
Harry S. Truman,
Democratic 1945

Edward R. Stettinius, Jr.

33. Harry S. Truman, Alben W. Barkley, 1945
Democratic 1945 Democratic 1949 James F. Byrnes 1945
George C. Marshall 1947
Dean G. Acheson 1949

34. Dwight D. Richard M. Nixon, John F. Dulles 1953

Eisenhower, Republican 1953 Christian A. Herter 1959
Republican 1953

35. John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Dean Rusk 1961

Democratic 1961 Democratic 1961

36. Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert H. Dean Rusk 1963

Democratic 1963 Humphrey,
Democratic 1965

37. Richard M. Nixon, Spiro T. Agnew, William P. Rogers 1969

Republican 1969 Republican 1969 Henry Kissinger 1973
Gerald R. Ford,
Republican 1973

38. Gerald R. Ford, Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger 1974

Republican 1974 Republican 1974

39. Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Cyrus Vance 1977

Democratic 1977 Democratic 1977 Edmund Muskie 1980
 Presidents, Vice Presidents, and Secretaries of State • A121

President Vice President Secretary of State

40. Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Alexander Haig 1981

Republican 1981 Republican 1981 George Schultz 1982

41. George H. W. Bush, J. Danforth Quayle, James A. Baker 1989

Republican 1989 Republican 1989 Lawrence Eagleburger
1992

42. William J. Clinton, Albert Gore, Jr., Warren Christopher 1993

Democratic 1993 Democratic 1993 Madeleine Albright 1997

43. George W. Bush, Richard B. Cheney, Colin L. Powell 2001

Republican 2001 Republican 2001 Condoleezza Rice 2005

44. Barack Obama, Joseph R. Biden, Hillary Rodham Clinton

Democratic 2009 Democratic 2009 2009
 
FURTHER READINGS

CHAPTER 1
A fascinating study of pre-Columbian migration is Brian M. Fagan’s The Great Jour-
ney: The Peopling of Ancient America, rev. ed. (2004). Alice B. Kehoe’s North American Indians:
A Comprehensive Account, 2nd ed. (1992), provides an encyclopedic treatment of Native
Americans. See also Charles Mann’s 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus
(2005) and 1493: Uncovering the New World that Columbus Created (2011), and Daniel K.
Richter, Before the Revolution: America’s Ancient Pasts (2011). On North America’s largest
Native American city, see Timothy R. Pauketat, Cahokia (2010).
The conflict between Native Americans and Europeans is treated well in James Axtell’s The
Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (1986) and Beyond 1492:
Encounters in Colonial North America (1992). Colin G. Calloway’s New Worlds for All: Indians,
Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America (1997) explores the ecological effects of European
settlement.
The voyages of Columbus are surveyed in William D. Phillips Jr. and Carla Rahn Phillips’s
The Worlds of Christopher Columbus (1992). For sweeping overviews of Spain’s creation of a
global empire, see Henry Kamen’s Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 1492–1763
(2003) and Hugh Thomas’s Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire, from Columbus to
Magellan (2004). David J. Weber examines Spanish colonization in The Spanish Frontier in
North America (1992). For the French experience, see William J. Eccles’s France in America,
rev. ed. (1990). For an insightful comparison of Spanish and English modes of settlement, see
J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830 (2006).

CHAPTER 2
Two excellent surveys of early American history are Peter C. Hoffer’s The Brave New
World: A History of Early America, 2nd ed. (2006), and William R. Polk’s The Birth of America:
From before Columbus to the Revolution (2006).
Bernard Bailyn’s Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the
Revolution (1986) provides a comprehensive view of migration to the New World. Jack P.
Greene offers a brilliant synthesis of British colonization in Pursuits of Happiness: The Social
Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture (1988).
The best overview of the colonization of North America is Alan Taylor’s American Colonies:
The Settling of North America (2001). On the interactions among Indian, European, and

A123
A124 • FURTHER READINGS

African cultures, see Gary B. Nash’s Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early North America,
5th ed. (2005). See Daniel K. Richter’s The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois
League in the Era of European Colonization (1992) and Daniel P. Barr’s Unconquered: The Iro-
quois League at War in Colonial America (2006) for a history of the Iroquois Confederacy.
A splendid overview of Indian infighting is Peter Silver, Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War
Transformed (2008).
Andrew Delbanco’s The Puritan Ordeal (1989) is a powerful study of the tensions inherent
in the Puritan outlook. For information regarding the Puritan settlement of New England, see
Virginia DeJohn Anderson’s New England’s Generation: The Great Migration and the Formation
of Society and Culture in the Seventeenth Century (1991). The best biography of John Winthrop
is Francis J. Bremer’s John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father (2003).
The pattern of settlement in the middle colonies is illuminated in Barry Levy’s Quakers and
the American Family: British Settlement in the Delaware Valley (1988). On the early history of
New York, see Russell Shorto’s The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch
Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America (2004). Settlement of the areas along
the Atlantic in the South is traced in James Horn’s Adapting to a New World: English Society in
the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake (1994). On shifting political life in England, see Steve Pin-
cus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (2009). For a study of race and the settlement of South
Carolina, see Peter H. Wood’s Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670
through the Stono Rebellion (1974). A brilliant book on relations between the Catawba Indians
and their black and white neighbors is James H. Merrell’s The Indians’ New World: Catawbas
and Their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal (1989). On the flourish-
ing trade in captive Indians, see Alan Gallay’s The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English
Empire in the American South, 1670–1717 (2002). On the Yamasee War, see Steven J. Oatis’s A
Colonial Complex: South Carolina’s Frontiers in the Era of the Yamasee War, 1680–1730 (2004).

CHAPTER 3
The diversity of colonial societies may be seen in David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed:
Four British Folkways in America (1989). On the economic development of New England, see
Christine Leigh Heyrman’s Commerce and Culture: The Maritime Communities of Colonial Massa-
chusetts, 1690–1750 (1984) and Stephen Innes’s Creating the Commonwealth: The Economic
Culture of Puritan New England (1995). John Frederick Martin’s Profits in the Wilderness: Entrepre-
neurship and the Founding of New England Towns in the Seventeenth Century (1991) indicates that
economic concerns rather than spiritual motives were driving forces in many New England towns.
For a fascinating account of the impact of livestock on colonial history, see Virginia DeJohn
Anderson’s Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (2004).
Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum’s Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft
(1974) connects the notorious witch trials to changes in community structure. Bernard Rosen-
thal challenges many myths concerning the Salem witch trials in Salem Story: Reading the
Witch Trials of 1692 (1993). Mary Beth Norton’s In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Cri-
sis of 1692 (2002) emphasizes the role of Indian violence.
Discussions of women in the New England colonies can be found in Laurel Thatcher
Ulrich’s Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England,
1650–1750 (1980), Joy Day Buel and Richard Buel Jr.’s The Way of Duty: A Woman and Her
Family in Revolutionary America (1984), and Mary Beth Norton’s Separated by Their Sex:
Women in Public and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World (2011). On women and religion,
 Further Readings • A125

see Susan Juster’s Disorderly Women: Sexual Politics and Evangelicalism in Revolutionary New
England (1994). John Demos describes family life in A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in
Plymouth Colony, new ed. (2000).
For an excellent overview of Indian relations with Europeans, see Colin G. Calloway’s New
Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America (1997). On New England
Indians, see Kathleen J. Bragdon’s Native People of Southern New England, 1500–1650 (1996).
For analyses of Indian wars, see Alfred A. Cave’s The Pequot War (1996) and Jill Lepore’s The
Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (1998). The story of the
Iroquois is told well in Daniel K. Richter’s The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iro-
quois League in the Era of European Colonization (1992). Indians in the southern colonies are
the focus of James Axtell’s The Indians’ New South: Cultural Change in the Colonial Southeast
(1997). On the fur trade, see Eric Jay Dolan, Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic Story of the Fur
Trade in America (2010).
For the social history of the southern colonies, see Allan Kulikoff ’s Tobacco and Slaves: The
Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680–1800 (1986) and Kathleen M.
Brown’s Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colo-
nial Virginia (1996). Family life along the Chesapeake Bay is described in Gloria L. Main’s
Tobacco Colony: Life in Early Maryland, 1650–1720 (1982) and Daniel Blake Smith’s Inside the
Great House: Planter Family Life in Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake Society (1980).
Edmund S. Morgan’s American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia
(1975) examines Virginia’s social structure, environment, and labor patterns in a biracial
context. On the interaction of the cultures of blacks and whites, see Mechal Sobel’s The World
They Made Together: Black and White Values in Eighteenth-Century Virginia (1987). African
American viewpoints are presented in Timothy H. Breen and Stephen Innes’s “Myne Owne
Ground”: Race and Freedom on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 1640–1676, new ed. (2004). David W.
Galenson’s White Servitude in Colonial America: An Economic Analysis (1981) looks at the
indentured labor force.
Henry F. May’s The Enlightenment in America (1976) and Donald H. Meyer’s The Democra-
tic Enlightenment (1976) examine intellectual trends in eighteenth-century America. Lawrence
A. Cremin’s American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607–1783 (1970) surveys educational
developments.
On the Great Awakening, see Patricia U. Bonomi’s Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society,
and Politics in Colonial America, updated ed. (2003), Timothy D. Hall’s Contested Boundaries:
Itinerancy and the Reshaping of the Colonial American Religious World (1994), Frank Lambert’s
Inventing the “Great Awakening” (1999), and Thomas S. Kidd’s The Great Awakening: The Roots of
Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (2007). The best biography of Edwards is Phillip F.
Gura’s Jonathan Edwards: A Life (2003). For evangelism in the South, see Christine Leigh Heyr-
man’s Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (1997).

CHAPTER 4
The economics motivating colonial policies is covered in John J. McCusker and Russell
R. Menard’s The Economy of British America, 1607–1789, rev. ed. (1991). The problems of colo-
nial customs administration are explored in Michael Kammen’s Empire and Interest: The
American Colonies and the Politics of Mercantilism (1970).
The Andros crisis and related topics are treated in Jack M. Sosin’s English America and the
Revolution of 1688: Royal Administration and the Structure of Provincial Government (1982).
A126 • FURTHER READINGS

Stephen Saunders Webb’s The Governors-General: The English Army and the Definition of the
Empire, 1569–1681 (1979) argues that the Crown was more concerned with military adminis-
tration than with commercial regulation, and Webb’s 1676: The End of American Independence
(1984) shows how the Indian wars undermined the autonomy of the colonial governments.
On the Jesuits, see Nicholas P. Cushner’s Why Have You Come Here? The Jesuits and the First
Evangelization of Native America (2006). The early Indian wars are treated in Jill Lepore’s The
Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (1998). Gregory Evans
Dowd describes the unification efforts of Indians east of the Mississippi in A Spirited Resis-
tance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815 (1992). See also James H. Mer-
rell’s Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier (1999).
A good introduction to the imperial phase of the colonial conflicts is Douglas Edward
Leach’s Arms for Empire: A Military History of the British Colonies in North America, 1607–1763
(1973). Also useful is Brendan Simms’s Three Victories and a Defeat: The Rise and Fall of the
Fiurst British Empire (2008). Fred Anderson’s Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the
Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766 (2000) is the best history of the Seven
Years’ War. For the implications of the British victory in 1763, see Colin G. Calloway’s The
Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America (2006). On the French colonies
in North America, see Allan Greer’s The People of New France (1997).
For a narrative survey of the events leading to the Revolution, see Edward Countryman’s
The American Revolution, rev. ed. (2003). For Great Britain’s perspective on the imperial con-
flict, see Ian R. Christie’s Crisis of Empire: Great Britain and the American Colonies, 1754–1783
(1966). Also see Jeremy Black’s George III: America’s Last King (2007).
The intellectual foundations of revolt are traced in Bernard Bailyn’s The Ideological Origins
of the American Revolution, enlarged ed. (1992). To understand how these views were con-
nected to organized protest, see Pauline Maier’s From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radi-
cals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765–1776 (1972) and Jon Butler’s
Becoming America: The Revolution before 1776 (2000).
On the efforts of colonists to boycott the purchase of British goods, see T. H. Breen’s The
Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (2004). An
excellent overview of the political turmoil leading to war is John Ferling’s A Leap in the Dark:
The Struggle to Create the American Republic (2003). See also Timoth Breen’s American Insur-
gents, American Patriots (2010). A fascinating account of the smallpox epidemic during the
Revolutionary War is Elizabeth A. Fenn’s Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of
1775–1782 (2001).
Pauline Maier’s American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (1997) is the
best analysis of the framing of that document. Jack M. Sosin chronicles events west of the
Appalachians concisely in The Revolutionary Frontier, 1763–1783 (1967). Military affairs in
the early phases of the war are handled in John W. Shy’s Toward Lexington: The Role of the
British Army in the Coming of the American Revolution (1965).

CHAPTER 5
The Revolutionary War is the subject of Colin Bonwick’s The American Revolution, 2nd
ed. (2005), Gordon S. Wood’s The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1991), and Jeremy
Black’s War for America: The Fight for Independence, 1775–1783 (1991). John Ferling’s Setting
the World Ablaze: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and the American Revolution (2000) highlights
the roles played by key leaders.
 Further Readings • A127

On the social history of the Revolutionary War, see John W. Shy’s A People Numerous and
Armed: Reflections on the Military Struggle for American Independence, rev. ed. (1990). Colin G.
Calloway tells the neglected story of the Indian experiences in the Revolution in The American
Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities (1995). The
imperial, aristocratic, and racist aspects of the Revolution are detailed in Francis Jennings’s The
Creation of America: Through Revolution to Empire (2000).
Why some Americans remained loyal to the Crown is the subject of Thomas B. Allen’s
Tories: Fighting for the King in America’s First Civil War (2010) and Maya Jasanoff ’s Liberty’s
Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary War (2011). A superb study of African Ameri-
cans during the Revolutionary era is Douglas R. Egerton’s Death or Liberty: African Americans
and Revolutionary America (2009). Mary Beth Norton’s Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary
Experience of American Women, 1750–1800, new ed. (1996), Linda K. Kerber’s Women of the
Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (1980), and Carol Berkin’s Revolu-
tionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence (2005) document the role
that women played in securing independence. A superb biography of Revolutionary America’s
most prominent woman is Woody Holton’s Abigail Adams (2010). A fine new biography of
America’s commander in chief is Ron Chernow’s Washington: A Life (2010).

CHAPTER 6
A good overview of the Confederation period is Richard B. Morris’s The Forging of the
Union, 1781–1789 (1987). Another useful analysis of this period is Richard Buel Jr.’s Securing
the Revolution: Ideology in American Politics, 1789–1815 (1972). David P. Szatmary’s Shays’s
Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection (1980) covers that fateful incident. For a fine
account of cultural change during the period, see Joseph J. Ellis’s After the Revolution: Profiles
of Early American Culture (1979).
Excellent treatments of the post-Revolutionary era include Edmund S. Morgan’s Inventing
the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America (1988), Michael Kammen’s
Sovereignty and Liberty: Constitutional Discourse in American Culture (1988), and Joyce
Appleby’s Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans (2000). On the political
philosophies contributing to the drafting of the Constitution, see Ralph Lerner’s The Thinking
Revolutionary: Principle and Practice in the New Republic (1987). For the dramatic story of the
framers of the Constitution, see Richard Beeman’s Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the Ameri-
can Constituion (2009). Woody Holton’s Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution
(2007) emphasizes the role of taxes and monetary policies in the crafting of the Constitution. The
complex story of ratification is well told in Pauline Maier’s Ratification: The People Debate the
Constitution, 1787–1788 (2010).

CHAPTER 7
The best introduction to the early Federalists remains John C. Miller’s The Federalist Era,
1789–1801, rev. ed. (2011). Other works analyze the ideological debates among the nation’s first
leaders. Richard Buel Jr.’s Securing the Revolution: Ideology in American Politics, 1789–1815
(1972), Joyce Appleby’s Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s
(1984), and Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick’s The Age of Federalism: The Early American Repub-
lic, 1788–1800 (1993) trace the persistence and transformation of ideas first fostered during the
A128 • FURTHER READINGS

Revolutionary crisis. On the first ten constitutional amendments, see Leonard W. Levy’s Origins of
the Bill of Rights (1999). The best study of Washington’s political career is John Ferling’s The Ascent
of George Washington: The Hidden Political Genius of an American Icon (2009).
The 1790s may also be understood through the views and behavior of national leaders.
Joseph J. Ellis’s Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (2000) is a superb group
study. See also the following biographies: Richard Brookhiser’s Founding Father: Rediscovering
George Washington (1996) and Alexander Hamilton, American (1999) and Joseph J. Ellis’s Pas-
sionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams (1993). For a female perspective, see
Phyllis Lee Levin’s Abigail Adams: A Biography (1987). The Republican viewpoint is the subject
of Lance Banning’s The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology (1978).
Federalist foreign policy is explored in Jerald A. Comb’s The Jay Treaty: Political Battleground
of the Founding Fathers (1970) and William Stinchcombe’s The XYZ Affair (1980). For specific
domestic issues, see Thomas P. Slaughter’s The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the Ameri-
can Revolution (1986) and Harry Ammon’s The Genet Mission (1973). The treatment of Indians
in the Old Northwest is explored in Richard H. Kohn’s Eagle and Sword: The Federalists and the
Creation of the Military Establishment in America, 1783–1802 (1975). For the Alien and Sedition
Acts, consult James Morton Smith’s Freedom’s Fetters: The Alien and Sedition Laws and American
Civil Liberties (1956).
Several books focus on social issues of the post-Revolutionary period, including Keepers of
the Revolution: New Yorkers at Work in the Early Republic (1992), edited by Paul A. Gilje and
Howard B. Rock; Ronald Schultz’s The Republic of Labor: Philadelphia Artisans and the Politics
of Class, 1720–1830 (1993); and Peter Way’s Common Labour: Workers and the Digging of North
American Canals, 1780–1860 (1993).

CHAPTER 8
Marshall Smelser’s The Democratic Republic, 1801–1815 (1968) presents an overview of
the Republican administrations. Even more comprehensive is Gordon S. Wood’s Empire of Lib-
erty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (2010). The best treatment of the election of
1800 is Edward J. Larson’s A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 (2008).
The standard biography of Jefferson is Joseph J. Ellis’s American Sphinx: The Character of
Thomas Jefferson (1996). On the life of Jefferson’s friend and successor, see Drew R. McCoy’s
The Last of the Fathers: James Madison and the Republican Legacy (1989). Joyce Appleby’s Capi-
talism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s (1984) minimizes the impact
of Republican ideology.
Linda K. Kerber’s Federalists in Dissent: Imagery and Ideology in Jeffersonian American
(1970) explores the Federalists while they were out of power. The concept of judicial review
and the courts can be studied in Cliff Sloan and David McKean’s The Great Decision: Jefferson,
Adams, Marshall, and the Battle for the Supreme Court (2009). On John Marshall, see
G. Edward White’s The Marshall Court and Cultural Change, 1815–1835 (1988) and James F.
Simon’s What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a
United States (2002). Milton Lomask’s two volumes, Aaron Burr: The Years from Princeton to
Vice President, 1756–1805 (1979) and The Conspiracy and the Years of Exile, 1805–1836 (1982)
trace the career of that remarkable American.
For the Louisiana Purchase, consult Jon Kukla’s A Wilderness So Immense: The Louisiana Pur-
chase and the Destiny of America (2003). For a captivating account of the Lewis and Clark expedi-
tion, see Stephen Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the
 Further Readings • A129

Opening of the American West (1996). Bernard W. Sheehan’s Seeds of Extinction: Jeffersonian Phil-
anthropy and the American Indian (1973) is more analytical in its treatment of the Jeffersonians’
Indian policy and the opening of the West. Burton Spivak’s Jefferson’s English Crisis: Commerce,
Embargo, and the Republican Revolution (1979) discusses Anglo-American relations during Jeffer-
son’s administration; Clifford L. Egan’s Neither Peace Nor War: Franco-American Relations,
1803–1812 (1983) covers America’s relations with France. An excellent revisionist treatment of the
events that brought on war in 1812 is J. C. A. Stagg’s Mr. Madison’s War: Politics, Diplomacy, and
Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783–1830 (1983). The war itself is the focus of Donald R.
Hickey’s The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict (1989). See also Alan Taylor’s The Civil War of 1812:
American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (2011).

CHAPTER 9
The best overview of the second quarter of the nineteenth century is Daniel Walker
Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1845 (2007). On eco-
nomic development in the nation’s early decades, see Stuart Bruchey’s Enterprise: The Dynamic
Economy of a Free People (1990). The classic study of transportation and economic growth is
George Rogers Taylor’s The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860 (1951). A fresh view is pro-
vided in Sarah H. Gordon’s Passage to Union: How the Railroads Transformed American Life,
1829–1929 (1996). On the Erie Canal, see Carol Sheriff ’s The Artificial River: The Erie Canal
and the Paradox of Progress, 1817–1862 (1996).
The impact of technology is traced in David J. Jeremy’s Transatlantic Industrial Revolution: The
Diffusion of Textile Technologies between Britain and America, 1790–1830s (1981). On the inven-
tion of the telegraph, see Kenneth Silverman’s Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B.
Morse (2003). For the story of steamboats, see Andrea Sutcliffe’s Steam: The Untold Story of Amer-
ica’s First Great Invention (2004). The best treatment of public works, such as the Erie Canal in the
development of nineteenth-century America, is John Lauritz Larson’s Internal Improvement:
National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States (2001).
Paul E. Johnson’s A Shopkeeper’s Millenium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York,
1815–1837 (1978) studies the role religion played in the emerging industrial order. The atti-
tude of the worker during this time of transition is surveyed in Edward E. Pessen’s Most
Uncommon Jacksonians: The Radical Leaders of the Early Labor Movement (1967). Detailed case
studies of working communities include Anthony F. C. Wallace’s Rockdale: The Growth of an
American Village in the Early Industrial Revolution (1978), Thomas Dublin’s Women at Work:
The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826–1860 (1979), and
Sean Wilentz’s Chants Democratic: New York and the Rise of the American Working Class,
1788–1850 (1984). Walter Licht’s Working for the Railroad: The Organization of Work in the
Nineteenth Century (1983) is rich in detail.
For a fine treatment of urbanization, see Charles N. Glaab and A. Theodore Brown’s A History
of Urban America (1967). On immigration, see Jay P. Dolan’s The Irish Americans (2008).

CHAPTER 10
The standard overview of the Era of Good Feelings remains George Dangerfield’s The
Awakening of American Nationalism, 1815–1828 (1965). A classic summary of the economic
trends of the period is Douglass C. North’s The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860
A130 • FURTHER READINGS

(1961). An excellent synthesis of the era is Charles Sellers’s The Market Revolution: Jacksonian
America, 1815–1846 (1991). On diplomatic relations during James Monroe’s presidency, see
William Earl Weeks’s John Quincy Adams and American Global Empire (1992). For relations after
1812, see Ernest R. May’s The Making of the Monroe Doctrine (1975). For background on Andrew
Jackson, see the readings cited in Chapter 11. The campaign that brought Jackson to the White
House is analyzed in Robert Vincent Remini’s The Election of Andrew Jackson (1963).

CHAPTER 11
An excellent survey of events covered in this chapter is Daniel Feller’s The Jacksonian
Promise: America, 1815–1840 (1995). Even more comprehensive surveys of politics and culture
during the Jacksonian era are Daniel Walker Howe’s What Hath God Wrought: The Transfor-
mation of America, 1815–1848 (2007) and David S. Reynolds’s Waking Giant: America in the
Age of Jackson (2008). A more political focus can be found in Harry L. Watson’s Liberty and
Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America (1990).
For an outstanding analysis of women in New York City during the Jacksonian period, see
Christine Stansell’s City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789–1860 (1986). In Chants
Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working-Class, 1788–1850 (1984), Sean
Wilentz analyzes the social basis of working-class politics. More recently, Wilentz has traced
the democratization of politics in The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln,
abridged college ed. (2009).
The best biography of Jackson remains Robert Vincent Remini’s three-volume work:
Andrew Jackson: The Course of American Empire, 1767–1821 (1977), Andrew Jackson: The
Course of American Freedom, 1822–1832 (1981), and Andrew Jackson: The Course of American
Democracy, 1833–1845 (1984). A more critical study of the seventh president is Andrew
Burstein’s The Passions of Andrew Jackson (2003). On Jackson’s successor, consult John Niven’s
Martin Van Buren: The Romantic Age of American Politics (1983) and Ted Widmer’s Martin Van
Buren (2005). Studies of other major figures of the period include John Niven’s John C. Cal-
houn and the Price of Union: A Biography (1988), Merrill D. Peterson’s The Great Triumvirate:
Webster, Clay, and Calhoun (1987), and Robert Vincent Remini’s Henry Clay: Statesman for the
Union (1991) and Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time (1997).
The political philosophies of Jackson’s opponents are treated in Michael F. Holt’s The Rise
and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (1999)
and Harry L. Watson’s Andrew Jackson vs. Henry Clay: Democracy and Development in Antebel-
lum America (1998). On a crucial election, see Lynn Hudson Parsons’s The Birth of Modern
Politics: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and the Election of 1828 (2009).
On the Eaton affair, see John F. Marszalek’s The Petticoat Affair: Manners, Mutiny, and Sex
in Andrew Jackson’s White House (1998). Two studies of the impact of the bank controversy are
William G. Shade’s Banks or No Banks: The Money Issue in Western Politics, 1832–1865 (1972)
and James Roger Sharp’s The Jacksonians versus the Banks: Politics in the States after the Panic of
1837 (1970).
The outstanding book on the nullification issue remains William W. Freehling’s Prelude to
Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816–1836 (1965). John M.
Belohlavek’s “Let the Eagle Soar!”: The Foreign Policy of Andrew Jackson (1985) is a thorough
study of Jacksonian diplomacy. A. J. Langguth’s Driven West: Andrew Jackson and the Trail of
Tears to the Civil War (2010) analyzes the controversial relocation policy.
 Further Readings • A131

CHAPTER 12
Those interested in the problem of discerning myth and reality in the southern experi-
ence should consult William R. Taylor’s Cavalier and Yankee: The Old South and American
National Character (1961). Three recent efforts to understand the mind of the Old South and
its defense of slavery are Eugene D. Genovese’s The Slaveholders’ Dilemma: Freedom and
Progress in Southern Conservative Thought, 1820–1860 (1992), Eric H. Walther’s The Fire-
Eaters (1992), and William W. Freehling’s The Road to Disunion: Secessionists Triumphant,
1854–1861 (2007).
Contrasting analyses of the plantation system are Eugene D. Genovese’s The World the Slave-
holders Made: Two Essays in Interpretation, with a new introduction (1988), and Gavin Wright’s
The Political Economy of the Cotton South: Households, Markets, and Wealth in the Nineteenth
Century (1978). Stephanie McCurry’s Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households, Gender
Relations, and the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country (1995) greatly
enriches our understanding of southern households, religion, and political culture.
Other essential works on southern culture and society include Bertram Wyatt-Brown’s
Honor and Violence in the Old South (1986), Elizabeth Fox-Genovese’s Within the Plantation
Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (1988), Catherine Clinton’s The Planta-
tion Mistress: Woman’s World in the Old South (1982), Joan E. Cashin’s A Family Venture: Men
and Women on the Southern Frontier (1991), and Theodore Rosengarten’s Tombee: Portrait of a
Cotton Planter (1986).
A provocative discussion of the psychology of African American slavery can be found in
Stanley M. Elkins’s Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life, 3rd ed.
(1976). John W. Blassingame’s The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South,
rev. and enlarged ed. (1979), Eugene D. Genovese’s Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves
Made (1974), and Herbert G. Gutman’s The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925
(1976) all stress the theme of a persisting and identifiable slave culture. On the question of
slavery’s profitability, see Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman’s Time on the Cross:
The Economics of American Negro Slavery (1974).
The best study of the political dimensions of slavery in the South is Lacy K. Ford’s Deliver Us
from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South (2009). On the Louisiana slave revolt in 1811,
see Daniel Rasmussen’s American Uprising: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt
(2011). Other works on slavery include Lawrence W. Levine’s Black Culture and Black Con-
sciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (1977); Albert J. Raboteau’s
Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (1978); We Are Your Sisters:
Black Women in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Dorothy Sterling (1984); Deborah Gray
White’s Ar’n’t I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South, rev. ed. (1999); and Joel
Williamson’s The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South since Emancipa-
tion (1984). Charles Joyner’s Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community (1984)
offers a vivid reconstruction of one community.

CHAPTER 13
Russel Blaine Nye’s Society and Culture in America, 1830–1860 (1974) provides a wide-
ranging survey of the Romantic movement. On the reform impulse, consult Ronald G. Walter’s
American Reformers, 1815–1860, rev. ed. (1997). Revivalist religion is treated in Nathan O.
A132 • FURTHER READINGS

Hatch’s The Democratization of American Christianity (1989), Christine Leigh Heyrman’s

Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (1997), and Ellen Eslinger’s Citizens of Zion:
The Social Origins of Camp Meeting Revivalism (1999). On the Mormons, see Leonard Arring-
ton’s Brigham Young: American Moses (1985).
The best treatments of transcendentalist thought are Paul F. Boller’s American Transcenden-
talism, 1830–1860: An Intellectual Inquiry (1974) and Philip F. Gura’s American Transcenden-
talism: A History (2007). Several good works describe various aspects of the antebellum reform
movement. For temperance, see W. J. Rorabaugh’s The Alcoholic Republic: An American
Tradition (1979) and Barbara Leslie Epstein’s The Politics of Domesticity: Women, Evangelism,
and Temperance in Nineteenth-Century America (1981). Stephen Nissenbaum’s Sex, Diet, and
Debility in Jacksonian America: Sylvester Graham and Health Reform (1980) looks at a pioneer-
ing reformer concerned with diet and lifestyle. On prison reform and other humanitarian pro-
jects, see David J. Rothman’s The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New
Republic, rev. ed. (2002), and Thomas J. Brown’s biography Dorothea Dix: New England
Reformer (1998). Lawrence A. Cremin’s American Education: The National Experience,
1783–1876 (1980) traces early school reform.
On women during the antebellum period, see Nancy F. Cott’s The Bonds of Womanhood:
“Woman’s Sphere” in New England, 1780–1835, rev. ed. (1997), and Ellen C. DuBois’s Feminism
and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1848–1869
(1978). Michael Fellman’s The Unbounded Frame: Freedom and Community in Nineteenth-
Century American Utopianism (1973) surveys the utopian movements.
Useful surveys of abolitionism include Seymour Drescher’s Abolition: A History of Slavery and
Antislavery (2009), James Brewer Stewart’s Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery,
rev. ed. (1997), and Julie Roy Jeffrey’s The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in
the Antislavery Movement (1998). On William Lloyd Garrison, see Henry Mayer’s All on Fire:
William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (1998) and Bruce Laurie’s Beyond Garrison:
Antislavery and Social Reform (2005). For the pro-slavery argument as it developed in the South, see
Larry E. Tise’s Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1701–1840 (1987) and
James Oakes’s The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders (1982). The problems southern-
ers had in justifying slavery are explored in Kenneth S. Greenberg’s Masters and Statesmen: The
Political Culture of American Slavery (1985).

CHAPTER 14
For background on Whig programs and ideas, see Michael F. Holt’s The Rise and Fall of
the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (1999). On John
Tyler, see Edward P. Crapol’s John Tyler: The Accidental President (2006). Several works help
interpret the expansionist impulse. Frederick Merk’s Manifest Destiny and Mission in American
History: A Reinterpretation (1963) remains a classic. A more recent treatment of expansionist
ideology is Thomas R. Hietala’s Manifest Design: Anxious Aggrandizement in Late Jacksonian
America (1985).
The best surveys of western expansion are Bruce Cumings’s Dominion from Sea to Sea: Pacific
Ascendancy and American Power (2009), Walter Nugent’s Habits of Empire: A History of American
Expansionism (2008), and Richard White’s “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A New His-
tory of the American West (1991). For the expansionism of the 1840s, see Steven E. Woodworth’s
Manifest Destinies: America’s Westward Expansion and the Road to the Civil War (2010). Robert M.
 Further Readings • A133

Utley’s A Life Wild and Perilous: Mountain Men and the Paths to the Pacific (1997) tells the dra-
matic story of the rugged pathfinders who discovered corridors over the Rocky Mountains. The
movement of settlers to the West is ably documented in John Mack Faragher’s Women and Men on
the Overland Trail, 2nd ed. (2001), and David Dary’s The Santa Fe Trail: Its History, Legends, and
Lore (2000). On the tragic Donner party, see Ethan Rarick’s Desperate Passage: The Donner Party’s
Perilous Journey West (2008).
Gene M. Brack’s Mexico Views Manifest Destiny, 1821–1846: An Essay on the Origins of the
Mexican War (1975) takes Mexico’s viewpoint on U.S. designs on the West. For the American
perspective on Texas, see Joel H. Silbey’s Storm over Texas: The Annexation Controversy and the
Road to Civil War (2005). On the siege of the Alamo, see William C. Davis’s Three Roads to the
Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis
(1998). An excellent biography related to the emergence of Texas is Gregg Cantrell’s Stephen F.
Austin: Empresario of Texas (1999). On James K. Polk, see Robert W. Merry’s A Country of Vast
Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War, and the Conquest of the American Continent (2009).
The best survey of the military conflict is John S. D. Eisenhower’s So Far from God: The U.S.
War with Mexico, 1846–1848 (1989). The Mexican War as viewed from the perspective of the
soldiers is ably described in Richard Bruce Winders’s Mr. Polk’s Army: American Military Experi-
ence in the Mexican War (1997). On the diplomatic aspects of Mexican-American relations, see
David M. Pletcher’s The Diplomacy of Annexation: Texas, Oregon, and the Mexican War (1973).

CHAPTER 15
The best surveys of the forces and events leading to the Civil War include James M.
McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (1988), Stephen B. Oates’s The
Approaching Fury: Voices of the Storm, 1820–1861 (1997), and Bruce Levine’s Half Slave and
Half Free: The Roots of Civil War (1992). The most recent narrative of the political debate lead-
ing to secession is Michael A. Morrison’s Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest
Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War (1997).
Mark J. Stegmaier’s Texas, New Mexico, and the Compromise of 1850: Boundary Dispute and
Sectional Crisis (1996) probes that crucial dispute, while Michael F. Holt’s The Political Crisis of
the 1850s (1978) traces the demise of the Whigs. Eric Foner, in Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The
Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (1970), shows how events and ideas com-
bined in the formation of a new political party. A more straightforward study of the rise of the
Republicans is William E. Gienapp’s The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852–1856 (1987). The
economic, social, and political crises of 1857 are examined in Kenneth M. Stampp’s America in
1857: A Nation on the Brink (1990). Another perspective on the economic causes of the Civil War
is Marc Egnal’s Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War (2009). On the Anthony
Burns case, see Albert J. von Frank’s The Trials of Anthony Burns: Freedom and Slavery in Emer-
son’s Boston (1998). The Dred Scott case is ably assessed in Earl M. Maltz’s Dred Scott and the Pol-
itics of Slavery (2007). For an assessment of the Revival of 1857–1858, see Kathryn Teresa Long,
The Revival of 1857–1858: Interpreting an American Religious Awakening (1998).
Robert W. Johannsen’s Stephen A. Douglas (1973) analyzes the issue of popular sovereignty.
A more national perspective is provided in James A. Rawley’s Race and Politics: “Bleeding
Kansas” and the Coming of the Civil War (1969). On the role of John Brown in the sectional cri-
sis, see Robert E. McGlone’s John Brown’s War Against Slavery (2009) and David S. Reynolds’s
John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil
A134 • FURTHER READINGS

Rights (2005). An excellent study of the South’s journey to secession is William W. Freehling’s The
Road to Disunion, vol. 1, Secessionists at Bay, 1776–1854 (1990), and The Road to Disunion, vol. 2,
Secessionists Triumphant, 1854–1861 (2007). Robert E. Bonner traces the emergence of southern
nationalism in Mastering America: Southern Slaveholders and the Crisis of American Nationhood
(2009).
On the Buchanan presidency, see Jean H. Baker’s James Buchanan (2004). On Lincoln’s role
in the coming crisis of war, see Don E. Fehrenbacher’s Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850s
(1962). Harry V. Jaffa’s Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-
Douglas Debate, 50th anniversary ed. (2009), details the debates, and Maury Klein’s Days of
Defiance: Sumter, Secession, and the Coming of the Civil War (1997) treats the Fort Sumter con-
troversy. An excellent collection of interpretive essays is Why the Civil War Came (1996), edited
by Gabor S. Boritt.

CHAPTER 16
On the start of the Civil War, see Adam Goodheart’s 1861: The Civil War Awakening
(2011). The best one-volume overview of the Civil War period is James M. McPherson’s Battle
Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (1988). A good introduction to the military events is Her-
man Hattaway’s Shades of Blue and Gray: An Introductory Military History of the Civil War
(1997). The outlook and experiences of the common soldier are explored in James M.
McPherson’s For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (1997) and Earl J.
Hess’s The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat (1997).
The northern war effort is ably assessed in Gary W. Gallagher’s The Union War (2011). For
emphasis on the South, see Gallagher’s The Confederate War (1997). A sparkling account of the
birth of the Rebel nation is William C. Davis’s “A Government of Our Own”: The Making of the
Confederacy (1994). The same author provides a fine biography of the Confederate president
in Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour (1991). On the best Confederate commander, see
John M. Taylor’s Duty Faithfully Performed: Robert E. Lee and His Critics (1999). On the key
Union generals, see Lee Kennett’s Sherman: A Soldier’s Life (2001) and Josiah Bunting III’s
Ulysses S. Grant (2004).
Analytical scholarship on the military conflict includes Joseph L. Harsh’s Confederate Tide Ris-
ing: Robert E. Lee and the Making of Southern Strategy, 1861–1862 (1998), Steven E. Woodworth’s
Jefferson Davis and His Generals: The Failure of Confederate Command in the West (1990), and Paul
D. Casdorph’s Lee and Jackson: Confederate Chieftains (1992). Lonnie R. Speer’s Portals to Hell:
Military Prisons of the Civil War (1997) details the ghastly experience of prisoners of war.
The history of the North during the war is surveyed in Philip Shaw Paludan’s A People’s
Contest: The Union and Civil War, 1861–1865, 2nd ed. (1996), and J. Matthew Gallman’s The
North Fights the Civil War: The Home Front (1994). See also Jennifer L. Weber’s Copperheads:
The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North (2006). A good synthesis of the war and its
effects is David Goldfield’s America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation (2011).
The central northern political figure, Abraham Lincoln, is the subject of many books. See
James McPherson’s Abraham Lincoln (2009) and Ronald C. White Jr.’s A. Lincoln: A Biography
(2009). On Lincoln’s great speeches, see Ronald C. White Jr.’s The Eloquent President: A Portrait
of Lincoln through His Words (2005). The election of 1864 is treated in John C. Waugh’s Reelect-
ing Lincoln: The Battle for the 1864 Presidency (1997). On Lincoln’s assassination, see William
Hanchett’s The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies (1983). For the religious implication of the war, see
George C. Rable’s God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the Civil War (2011).
 Further Readings • A135

Concerning specific military campaigns, see Larry J. Daniel’s Shiloh: The Battle That
Changed the Civil War (1997), Thomas Goodrich’s Black Flag: Guerrilla Warfare on the West-
ern Border, 1861–1865 (1995), Stephen W. Sears’s To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula
Campaign (1992), James M. McPherson’s Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam (2002), James Lee
McDonough and James Pickett Jones’s “War So Terrible”: Sherman and Atlanta (1987),
Robert Garth Scott’s Into the Wilderness with the Army of the Potomac, rev. and enl. ed. (1992),
Marc Wortman’s The Bonfire: The Siege and Burning of Atlanta (2008), Richard Slotkin’s No
Quarter: The Battle of the Crater, 1864 (2009), and Noah Andre Trudeau’s Southern Storm:
Sherman’s March to the Sea (2008). On the final weeks of the war, see William C. Davis’s An
Honorable Defeat: The Last Days of the Confederate Government (2001).
The experience of the African American soldier is surveyed in Joseph T. Glatthaar’s Forged
in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers (1990) and Ira Berlin,
Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland’s Freedom’s Soldiers: The Black Military Experience in the
Civil War (1998). For the African American woman’s experience, see Jacqueline Jones’s Labor
of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work and the Family, from Slavery to the Present (1985).
On Lincoln’s evolving racial views, see Eric Foner’s The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and Amer-
ican Slavery (2010).
Recent gender and ethnic studies include Nina Silber’s Gender and the Sectional Conflict
(2008), Drew Gilpin Faust’s Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the
American Civil War (1996), George C. Rable’s Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern
Nationalism (1989), and William L. Burton’s Melting Pot Soldiers: The Union’s Ethnic Regi-
ments, 2nd ed. (1998).

CHAPTER 17
The most comprehensive treatment of Reconstruction is Eric Foner’s Reconstruction:
America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (1988). On Andrew Johnson, see Hans L. Tre-
fousse’s Andrew Johnson: A Biography (1989) and David D. Stewart’s Impeached: The Trial of
Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy (2009). An excellent brief biography of Grant
is Josiah Bunting III’s Ulysses S. Grant (2004).
Scholars have been sympathetic to the aims and motives of the Radical Republicans. See,
for instance, Herman Belz’s Reconstructing the Union: Theory and Policy during the Civil War
(1969) and Richard Nelson Current’s Those Terrible Carpetbaggers: A Reinterpretation
(1988). The ideology of the Radicals is explored in Michael Les Benedict’s A Compromise of
Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction, 1863–1869 (1974). On the black
political leaders, see Phillip Dray’s Capitol Men: The Epic Story of Reconstruction through the
Lives of the First Black Congressmen (2008).
The intransigence of southern white attitudes is examined in Michael Perman’s Reunion
without Compromise: The South and Reconstruction, 1865–1868 (1973) and Dan T. Carter’s
When the War Was Over: The Failure of Self-Reconstruction in the South, 1865–1867 (1985).
Allen W. Trelease’s White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction
(1971) covers the various organizations that practiced vigilante tactics. On the massacre of
African Americans, see Charles Lane’s The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the
Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction (2008). The difficulties former slaves had in
adjusting to the new labor system are documented in James L. Roark’s Masters without Slaves:
Southern Planters in the Civil War and Reconstruction (1977). Books on southern politics dur-
ing Reconstruction include Michael Perman’s The Road to Redemption: Southern Politics,
A136 • FURTHER READINGS

1869–1879 (1984), Terry L. Seip’s The South Returns to Congress: Men, Economic Measures, and
Intersectional Relationships, 1868–1879 (1983), and Mark W. Summers’s Railroads, Reconstruc-
tion, and the Gospel of Prosperity: Aid under the Radical Republicans, 1865–1877 (1984).
Numerous works study the freed blacks’ experience in the South. Start with Leon F.
Litwack’s Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (1979). Joel Williamson’s After
Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina during Reconstruction, 1861–1877 (1965) argues that
South Carolina blacks took an active role in pursuing their political and economic rights. The
Freedmen’s Bureau is explored in William S. McFeely’s Yankee Stepfather: General O. O.
Howard and the Freedmen (1968). The situation of freed slave women is discussed in Jacque-
line Jones’s Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work and the Family, from Slavery to
the Present (1985).
The politics of corruption outside the South is depicted in William S. McFeely’s Grant: A
Biography (1981). The political maneuvers of the election of 1876 and the resultant crisis and
compromise are explained in Michael Holt’s By One Vote: The Disputed Presidential Election
of 1876 (2008).

CHAPTER 18
For masterly syntheses of post–Civil War industrial development, see Walter Licht’s
Industrializing America: The Nineteenth Century (1995) and Maury Klein’s The Genesis of Indus-
trial America, 1870–1920 (2007). On the growth of railroads, see Richard White’s Railroaded:
The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (2011) and Albro Martin’s Railroad
Triumphant: The Growth, Rejection, and Rebirth of a Vital American Force (1992).
On entrepreneurship in the iron and steel sector, see Thomas J. Misa’s A Nation of Steel: The
Making of Modern America, 1865–1925 (1995). The best biographies of the leading business
tycoons are Ron Chernow’s Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (1998), David Nasaw’s
Andrew Carnegie (2006), and Jean Strouse’s Morgan: American Financier (1999). Nathan
Rosenberg’s Technology and American Economic Growth (1972) documents the growth of
invention during the period.
For an overview of the struggle of workers to organize unions, see Philip Bray’s There Is
Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America (2010). On the 1877 railroad strike, see
David O. Stowell’s Streets, Railroad, and the Great Strike of 1877 (1999). For the role of women
in the changing workplace, see Alice Kessler-Harris’s Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning
Women in the United States (1982) and Susan E. Kennedy’s If All We Did Was to Weep at Home:
A History of White Working-Class Women in American (1979). On Mother Jones, see Elliott J.
Gorn’s Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America (2001). To trace the rise of social-
ism among organized workers, see Nick Salvatore’s Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist
(1982). The key strikes are discussed in Paul Arvich’s The Haymarket Tragedy (1984) and Paul
Krause’s The Battle for Homestead, 1880–1892: Politics, Culture, and Steel (1992).

CHAPTER 19
The classic study of the emergence of the New South remains C. Vann Woodward’s Ori-
gins of the New South, 1877–1913 (1951). A more recent treatment of southern society after the
end of Reconstruction is Edward L. Ayers’s Southern Crossing: A History of the American South,
 Further Readings • A137

1877–1906 (1995). A thorough survey of industrialization in the South is James C. Cobb’s

Industrialization and Southern Society, 1877–1984 (1984).
C. Vann Woodward’s The Strange Career of Jim Crow, commemorative ed. (2002), remains the
standard on southern race relations. Some of Woodward’s points are challenged in Howard N.
Rabinowitz’s Race Relations in the Urban South, 1865–1890 (1978). Leon F. Litwack’s Trouble in
Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (1998) treats the rise of legal segregation, while
Michael Perman’s Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888–1908 (2001) sur-
veys efforts to keep African Americans from voting. An award-winning study of white women
and the race issue is Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore’s Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics
of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896–1920 (1996). On W. E. B. Du Bois, see David Lev-
ering Lewis’s W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 (1993). On Booker T. Washing-
ton, see Robert J. Norrell’s Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington (2009).
For stimulating reinterpretations of the frontier and the development of the West, see
William Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1991), Patricia Nelson Lim-
erick’s The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (1987), Richard White’s
“It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A New History of the American West (1991), and
Walter Nugent’s Into the West: The Story of Its People (1999). An excellent overview is James M.
McPherson’s Into the West: From Reconstruction to the Final Days of the American Frontier
(2006).
The role of African Americans in western settlement is the focus of William Loren Katz’s
The Black West: A Documentary and Pictorial History of the African American Role in the West-
ward Expansion of the United States, rev. ed. (2005), and Nell Irvin Painter’s Exodusters: Black
Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction (1977). The best account of the conflicts between
Indians and whites is Robert M. Utley’s The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846–1890
(1984). On the Battle of the Little Bighorn, see Nathaniel Philbrick’s The Last Stand: Custer,
Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn (2010). On Crazy Horse, see Thomas Powers’s
The Killing of Crazy Horse (2010). For a presentation of the Native American side of the story,
see Peter Nabokov’s Native American Testimony: A Chronicle of Indian-White Relations from
Prophecy to the Present, 1492–2000, rev. ed. (1999). On the demise of the buffalo herds, see
Andrew C. Isenberg’s The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750–1920 (2000).

CHAPTER 20
For a survey of urbanization, see David R. Goldfield’s Urban America: A History, 2nd ed.
(1989). Gunther Barth discusses the emergence of a new urban culture in City People: The Rise of
Modern City Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (1980). John Bodnar offers a synthesis of the
urban immigrant experience in The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America
(1985). See also Roger Daniels’s Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and
Immigrants since 1882 (2004). Walter Nugent’s Crossings: The Great Transatlantic Migrations,
1870–1914 (1992) provides a wealth of demographic information and insight. Efforts to stop Chi-
nese immigration are described in Erika Lee’s At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration during the
Exclusion Era (2003).
On urban environments and sanitary reforms, see Martin V. Melosi’s The Sanitary City:
Urban Infrastructure in America from Colonial Times to the Present (2000), Joel A. Tarr’s The
Search for the Ultimate Sink: Urban Pollution in Historical Perspective (1996), and Suellen Hoy’s
Chasing Dirt: The American Pursuit of Cleanliness (1995).
A138 • FURTHER READINGS

For the growth of urban leisure and sports, see Roy Rosenzweig’s Eight Hours for What We
Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870–1920 (1983) and Steven A. Riess’s City
Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports (1989). Saloon culture is
examined in Madelon Powers’s Faces along the Bar: Lore and Order in the Workingman’s Saloon,
1870–1920 (1998).
On the impact of the theory of evolution, see Barry Werth’s Banquet at Delmonico’s: Great
Minds, the Gilded Age, and the Triumph of Evolution in America (2009). On the rise of realism
in thought and the arts during the second half of the nineteenth century, see David E. Shi’s
Facing Facts: Realism in American Thought and Culture, 1850–1920 (1995). Pragmatism is the
focus of Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (2001).

CHAPTER 21
Two good overviews of the Gilded Age are Sean Cashman’s America in the Gilded Age:
From the Death of Lincoln to the Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (1984) and Mark Summers’s The
Gilded Age or, The Hazard of New Functions (1996). Nell Irvin Painter’s Standing at Armageddon:
The United States, 1877–1919 (1987) focuses on the experience of the working class. For a stimu-
lating overview of the political, social, and economic trends during the Gilded Age, see Jack
Beatty’s Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865–1900 (2007). On the develop-
ment of city rings and bosses, see Kenneth D. Ackerman’s Boss Tweed: The Rise and Fall of the Cor-
rupt Pol Who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York (2005). Excellent presidential biographies
include Hans L. Trefousse’s Rutherford B. Hayes (2002), Zachary Karabell’s Chester Alan Arthur
(2004), Henry F. Graff ’s Grover Cleveland (2002), and Kevin Phillips’s William McKinley (2003).
On the political culture of the Gilded Age, see Charles Calhoun’s Minority Victory: Gilded Age
Politics and the Front Porch Campaign of 1888 (2008).
Scholars have also examined various Gilded Age issues and interest groups. Gerald W.
McFarland’s Mugwumps, Morals, and Politics, 1884–1920 (1975) examines the issue of reform-
ing government service. Tom E. Terrill’s The Tariff, Politics, and American Foreign Policy,
1874–1901 (1973) lends clarity to that complex issue. The finances of the Gilded Age are cov-
ered in Walter T. K. Nugent’s Money and American Society, 1865–1880 (1968).
A balanced account of Populism is Charles Postel’s The Populist Vision (2007). The election
of 1896 is the focus of R. Hal Williams’s Realigning America: McKinley, Bryan, and the Remark-
able Election of 1896 (2010). On the role of religion in the agrarian protest movements, see Joe
Creech’s Righteous Indignation: Religion and the Populist Revolution (2006). The best biography
of Bryan is Michael Kazin’s A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (2006). For an
innovative of the politics and culture of the Gilded Age, see Jackson Lears, Rebirth of a Nation:
The Making of Modern America, 1877–1920 (2009).

CHAPTER 22
An excellent survey of the diplomacy of the era is Charles S. Campbell’s The Transfor-
mation of American Foreign Relations, 1865–1900 (1976). For background on the events of the
1890s, see David Healy’s U.S. Expansionism: The Imperialist Urge in the 1890s (1970). The dis-
pute over American policy in Hawaii is covered in Thomas J. Osborne’s “Empire Can Wait”:
American Opposition to Hawaiian Annexation, 1893–1898 (1981).
 Further Readings • A139

Ivan Musicant’s Empire by Default: The Spanish-American War and the Dawn of the Ameri-
can Century (1998) is the most comprehensive volume on the conflict. A colorful treatment of
the powerful men promoting war is Evan Thomas’s The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Mahan,
and the Rush to Empire, 1898 (2010). For the war’s aftermath in the Philippines, see Stuart
Creighton Miller’s “Benevolent Assimilation”: The American Conquest of the Philippines,
1899–1903 (1982). Robert L. Beisner’s Twelve against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898–1900
(1968) handles the debate over annexation. On the Philippine-American War, see David J. Sil-
bey’s A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899–1902 (2007).
A good introduction to American interest in China is Michael H. Hunt’s The Making of a
Special Relationship: The United States and China to 1914 (1983). Kenton J. Clymer’s John Hay:
The Gentleman as Diplomat (1975) examines the role of this key secretary of state in forming
policy.
For U.S. policy in the Caribbean and Central America, see Walter LaFeber’s Inevitable Revo-
lutions: The United States in Central America, 2nd ed. (1993). David McCullough’s The Path
between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914 (1977) presents an admiring
account of how the United States secured the Panama Canal. A more sober assessment is Julie
Greene’s The Canal Builders: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal (2009).

CHAPTER 23
Splendid analyses of progressivism can be found in John Whiteclay Chambers II’s The
Tyranny of Change: America in the Progressive Era, 1890–1920, rev. ed. (2000), John M.
Cooper’s Pivotal Decades: The United States, 1900–1920 (1990), Steven J. Diner’s A Very Differ-
ent Age: Americans of the Progressive Era (1997), Maureen A. Flanagan’s America Reformed: Pro-
gressives and Progressivisms, 1890–1920 (2006), Michael McGerr’s A Fierce Discontent: The Rise
and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America (2003), and David Traxel’s Crusader Nation:
The United States in Peace and the Great War, 1898–1920 (2006). On Ida Tarbell and the muck-
rakers, see Steve Weinberg’s Taking on the Trust: The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rock-
efeller (2008). The evolution of government policy toward business is examined in Martin J.
Sklar’s The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890–1916: The Market, the Law,
and Politics (1988). Mina Carson’s Settlement Folk: Social Thought and the American Settlement
Movement, 1885–1930 (1990) and Jack M. Holl’s Juvenile Reform in the Progressive Era: William
R. George and the Junior Republic Movement (1971) examine the social problems in the cities.
Robert Kanigel’s The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency
(1997) highlights the role of efficiency in the Progressive Era.
An excellent study of the role of women in progressivism’s emphasis on social justice is
Kathryn Kish Sklar’s Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work: The Rise of Women’s Political Cul-
ture, 1830–1900 (1995). On the tragic fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, see David Von
Drehle’s Triangle: The Fire That Changed America (2003). Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitz-
patrick’s Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States, enl. ed.
(1996), surveys the condition of women in the late nineteenth century. The best study of the
settlement house movement is Jean Bethke Elshtain’s Jane Addams and the Dream of American
Democracy: A Life (2002).
On Theodore Roosevelt and the conservation movement, see Douglas Brinkley’s The
Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (2009). The pivotal election
of 1912 is covered in James Chace’s 1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft, and Debs—The Election That
A140 • FURTHER READINGS

Changed the Country (2004) and Sidney M. Milkis’s TR, the Progressive Party, and the Transfor-
mation of Democracy (2009). Excellent biographies include Kathleen Dalton’s Theodore Roo-
sevelt: A Strenuous Life (2002) and H. W. Brands’s Woodrow Wilson (2003). For banking
developments, see Allan H. Meltzer’s A History of the Federal Reserve, vol. 1, 1913–1951 (2003).
The racial blind spot of Progressivism is assessed in David W. Southern’s The Progressive Era and
Race: Reform and Reaction, 1900–1917 (2006).

CHAPTER 24
A lucid overview of international events in the early twentieth century is Robert H. Fer-
rell’s Woodrow Wilson and World War I, 1917–1921 (1985). For a vivid account of U.S. inter-
vention in Mexico, see Frederick Katz’s The Life and Times of Pancho Villa (1999). On Wilson’s
stance toward war, see Robert W. Tucker’s Woodrow Wilson and the Great War: Reconsidering
America’s Neutrality, 1914–1917 (2007). An excellent biography is John Milton Cooper Jr.’s
Woodrow Wilson: A Biography (2010).
For the European experience in the First World War, see Adam Hochschild’s To End All Wars:
A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918 (2011). Edward M. Coffman’s The War to End All
Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I (1968) is a detailed presentation of Amer-
ica’s military involvement. See also Gary Mead’s The Doughboys: America and the First World War
(2000). For a survey of the impact of the war on the home front, see Meirion Harries and Susie
Harries’s The Last Days of Innocence: America at War, 1917–1918 (1997). Maurine Weiner Green-
wald’s Women, War, and Work: The Impact of World War I on Women Workers in the United States
(1980) discusses the role of women. Ronald Schaffer’s America in the Great War: The Rise of the
War Welfare State (1991) shows the effect of war mobilization on business organization. Richard
Polenberg’s Fighting Faiths: The Abrams Case, the Supreme Court, and Free Speech (1987) exam-
ines the prosecution of a case under the 1918 Sedition Act. See also Ernest Freeberg’s Democracy’s
Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent (2009).
How American diplomacy fared in the making of peace has received considerable atten-
tion. Thomas J. Knock interrelates domestic affairs and foreign relations in his explanation of
Wilson’s peacemaking in To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World
Order (1992). See also John Milton Cooper Jr.’s Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wil-
son and the Fight for the League of Nations (2002).
The problems of the immediate postwar years are chronicled by a number of historians.
The best overview is Ann Hagedorn’s Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919 (2007). On
the Spanish flu, see John M. Barry’s The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague
in History (2004). Labor tensions are examined in David E. Brody’s Labor in Crisis: The Steel
Strike of 1919 (1965) and Francis Russell’s A City in Terror: Calvin Coolidge and the 1919 Boston
Police Strike (1975). On racial strife, see Jan Voogd’s Race Riots and Resistance: The Red Summer
of 1919 (2008). The fear of Communists is analyzed in Robert K. Murray’s Red Scare: A Study
in National Hysteria, 1919–1920 (1955).

CHAPTER 25
For a lively survey of the social and cultural changes during the interwar period, start
with William E. Leuchtenburg’s The Perils of Prosperity, 1914–32, 2nd ed. (1993). Even more
comprehensive s Michael E. Parrish’s Anxious Decades: America in Prosperity and Depression,
 Further Readings • A141

1920–1941 (1992). The best introduction to the culture of the twenties remains Roderick
Nash’s The Nervous Generation: American Thought, 1917–1930 (1990). See also Lynn Dume-
nil’s The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (1995).
John Higham’s Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925, 2nd ed. (2002)
details the story of immigration restriction. The controversial Sacco and Vanzetti case is the focus of
Moshik Temkin’s The Sacco-Vanzetti Affair: America on Trial (2009). For analysis of the revival of
Klan activity, see Thomas R. Pegram’s One Hundred Percent American: The Rebirth and Decline
of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s (2011). The best analysis of the Scopes trial is Edward J. Larson’s
Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion
(1997). On Prohibition, see Daniel Okrent’s Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (2011).
Woman suffrage is treated in Sara Hunter Graham’s Woman Suffrage and the New Democ-
racy (1996) and Kristi Anderson’s After Suffrage: Women in Partisan and Electoral Politics before
the New Deal (1996). The best study of the birth-control movement is Ellen Chesler’s Woman
of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America (1992). See Charles Flint
Kellogg’s NAACP: A History of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(1967) for his analysis of the pioneering court cases against racial discrimination. Nathan
Irvin Huggins’s Harlem Renaissance (1971) assesses the cultural impact of the Great Migration
on New York City. The emergence of jazz is ably documented in Burton W. Peretti’s The Cre-
ation of Jazz: Music, Race, and Culture in Urban America (1992). On the African American
migration from the South, see James N. Gregory’s The Southern Diaspora: How the Great
Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America (2005).
Scientific breakthroughs are analyzed in Manjit Kumar’s Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the
Great Debate about the Nature of Reality (2010). The best overview of cultural modernism in
Europe is Peter Gay’s Modernism: The Lure of Heresy from Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond
(2009). See also Stephen Kern’s The Culture of Time and Space, 1880–1918 (2003). A com-
pelling biography the champion of modernist verse is David Moody’s Ezra Pount: Poet (2007).
On southern modernism, see Daniel Joseph Singal’s The War Within: From Victorian to Mod-
ernist Thought in the South, 1919–1945 (1982). Stanley Coben’s Rebellion against Victorianism:
The Impetus for Cultural Change in 1920s America (1991) surveys the appeal of modernism
among writers, artists, and intellectuals.

CHAPTER 26
A fine synthesis of events immediately following the First World War is Ellis W. Hawley’s
The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order: A History of the American People and Their
Institutions, 1917–1933, 2nd ed. (1992). On the election of 1920, see David Pietrusza, 1920: The
Year of the Six Presidents (2006).
On Harding, see Robert K. Murray’s The Harding Era: Warren G. Harding and His Adminis-
tration (1969). On Coolidge, see Robert H. Ferrell’s The Presidency of Calvin Coolidge (1998).
On Hoover, see Martin L. Fausold’s The Presidency of Herbert C. Hoover (1985). The Democratic
candidate for president in 1928 is explored in Robert A. Slayton’s Empire Statesman: The Rise
and Redemption of Al Smith (2001). The influential secretary of the Treasury during the twenties
is ably analyzed in David Cannadine’s Mellon: An American Life (2006).
On the stock-market crash in 1929 see Maury Klein’s Rainbow’s End: The Crash of 1929
(2000). Overviews of the depressed economy are found in Charles P. Kindleberger’s The World
in Depression, 1929–1939, rev. and enlarged ed. (1986) and Peter Fearon’s War, Prosperity, and
Depression: The U.S. Economy, 1917–1945 (1987). John A. Garraty’s The Great Depression: An
A142 • FURTHER READINGS

Inquiry into the Causes, Course, and Consequences of the Worldwide Depression of the Nineteen-
Thirties (1986) describes how people survived the Depression. On the removal of the Bonus
Army, see Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen’s The Bonus Army: An American Epic (2004).

CHAPTER 27
A comprehensive overview of the New Deal is David M. Kennedy’s Freedom from Fear:
The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (1999). A lively biography of Franklin
D. Roosevelt is H. W. Brands’s Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (2009). The Roosevelt marriage is well described in Hazel Rowley’s
Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage (2011). On the first woman cabinet member,
see Kirstin Downey’s The Woman behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins (2009). The
busy first year of the New Deal is ably detailed in Anthony J. Badger’s FDR: The First Hundred
Days (2008). Perhaps the most successful of the early New Deal programs is the focus of Neil
M. Maher’s Nature’s New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American
Environmental Movement (2008). On the political opponents of the New Deal, see Alan Brink-
ley’s Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression (1982). Roosevelt’s
battle with the Supreme Court is detailed in Jeff Shesol’s Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs.
The Supreme Court (2010). The actual effects of the New Deal on the economy are detailed in
Elliot A. Rosen’s Roosevelt, the Great Depression, and the Economics of Recovery (2005).
A critical assessment of Roosevelt and the New Deal is Amity Schlaes’s The Forgotten Man
(2007). James N. Gregory’s American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in
California (1989) describes the migratory movement. On the environmental and human
causes of the dust bowl, see Donald Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s
(1979). On cultural life during the thirties, see Morris Dickstein’s Dancing in the Dark: A Cul-
tural History of the Great Depression (2009).
The best overview of diplomacy between the world wars remains Selig Adler’s The Uncer-
tain Giant, 1921–1941: American Foreign Policy between the Wars (1965). Robert Dallek’s
Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (1979) provides a judicious
assessment of Roosevelt’s foreign-policy initiatives during the thirties.
A noteworthy study is Waldo Heinrichs’s Threshold of War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and Amer-
ican Entry into World War II (1988). See also David Reynolds’s From Munich to Pearl Harbor:
Roosevelt’s America and the Origins of the Second World War (2001). On the surprise attack
on Pearl Harbor, see Gordon W. Prange’s Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History (1986). Japan’s
perspective is described in Akira Iriye’s The Origins of the Second World War in Asia and the
Pacific (1987).

CHAPTER 28
For sweeping surveys of the Second World War, consult Anthony Roberts’s The Storm of
War: A New History of the Second World War (2011) and Max Hastings’s The World at War,
1939–1945 (2011), while Charles B. MacDonald’s The Mighty Endeavor: The American War in
Europe (1986) concentrates on U.S. involvement. Roosevelt’s wartime leadership is analyzed in
Eric Larrabee’s Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and Their War
(1987).
 Further Readings • A143

Books on specific European campaigns include Anthony Beevor’s D-Day: The Battle for
Normandy (2010) and Charles B. MacDonald’s A Time for Trumpets: The Untold Story of the
Battle of the Bulge (1985). On the Allied commander, see Carlo D’Este’s Eisenhower: A Soldier’s
Life (2002).
For the war in the Far East, see John Costello’s The Pacific War, 1941–1945 (1981), Ronald
H. Spector’s Eagle against the Sun: The American War with Japan (1985), John W. Dower’s
award-winning War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (1986), and Dan van der
Vat’s The Pacific Campaign: The U.S.-Japanese Naval War, 1941–1945 (1991).
An excellent overview of the war’s effects on the home front is Michael C. C. Adams’s The
Best War Ever: America and World War II (1994). On economic effects, see Harold G. Vatter’s
The U.S. Economy in World War II (1985). Susan M. Hartmann’s The Home Front and Beyond:
American Women in the 1940s (1982) treats the new working environment for women.
Kenneth D. Rose tells the story of problems on the home front in Myth and the Greatest Gener-
ation: A Social History of Americans in World War II (2008). Neil A. Wynn looks at the participa-
tion of blacks in The Afro-American and the Second World War (1976). A more focused study of
black airmen is J. Todd Moye’s Freedom Flyers: The Tuskeegee Airmen of World War II (2010).
The story of the oppression of Japanese Americans is told in Greg Robinson’s A Tragedy for
Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America (2009). On the development of the
atomic bomb, see Jim Baggott’s The First War of Physics: The Secret History of the Atomic Bomb
(2010).
A sound introduction to U.S. diplomacy during the conflict can be found in Gaddis Smith’s
American Diplomacy during the Second World War, 1941–1945 (1965). To understand the role
that Roosevelt played in policy making, consult Warren F. Kimball’s The Juggler: Franklin Roo-
sevelt as Wartime Statesman (1991). The most important wartime summit is assessed in S. M.
Plokhy’s Yalta: The Price of Peace (2010). The issues and events that led to the deployment of
atomic weapons are addressed in Martin J. Sherwin’s A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb
and the Grand Alliance (1975).

CHAPTER 29
The cold war remains a hotly debated topic. The traditional interpretation is best
reflected in John Lewis Gaddis’s The Cold War: A New History (2005). Both superpowers, Gad-
dis argues, were responsible for causing the cold war, but the Soviet Union was more culpable.
The revisionist perspective is represented by Gar Alperovitz’s Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima
and Potsdam: The Use of the Atomic Bomb and the American Confrontation with Soviet Power,
2nd ed. (1994). Alperovitz places primary responsibility for the conflict on the United States.
Also see H. W. Brands’s The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War (1993) and Melvyn P.
Leffler’s For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War (2007).
On the architect of the containment strategy, see John L. Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American
Life (2011).
Arnold A. Offner indicts Truman for clumsy statesmanship in Another Such Victory: Presi-
dent Truman and the Cold War, 1945–1953 (2002). For a positive assessment of Truman’s leader-
ship, see Alonzo L. Hamby’s Beyond the New Deal: Harry S. Truman and American Liberalism
(1973) and Robert Dallek’s The Lost Peace: Leadership in a Time of Horror and Hope, 1945–1953
(2010). The domestic policies of the Fair Deal are treated in William C. Berman’s The Politics of
Civil Rights in the Truman Administration (1970), Richard M. Dalfiume’s Desegregation of the
A144 • FURTHER READINGS

U.S. Armed Forces: Fighting on Two Fronts, 1939–1953 (1969), and Maeva Marcus’s Truman and
the Steel Seizure Case: The Limits of Presidential Power (1977). The most comprehensive biogra-
phy of Truman is David McCullough’s Truman (1992).
For an introduction to the tensions in Asia, see Akira Iriye’s The Cold War in Asia: A Histor-
ical Introduction (1974). For the Korean conflict, see Callum A. MacDonald’s Korea: The War
before Vietnam (1986) and Max Hasting’s The Korean War (1987).
The anti-Communist syndrome is surveyed in David Caute’s The Great Fear: The Anti-
Communist Purge under Truman and Eisenhower (1978). Arthur Herman’s Joseph McCarthy: Reex-
amining the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator (2000) covers McCarthy himself. For
a well-documented account of how the cold war was sustained by superpatriotism, intolerance,
and suspicion, see Stephen J. Whitfield’s The Culture of the Cold War, 2nd ed. (1996).

CHAPTER 30
Two excellent overviews of social and cultural trends in the postwar era are William H.
Chafe’s The Unfinished Journey: America since World War II, 6th ed. (2006) and William E.
Leuchtenburg’s A Troubled Feast: America since 1945, rev. ed. (1979). For insights into the cul-
tural life of the fifties, see Jeffrey Hart’s When the Going Was Good! American Life in the Fifties
(1982) and David Halberstam’s The Fifties (1993).
The baby boom generation and its impact are vividly described in Paul C. Light’s Baby
Boomers (1988). The emergence of the television industry is discussed in Erik Barnouw’s Tube
of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television, 2nd rev. ed. (1990), and Ella Taylor’s Prime-
Time Families: Television Culture in Postwar America (1989).
A comprehensive account of the process of suburban development is Kenneth T. Jackson’s
Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (1985). Equally good is Tom Mar-
tinson’s American Dreamscape: The Pursuit of Happiness in Postwar Suburbia (2000).
The middle-class ideal of family life in the fifties is examined in Elaine Tyler May’s Home-
ward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era, rev. ed. (2008). Thorough accounts of
women’s issues are found in Wini Breines’s Young, White, and Miserable: Growing Up Female in
the Fifties (1992). For an overview of the resurgence of religion in the fifties, see George M.
Marsden’s Religion and American Culture, 2nd ed. (2000).
A lively discussion of movies of the fifties can be found in Peter Biskind’s Seeing Is Believ-
ing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties (1983). The origins and
growth of rock and roll are surveyed in Carl Belz’s The Story of Rock, 2nd ed. (1972). Thought-
ful interpretive surveys of postwar literature include Josephine Hendin’s Vulnerable People: A
View of American Fiction since 1945 (1978) and Malcolm Bradbury’s The Modern American
Novel (1983). The colorful Beats are brought to life in Steven Watson’s The Birth of the Beat
Generation: Visionaries, Rebels, and Hipsters, 1944–1960 (1995).
Scholarship on the Eisenhower years is extensive. A carefully balanced overview of the
period is Chester J. Pach Jr. and Elmo Richardson’s The Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower,
rev. ed. (1991). For the manner in which Eisenhower conducted foreign policy, see Robert A.
Divine’s Eisenhower and the Cold War (1981). Tom Wicker deems Eisenhower a better person
than a president in Dwight D. Eisenhower (2002).
The best overview of American foreign policy since 1945 is Stephen E. Ambrose and Dou-
glas G. Brinkley’s Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy since 1938, 9th ed. (2011). For the
buildup of U.S. involvement in Indochina, consult Lloyd C. Gardner’s Approaching Vietnam:
 Further Readings • A145

From World War II through Dienbienphu, 1941–1954 (1988) and David L. Anderson’s Trapped by
Success: The Eisenhower Administration and Vietnam, 1953–61 (1991). How the Eisenhower
Doctrine came to be implemented is traced in Stephen E. Ambrose and Douglas G. Brinkley’s
Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy since 1938, 8th ed. (1997). The cold war strategy of
the Eisenhower administration is the focus of Chris Tudda’s The Truth Is Our Weapon: The
Rhetorical Diplomacy of Dwight D. Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles (2006).
The impact of the Supreme Court during the fifties is the focus of Archibald Cox’s The
Warren Court: Constitutional Decision as an Instrument of Reform (1968). A masterly study of
the important Warren Court decision on school desegregation is James T. Patterson’s Brown v.
Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (2001).
For the story of the early years of the civil rights movement, see Taylor Branch’s Parting the
Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–1963 (1988), Robert Weisbrot’s Freedom Bound: A His-
tory of America’s Civil Rights Movement (1990), and David A. Nicholas’s A Matter of Justice:
Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution (2007).

CHAPTER 31
A dispassionate analysis of John F. Kennedy’s life is Thomas C. Reeves’s A Question of
Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy (1991). The 1960 campaign is detailed in Gary A. Donald-
son’s The First Modern Campaign: Kennedy, Nixon, and the Election of 1960 (2007). The best
study of the Kennedy administration’s domestic policies is Irving Bernstein’s Promises Kept:
John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier (1991). For details on the still swirling conspiracy theories
about the assassination, see David W. Belin’s Final Disclosure: The Full Truth about the Assassi-
nation of President Kennedy (1988).
The most comprehensive biography of Lyndon B. Johnson is Robert Dallek’s two-volume
work, Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908–1960 (1991) and Flawed Giant:
Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (1998). On the Johnson administration, see Vaughn
Davis Bornet’s The Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson (1984).
Among the works that interpret liberal social policy during the sixties, John E. Schwarz’s
America’s Hidden Success: A Reassessment of Twenty Years of Public Policy (1983) offers a glow-
ing endorsement of Democratic programs. For a contrasting perspective, see Charles Murray’s
Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980, rev. ed. (1994).
On foreign policy, see Kennedy’s Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961–1963
(1989), edited by Thomas G. Paterson. To learn more about Kennedy’s problems in Cuba, see
Mark J. White’s Missiles in Cuba: Kennedy, Khrushchev, Castro and the 1962 Crisis (1997). See
also Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali’s “One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro
and Kennedy, 1958–1964 (1997).
American involvement in Vietnam has received voluminous treatment from all political per-
spectives. For an excellent overview, see Larry Berman’s Planning a Tragedy: The Americanization
of the War in Vietnam (1983) and Lyndon Johnson’s War: The Road to Stalemate in Vietnam (1989),
as well as Stanley Karnow’s Vietnam: A History, 2nd rev. ed. (1997). An analysis of policy making
concerning the Vietnam War is David M. Barrett’s Uncertain Warriors: Lyndon Johnson and His
Vietnam Advisors (1993). A fine account of the military involvement is Robert D. Schulzinger’s A
Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941–1975 (1997). On the legacy of the Vietnam
War, see Arnold R. Isaacs’s Vietnam Shadows: The War, Its Ghosts, and Its Legacy (1997).
A146 • FURTHER READINGS

Many scholars have dealt with various aspects of the civil rights movement and race rela-
tions in the sixties. See especially Carl M. Brauer’s John F. Kennedy and the Second Reconstruc-
tion (1977), David J. Garrow’s Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (1986), and Adam Fairclough’s To Redeem the Soul of America:
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr. (1987). William H.
Chafe’s Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Free-
dom (1980) details the original sit-ins. An award-winning study of racial and economic
inequality in a representative American city is Thomas J. Sugrue’s The Origins of the Urban
Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (1996).

CHAPTER 32
An engaging overview of the cultural trends of the sixties is Maurice Isserman and
Michael Kazin’s America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s, 3rd ed. (2007). The New Left is
assessed in Irwin Unger’s The Movement: A History of the American New Left, 1959–1972
(1974). On the Students for a Democratic Society, see Kirkpatrick Sale’s SDS (1973) and Allen
J. Matusow’s The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (1984). Also useful
is Todd Gitlin’s The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage, rev. ed. (1993).
Two influential assessments of the counterculture by sympathetic commentators are
Theodore Roszak’s The Making of a Counter-culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and
Its Youthful Opposition (1969) and Charles A. Reich’s The Greening of America: How the Youth
Revolution Is Trying to Make America Livable (1970). A good scholarly analysis that takes the
hippies seriously is Timothy Miller’s The Hippies and American Values (1991).
The best study of the women’s liberation movement is Ruth Rosen’s The World Split Open:
How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America, rev. ed. (2006). The organizing efforts
of Cesar Chavez are detailed in Ronald B. Taylor’s Chavez and the Farm Workers (1975). The
struggles of Native Americans for recognition and power are sympathetically described in Stan
Steiner’s The New Indians (1968).
The best overview of the seventies and eighties is James T. Patterson’s Restless Giant: The
United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore (2005). On Nixon, see Melvin Small’s thorough
analysis in The Presidency of Richard Nixon (1999). A good slim biography is Elizabeth Drew’s
Richard M. Nixon (2007). For an overview of the Watergate scandal, see Stanley I. Kutler’s The
Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon (1990). For the way the Republicans handled
foreign affairs, consult Tad Szulc’s The Illusion of Peace: Foreign Policy in the Nixon Years (1978).
The Communist takeover of Vietnam and the end of American involvement there are
traced in Larry Berman’s No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam
(2001). William Shawcross’s Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia, rev.
ed. (2002), deals with the broadening of the war, while Larry Berman’s Planning a Tragedy: The
Americanization of the War in Vietnam (1982) assesses the final impact of U.S. involvement.
The most comprehensive treatment of the anti-war movement is Tom Wells’s The War Within:
America’s Battle over Vietnam (1994).
A comprehensive treatment of the Ford administration is contained in John Robert
Greene’s The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford (1995). The best overview of the Carter administra-
tion is Burton I. Kaufman’s The Presidency of James Earl Carter, Jr., 2nd rev. ed. (2006). A work
more sympathetic to the Carter administration is John Dumbrell’s The Carter Presidency: A
Re-evaluation, 2nd ed. (1995). Gaddis Smith’s Morality, Reason, and Power: American Diplo-
macy in the Carter Years (1986) provides an overview. Background on how the Middle East
 Further Readings • A147

came to dominate much of American policy is found in William B. Quandt’s Decade of Deci-
sions: American Policy toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1967–1976 (1977).

CHAPTER 33
Two brief accounts of Reagan’s presidency are David Mervin’s Ronald Reagan and the
American Presidency (1990) and Michael Schaller’s Reckoning with Reagan: America and Its
President in the 1980s (1992). More substantial biographies are John Patrick Diggins’s Ronald
Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History (2007) and Richard Reeves’s President Rea-
gan: The Triumph of Imagination (2005). The best political analysis is Robert M. Collins’s
Transforming America: Politics and Culture during the Reagan Years (2007). An excellent analy-
sis of the 1980 election is Andrew E. Busch’s Reagan’s Victory: The Presidential Election of 1980
and the Rise of the Right (2005). A more comprehensive summary of the Reagan years is Sean
Wilentz’s The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974–2008 (2008).
The story of the rise of modern conservatism is well told in Patrick Allitt’s The Conserva-
tives: Ideas and Personalities throughout American History (2009) and Michael Schaller’s Right
Turn: American Life in the Reagan-Bush Era, 1980–1992 (2007).
On Reaganomics, see David A. Stockman’s The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolu-
tion Failed (1986) and Robert Lekachman’s Greed Is Not Enough: Reaganomics (1982). On the
issue of arms control, see Strobe Talbott’s Deadly Gambits: The Reagan Administration and the
Stalemate in Nuclear Arms Control (1984).
For Reagan’s foreign policy in Central America, see James Chace’s Endless War: How We Got
Involved in Central America—and What Can Be Done (1984) and Walter LaFeber’s Inevitable
Revolutions: The United States in Central America, 2nd ed. (1993). Insider views of Reagan’s
foreign policy are offered in Alexander M. Haig Jr.’s Caveat: Realism, Reagan, and Foreign Policy
(1984) and Caspar W. Weinberger’s Fighting for Peace: Seven Critical Years in the Pentagon
(1990).
On Reagan’s second term, see Jane Mayer and Doyle McManus’s Landslide: The Unmaking
of the President, 1984–1988 (1988). For a masterly work on the Iran-Contra affair, see
Theodore Draper’s A Very Thin Line: The Iran Contra Affairs (1991). Several collections of
essays include varying assessments of the Reagan years. Among these are The Reagan Revolu-
tion? (1988), edited by B. B. Kymlicka and Jean V. Matthews; The Reagan Presidency: An Incom-
plete Revolution? (1990), edited by Dilys M. Hill, Raymond A. Moore, and Phil Williams, and
Looking Back on the Reagan Presidency (1990), edited by Larry Berman.
On the 1988 campaign, see Jack W. Germond and Jules Witcover’s Whose Broad Stripes and
Bright Stars? The Trivial Pursuit of the Presidency, 1988 (1989) and Sidney Blumenthal’s Pledg-
ing Allegiance: The Last Campaign of the Cold War (1990). For a social history of the decade, see
John Ehrman’s The Eighties: America in the Age of Reagan (2005).

CHAPTER 34
Analysis of the Clinton years can be found in Joe Klein’s The Natural: The Misunder-
stood Presidency of Bill Clinton (2002). Clinton’s impeachment is assessed in Richard A. Pos-
ner’s An Affair of State: The Investigation, Impeachment, and Trial of President Clinton (1999).
On changing demographic trends, see Sam Roberts’s Who We Are Now: The Changing Face
of America in the Twenty-First Century (2004). On social and cultural life in the nineties, see
A148 • FURTHER READINGS

Haynes Johnson’s The Best of Times: America in the Clinton Years (2001). Economic and tech-
nological changes are assessed in Daniel T. Rogers’s Age of Fracture (2011). The onset and
growth of the AIDS epidemic are traced in And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the
AIDS Epidemic, 20th anniversary ed. (2007), by Randy Shilts.
Aspects of fundamentalist and apocalyptic movements are the subject of Paul Boyer’s
When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (1992), George M.
Marsden’s Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, new ed. (2006), and Ralph E.
Reed’s Politically Incorrect: The Emerging Faith Factor in American Politics (1994).
On the invention of the computer and the Internet, see Paul E. Ceruzzi’s A History of Mod-
ern Computing, 2nd ed. (2003), and Janet Abbate’s Inventing the Internet (1999). The booming
economy of the nineties is well analyzed in Joseph E. Stiglitz’s The Roaring Nineties: A New
History of the World’s Most Prosperous Decade (2003). On the rising stress within the work-
place, see Jill Andresky Fraser’s White-Collar Sweatshop: The Deterioration of Work and Its
Rewards in Corporate America (2001). Aspects of corporate restructuring and downsizing are
the subjects of Bennett Harrison’s Lean and Mean: The Changing Landscape of Corporate Power
in the Age of Flexibility (1994).
For further treatment of the end of the cold war, see Michael R. Beschloss and Strobe Tal-
bott’s At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War (1993) and Richard
Crockatt’s The Fifty Years War: The United States and the Soviet Union in World Politics,
1941–1991 (1995). On the Persian Gulf conflict, see Lester H. Brune’s America and the Iraqi
Crisis, 1990–1992: Origins and Aftermath (1993). On the transformation of American foreign
policy, see James Mann’s Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (2004), Claes G.
Ryn’s America the Virtuous: The Crisis of Democracy and the Quest for Empire (2003), and
Stephen M. Walt’s Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (2005).
The disputed 2000 presidential election is the focus of Jeffrey Toobin’s Too Close to Call: The
Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election (2001). On the Bush presidency, see The Pres-
idency of George W. Bush: A First Historical Assessment, edited by Julian E. Zelizer (2010). On
the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath, see The Age of Terror: America and the World after Septem-
ber 11, edited by Strobe Talbott and Nayan Chanda (2001).
For a devastating account of the Bush administration by a White House insider, see Scott
McClellan’s What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Decep-
tion (2008). On the historic 2008 election, see Michael Nelson’s The Elections of 2008 (2009).
An excellent early interpretation of the nation’s first African American president is Pete
Souza’s The Rise of Barack Obama (2010).
The Tea Party movement is assessed in Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson’s The Tea
Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism (2012) and Elizabeth Price Foley’s The
Tea Party: Three Principles (2012).
 
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Bettmann/Corbis; p. 9: Charles & Josette Lenars/Corbis; p. 12: Private Collection / © Dirk Bakker / The
Bridgeman Art Library; p. 13: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 15: Paul Souders / Getty Images; p. 20:
Bettmann/Corbis; p. 23: MPI/Getty Images; p. 24: Granger Collection; p. 28: The Benson Latin Ameri-
can Collection, University of Texas; p. 29: Library of Congress; p. 32: Atlantide Phototravel/Corbis; p. 37:
The Royal Library of Copenhagen; p. 39: Werner Forman/Art Resource, NY; p. 43: The Gallery Collec-
tion/Corbis; p. 47–48: Bettmann/Corbis.
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Portrait Gallery, London; p. 58: Bridgeman Art Library; p. 60: Granger Collection; p. 62:
Bettmann/Corbis; p. 64: Granger Collection; p. 69: Granger Collection; p. 71: Granger Collection; p. 75:
Granger Collection; p. 76: Granger Collection; p. 79: Library of Congress; p. 82: Granger Collection;
p. 86: The Mariners’ Museum/Corbis; p. 87: South Carolina Library; p. 91: Museum of the City of New
York/Corbis; p. 93: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 94: Library of Congress; p. 97: Stapleton Collection/Corbis;
p. 99: Granger Collection.
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cal Society Museum; p. 115: Granger Collection; p. 116: The Swem Library, the College of William &
Mary; p. 117: Granger Collection; p. 122: Granger Collection; p. 124: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art
Center Colonial Williamsburg; p. 128: North Wind Picture Archive; p. 130: Granger Collection; p. 131:
Granger Collection; p. 137: North Wind Picture Archives; p. 138: Granger Collection; p. 144: Collection
of the New-York Historical Society; p. 145: Library Company of Philadelphia; p. 148: Stock Mon-
tage/Getty Images; p. 149: Granger Collection; p. 151: Granger Collection; p. 152: National Portrait
Gallery, London.
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Resource, NY; p. 169: Three Lions/Getty Images; p. 170: Collection of the New-York Historical Society;
p. 173: Library of Congress; p. 175: Granger Collection; p. 183: Library of Congress; p. 184: Library
of Congress; p. 187: Library of Congress; p. 188: Library of Congress; p. 191: Library of Congress;
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Antiquarian Society; p. 202: National Archives; p. 204: North Wind Picture Archives/Alamy.
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Resource NY; p. 216: Library of Congress; p. 218: U.S. Senate Collection; p. 220: Anne S.K. Brown Mil-
itary Collection, Brown University Library; p. 224: Granger Collection; p. 226: Granger Collection;
p. 229: Granger Collection; p. 235: Library of Congress; p. 237: Granger Collection; p. 241: MPI/Getty
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Pennsylvania; p. 266: Granger Collection; p. 268: Library of Congress; p. 269: Library of Congress;
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Congress; (bottom): MPI/Getty Images.
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p. 297: Historical Society of Pennsylvania; p. 299: Granger Collection; p. 303: Granger Collection; p. 307:
Granger Collection; p. 310: Art Resource, NY; p. 311: Granger Collection; p. 313: Image copyright © The
Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY; p. 314: Granger Collection; p. 315: Granger Collection;
p. 318: Granger Collection; p. 320: Library of Congress.
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Gallery; p. 334: Collection of the New-York Historical Society / Bridgeman Art Library; p. 338: Copy-
right American Philosophical Society; p. 341: Collection of the New Jersey Historical Society, Newark,
NJ; p. 344: Library of Congress; p. 345: Collection of the New-York Historical Society; p. 348: Library of
Congress; p. 351: Collection of the New-York Historical Society; p. 359: Library of Congress; p. 361:
Collection of Davenport West, Jr.
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tion; p. 371: Minnesota Historical Society; p. 374: Granger Collection; p. 378: Library of Congress;
p. 381: Granger Collection; p. 383: Warder Collection; p. 386: Permission from New York State Histori-
cal Association; p. 387: Maryland Historical Society 1934.2.1; p. 388: Granger Collection; p. 390:
Library of Congress; p. 391: The New York Public Library / Art Resource, NY; p. 394: Board of Trustees,
National Gallery of Art, Washington 1980.62.9. (2794) PA; p. 395: Library of Congress; p. 397: National
Park Service, Ellis Island Collection; p. 399: American Antiquarian Society; p. 401: Library of Congress;
p. 403: Library of Congress; p. 404: John W. Bennett Labor Collection, Special Collections and Univer-
sity Archives, W. E. B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
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gress; p. 420: Library of Congress; p. 424: Henry Clay Memorial Foundation; p. 425: Corbis; p. 427:
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gress; p. 433: Corbis; p. 435: Collection of the New-York Historical Society.
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tion; p. 447: Library of Congress; p. 448: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution/Art
Resource, NY; p. 450: Library of Congress; p. 452: Library of Congress; p. 453: Courtesy of the Richland
County Public Library, SC; p. 457: Western Historical Collections University of Oklahoma Library;
p. 458: Granger Collection; p. 461: Collection of the New-York Historical Society; p. 463: Saint Louis Art
Museum. Gift of Bank of America; p. 469: Library of Congress; p. 470: Library of Congress; p. 473:
Library of Congress.
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Peter Newark American Pictures/Bridgeman Art Library; p. 486: Library of Congress; p. 487:
Bettmann/Corbis; p. 489: Used with Permission of Documenting the American South, The Univer-
sity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries; p. 492: © Atwater Kent Museum of Philadelphia/
Courtesy of Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collection/Bridgeman Art Library; p. 493: The
Charleston Museum; p. 497: 2006 Harvard University, Peabody Museum Photo 35-5-10/53044T1874;
p. 499: National Archives; p. 500: Library of Congress; p. 504: Library of Congress.
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p. 526: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 528: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 529: American Antiquarian Society; p. 530:
Library of Congress; p. 531: The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; p. 534: Granger Collection; p. 536:
Library of Congress; p. 538: NYPL Digital Gallery; p. 539: Warder Collection; p. 543: Granger Collec-
tion; p. 545 (both): Library of Congress; p. 547 (left): Granger Collection; (right): Library of
Congress.
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Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY; p. 570: Courtesy of Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley; p. 574: Kansas
State Historical Society; p. 575: Richard Collier, Wyoming Department of State Parks and Cultural
Resources; p. 576: Macduff Everton/Corbis; p. 578: Library of Congress; p. 581: MPI/Getty Images;
p. 582: National Archives; p. 587: Library of Congress; p. 591: Granger Collection; p. 592: Warder
Collection.
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Museum of American Art, History & Carriages, Stony Brook N.Y., Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ward
Melville, 1955; p. 607: Granger Collection; p. 610: Granger Collection; p. 612: Granger Collection;
p. 615: Library of Congress; p. 616: Granger Collection; p. 618: Granger Collection; p. 623:
GLC5116.19 Map: The Border Ruffian Code in Kansas 1856. The Gilder Lehermen Collection,
courtesy of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Not to be reproduced without written
permission; p. 624: akg-images/The Image Works; p. 625: The New York Public Library; p. 629: Art
Resource, NY; p. 634: Granger Collection; p. 635: Library of Congress; p. 638: Library of Congress;
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Army Military History Institute; p. 694: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 695: Library of Congress; p. 698: Library
of Congress; p. 700: Library of Congress.
CHAPTER 17: p. 704: Library of Congress; p. 706: Library of Congress; p. 709: Corbis; p. 711:
Library of Congress; p. 714: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 715: Library of Congress; p. 717: Library of Con-
gress; p. 722: National Archives; p. 725: Granger Collection; p. 727: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 728: Library
of Congress; p. 731: Library of Congress; p. 732: Library of Congress; p. 735: Library of Congress;
p. 737: Library of Congress; p. 740: Granger Collection; p. 741: Library of Congress.
CHAPTER 18: p. 747: Granger Collection; p. 748: Granger Collection; p. 751: Library of Congress;
p. 756: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 757: Union Pacific Museum; p. 759: Collection of the New-York Historical
Society; p. 760: National Archives; p. 761: Granger Collection; p. 762: Warder Collection; p. 763: Ameri-
can Petroleum Institute Historical Photo Collection; p. 764: Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh; p. 765:
Keystone-Mast Collection; p. 766: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution/Art Resource, NY;
p. 767: Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh; p. 768: Granger Collection; p. 770: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 773:
Granger Collection; p. 775: T.V. Powderly Photographic Collection, The American Catholic History
Research Center University Archives, The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C; p. 777: F&A
Archive/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY; p. 779: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 782: Library of Congress;
p. 784: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 785: Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University.
A152 • CREDITS

CHAPTER 19: p. 790: Library of Congress; p. 794: Granger Collection; p. 797: Granger Collec-
tion; p. 799: Kansas State Historical Society; p. 801: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 807: Warder Collection;
p. 808: SPC Plateau Nez Perce NAA 4876 00942000, Smithsonian Institution National Anthropologi-
cal Archives; p. 811: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 812: National Archives; p. 814: Corbis; p. 816: Western His-
torical Collections University of Oklahoma Library.
CHAPTER 20: p. 820: Library of Congress; p. 824: The Art Archive / Culver Pictures/Art
Resource; p. 827: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 827: The Bryon Collection, Museum of the City of New York;
p. 829: William Williams Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library,
Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; p. 832: The Denver Public Library, Western History Collection;
p. 833: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 836: Brown Brothers; p. 837: Old York Library/Avery Library, Columbia
University; p. 838: Library of Congress; p. 840: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 842: Special Collections, Vassar
College Libraries; p. 843: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 844: National Library of Medicine; p. 845: John
Carter Brown Library.
CHAPTER 21: p. 848: Library of Congress; p. 850: Library of Congress; p. 854: Library of Con-
gress; p. 857: Warder Collection; p. 859: Warder Collection; p. 860: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 861: Warder
Collection; p. 862: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 864: Library of Congress; p. 867: Wooten Studios; p. 869:
Kansas State Historical Society; p. 871: Nebraska State Historical Society; p. 872: Library of Con-
gress; p. 875: Library of Congress; p. 882: Granger Collection; p. 883: Photograph Courtesy of the
New Hanover County Public Library; p. 885: Special Collections, University of Chicago Library;
p. 886: Library of Congress; p. 887: Warder Collection.
CHAPTER 22: p. 893: Library of Congress; p. 895: Library of Congress; p. 897: Bettmann/Corbis;
p. 901: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 902: Adoc-photos/Art Resource, NY; p. 903: Hawaii State Archives; p. 905:
Library of Congress; p. 906: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 914: National Archives; p. 915: Corporal George J.
Vennage c/o Ohio State University Rare Books and Manuscripts Library; p. 918: Library of Congress;
p. 920: Granger Collection; p. 921: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 924: Granger Collection; p. 925: Bettmann/
Corbis; p. 927: Bettmann/Corbis.
CHAPTER 23: p. 932: Library of Congress; p. 938: University of Illinois at Chicago; p. 939:
Granger Collection; p. 943: Granger Collection; p. 946: Library of Congress; p. 947: Corbis; p. 948:
Bettmann/Corbis; p. 952 (top): Collection of the New-York Historical Society; (bottom): Library of
Congress; p. 954: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 955: Library of Congress; p. 956: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 957:
Bettmann/Corbis; p. 958: Library of Congress; p. 961: Library of Congress; p. 962: Library of Con-
gress; p. 964: Warder Collection; p. 968: Warder Collection; p. 971: Corbis; p. 974: Granger Collection.
CHAPTER 24: p. 980: Library of Congress; p. 983: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 985: Alamy;
p. 986: Granger Collection; p. 987: Warder Collection; p. 990: The New York Times; p. 991: Rollin
Kirby; p. 993: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 996: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 998: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1000: Everett
Collection; p. 1002: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1004: National Archives; p. 1006: Warder Collection;
p. 1009: Mary Evans Picture Library; p. 1010: Courtesy of the “Ding” Darling Wildlife Society;
p. 1016: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1018: Chicago History Museum.
CHAPTER 25: p. 1022: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1025: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1027: Bettmann/Corbis;
p. 1030: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1033: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1035: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1038: NYPL Dig-
ital; p. 1040: Art © Heirs of Aaron Douglas/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Into Bondage, 1936 (oil
on canvas), Douglas, Aaron (1899–1979) / Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., USA / Museum
Purchase and partial gift of Thurlow Evans Tibbs, Jr. The Evans-Tibbs Collection/Bridgeman Art
Library; p. 1041: Ramsey Archive; p. 1042: AP Photo; p. 1043: Library of Congress; p. 1045:
 Credits • A153

Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1046: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1048: From the Collections of The Henry Ford
Museum; p. 1051: Warder Collection; p. 1053: Brown Brothers; p. 1056: Image copyright © The Metro-
politan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY. © 2012 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York.
CHAPTER 26: p. 1060: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1063: Corbis; p. 1067: AP Photo;
p. 1070: The Washington Post. Reprinted with permission; p. 1072: Hulton Archive/Getty Images;
p. 1076: Gehl Company/Corbis; p. 1077: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1079: David J. & Janice L. Frent Col-
lection/Corbis; p. 1080: Herbert Hoover Presidential Library; p. 1083: AP Photo; p. 1087: Granger
Collection; p. 1088: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1092: New York Daily News; p. 1094: AP Photo.
CHAPTER 27: p. 1100: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1103: National Archives; p. 1104:
Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1108: Library of Congress; p. 1109: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1111: National Archives;
p. 1112: Library of Congress; p. 1115: Library of Congress; p. 1116: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1119:
Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1121: Hulton Archives/Getty Images; p. 1122: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1124:
Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1126: Robert Holmes/Corbis; p. 1127: Library of Congress; p. 1130: Corbis;
p. 1132: 1936, The Washington Post; p. 1134: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1138: Bettmann/Corbis.
CHAPTER 28: p. 1142: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1145: National Archives; p. 1147: Imperial War
Museum, London; p. 1150: 1938, The Washington Post; p. 1154: British Information Services;
p. 1155: Granger Collection; p. 1156: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1162: Library of Congress; p. 1164:
Warder Collection; p. 1167: Swim Ink LLC/Corbis; p. 1168: Granger Collection; p. 1169: Library of
Congress; p. 1171: AP Photo; p. 1172: National Archives; p. 1174: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1175: Russell
Lee/Getty Images; p. 1181: AP Photo; p. 1182: Eisenhower Presidential Library; p. 1184: National
Archives; p. 1188: National Archives; p. 1190: Hulton Archives/Getty Images; p. 1191: National
Archives; p. 1194: National Archives; p. 1195: National Archives; p. 1198: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1199:
Hulton Archives/Getty Images.
CHAPTER 29: p. 1205: Bill Eppridge/Getty Images; p. 1207: Peter Turnley/Corbis; p. 1209:
Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1211: University of Louisville; p. 1214 (left): Collections of the New York Public
Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; (right): Granger Collection; p. 1217: Herman Landshoff;
p. 1221: Library of Congress; p. 1223: Hartford Courant; p. 1227: Hy Peskin/Getty Images; p. 1228: 1948,
The Washington Post; p. 1229: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1230 (top): AP Photo; (bottom): Bettmann/Corbis;
p. 1237: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1239: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1240: Yale Joel/Getty Images.
CHAPTER 30: p. 1246: Hulton Archives/Getty Images; p. 1249: Time & Life Pictures/
Getty Images; p. 1251: William Joseph O’Keefe Collection, Veterans History Project, Library of Con-
gress; p. 1253: AP Photo; p. 1254: Hulton Archives/Getty Images; p. 1256: Library of Congress;
p. 1259: Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY; p. 1260: Fogg Art
Museum, Harvard University; p. 1262: William Gottlieb/Corbis; p. 1263: Bernard Gotfryd /Getty
Images; p. 1264: Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images; p. 1266: Hulton Archives/Getty Images; p. 1267:
AP Photo; p. 1269: Library of Congress; p. 1274: AP Photo; p. 1275: University of Louisville; p. 1277:
Granger Collection; p. 1279: Charles Moore/Black Star; p. 1281: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1284: Herb
Block Foundation; p. 1286: AP Photo; p. 1288: AP Photo; p. 1293: Detroit News; p. 1295: AP Photo:
p. 1296: AP Photo.
CHAPTER 31: p. 1300: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1303: Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images; p. 1308:
John G. Moebes/Corbis; p. 1310: Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images; p. 1311: AP Photo; p. 1313:
Hulton Archives/Getty Images; p. 1316: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1317: National Archives; p. 1320:
Hulton Archives/Getty Images; p. 1322: National Archives; p. 1325: AP Photo; p. 1327: Cartoon by
A154 • CREDITS

Victor (Vicky) Weisz, The New Statesman; p. 1330: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1332: George Ballis/Take
Stock Photos; p. 1336: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1338: © 1963, The Star-Ledger, All rights reserved,
Reprinted with permission; p. 1343: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1344: Jack Kightlinger, LBJ Library and
Museum; p. 1346: Bettmann/Corbis.
CHAPTER 32: p. 1350: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1352: Ted Streshinsky/Corbis; p. 1355: AP Photo;
p. 1356: © Roger Malloch/Magnum Photos; p. 1358: John Dominis/Getty Images; p. 1359: Warder
Collection; p. 1361: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1363: H. William Tetlow/Getty Images; p. 1365: AP Photo;
p. 1366: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1372: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1374: AP Photo; p. 1375: Bettmann/Corbis;
p. 1377: National Archives; p. 1380: Howard Ruffner/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images; p. 1382:
John Dominis/Getty Images; p. 1384: AP Photo; p. 1389: AP Photo; p. 1391: AP Photo; p. 1394: Dirck
Halstead/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images; p. 1395: Nik Wheeler/Corbis.
CHAPTER 33: p. 1400: Robert Maass/Corbis; p. 1401: National Archives; p. 1405: AP Photo;
p. 1408: Kaveh Kazemi/Corbis; p. 1412: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1416: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1418: Wally
McNamee/Corbis; p. 1422: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1424: Los Angeles Times Syndicate; p. 1428:
Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1431: Library of Congress; p. 1432: Bettmann/Corbis; p. 1434: Mark Thiesson ©
1992 The NAMES Project; p. 1435: AP Photo; p. 1437: Black Star Stock Photo; p. 1441: Woodfin
Camp; p. 1442: AP Photo; p. 1445: Bettmann/Corbis.
CHAPTER 34: p. 1450: Smiley N. Pool/Dallas Morning News/Corbis; p. 1451: AP Photo; p. 1455:
Chris Wilkins/Getty Images; p. 1457: AP Photo; p. 1458: AP Photo; p. 1460: Richard Ellis/AFP/Getty
Images; p. 1462: AP Photo; p. 1466: AP Photo; p. 1467: AP Photo; p. 1471: Najlah Feanny/Corbis;
p. 1474: Sean Adair/ Reuters/Corbis; p. 1476: AP Photo; p. 1477: Reuters/Corbis; p. 1478:
Reuters/Corbis; p. 1479: Ed Kashi/Corbis; p. 1481: Brooks Kraft/Corbis; p. 1483: Mario Tama/Getty
Images; p. 1484: AP Photo; p. 1488: Michael Ainsworth/Dallas Morning News/Corbis; p. 1489: Shawn
Thew/epa/Corbis; p. 1490: AP Photo; p. 1495: AP Photo; p. 1498: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images; p. 1501:
Darren McCollester/Getty Images; p. 1503 (left): Mario Tama/Getty Images; (right): AP Photo.
 
INDEX

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations.

Abenakis, 80 Adams, John Quincy, 255, 339, 357, 420, 433,

abolition movement, 542–51, 552 442, 464, 550
African Americans in, 547, 547–48 in election of 1824, 430–32, 431
African colonization proposed in, 543 in election of 1828, 398, 435–37, 436, 478
early opposition to slavery, 542–43 on Mexican War, 590
Fugitive Slave Act and, 614–15 Monroe Doctrine and, 428–29
gradualism to, 543, 543–45 named secretary of state, 416
reactions to, 548–49 Oregon Country issue and, 428
split in, 545, 545–47 presidency of, 432–34
abortion issue, 1360, 1414, 1416 Transcontinental Treaty and, 401, 420
Abrams v. United States, 1001 Adams, Samuel, 187, 189, 193
Acadia, 166, 173–74 in Committee of Correspondence, 190
Acheson, Dean, 1238 in ratification debate, 277
ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), 1029 as revolutionary agitator, 186–87, 187,
acquired immune deficiency syndrome 189, 190
(AIDS), 1433, 1433–34 warned by Paul Revere, 196
Act of Algeciras (1906), 929 Adamson Act (1916), 976
Act of Toleration, 162 Adams-Onís Treaty (1819), 420, 428
Act to Prevent Frauds and Abuses (1696), 163 Adarand Constructors v. Peña, 1464
Adams, Abigail, 190, 192, 202, 246–46, 247, Addams, Jane, 933, 937–38, 938, 1023
250, 267, 288, 318 Adena-Hopewell culture, 10, 11, 12
Adams, John, 190, 192–93, 202, 246, 250, 269, Admiralty courts, vice-admiralty courts,
303, 314, 327 163
Alien and Sedition Acts signed by, 318–19 AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent
American Revolution and, 237, 238 Children), 1460–61
in Boston Massacre case, 189 affirmative action, 1463–64
committee work of, 256 Affluent Society, The (Galbraith), 1262
Declaration of Independence and, 202–3 Afghanistan, 1477, 1480, 1492, 1495–96
description of, 314 AFL (American Federation of Labor), 779–80,
domestic discontent and, 317–21 1017, 1065, 1078, 1116
in election of 1796, 313, 314 AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor-
in election of 1800, 321–23, 322 Congress of Industrial Organizations),
French conflict and, 314–17, 315 1250, 1399, 1403
French Revolution and, 301 Africa
on peace commission, 237, 237 European exploration of, 19–20
as vice-president, 287, 288 slaves in, 112, 119–20, 121

A155
A156 • INDEX

Africa (continued) Agnew, Spiro, 1346, 1347, 1347

slaves in return to, 542–43 agrarian protest movements, 864, 864–71,
tribal kingdoms of, 119–21 867, 869
African Americans, 111–12, 327 Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) (1933),
in abolition movement, 547, 547–48 1105
African roots of, 119–23, 157 agriculture
in American Revolution, 220, 243–45 in colonial period, 56, 57, 114–15, 126, 127,
in antebellum southern society, 117, 117, 139–40, 156
119–26, 124, 492–505, 508 in early nineteenth century, 380–84,
in baseball, 839, 1226–27, 1227 451–52, 457–58
black code restrictions on, 716 Farmers’ Alliances and, 866–68, 867
black power and, 1331–37, 1332, 1336 farm politics and, 868–70, 869, 890
in Boston Massacre, 188 Granger movement and, 865–66
Civil War attacks on, 661–62 of Indians, 8, 50, 57–58, 80, 107–8, 531
as Civil War soldiers, 673, 675–76, 676, 724 in Kentucky, 310–11, 573
disenfranchisement of, 878–80 in New Deal, 1099, 1105–6, 1119–20
in early twentieth century, 1037–40, 1038, in New England, 129, 136, 156
1040 in 1920s, 1068–69, 1075–76, 1076
in early U.S., 286 in South, 114–15, 126, 127, 482, 482–85,
education of, 725–26, 754, 756, 762, 1243 483, 485, 577–79, 591, 792–95, 793,
folklore of, 501–2 794
free blacks, 327, 423, 424, 493, 493–94, in South Carolina colony, 114–15
708–10 in Virginia colony, 57–58
Great Migration of, 1037–38, 1038, in West, 382–84, 383, 450, 452–54, 574
1248–49 Aguinaldo, Emilio, 908, 914, 915
as indentured servants, 117 AIDS (acquired immune deficiency
land policy and, 708–9, 723, 724 syndrome), 1433, 1433–34
literature and, 1263, 1263 Aid to Families with Dependent Children
marriage of, 125, 725 (AFDC), 1460–61
migration of, after World War II, 1255–58, AIM (American Indian Movement), 1365–66,
1256 1366
minstrel shows and, 395, 395 air conditioning, 1369
mulattoes, 493 airplanes, 1046–48
music and, 125, 1266 Alabama
in politics, 726–28, 727, 728 secession of, 642
population of, 119 War of 1812 in, 355
post–World War II economy and, 1248 Alamo, 580–81, 581, 582, 599
in Reconstruction, 708–10, 716–17, 717, Alaska
724–28, 725, 727, 728 purchase of, 900, 901
religion of, 112, 501–2, 720, 725, 725, Russian claim to, 900
727, 760 Albany Congress, 172–73, 207
segregation and (see segregation and alcohol, consumption of
desegregation) in colonial period, 144–45
voting rights for, 164, 720, 726–28, 727, Puritans on, 134
728, 732 Alcott, Bronson, 524
in West, 799, 799–800 Alcott, Louisa May, 637
women in colonial America, 111–12 Alden, John, 68
in World War I, 998 Alexander I, 435
in World War II, 1170, 1171 Alexander v. Holmes County Board of
see also civil rights and liberties; civil rights Education, 1371
movement; segregation and Algonquian tribes, 14, 23, 79, 80,
desegregation; slavery; slaves; slave trade 86, 109
African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, Alien and Sedition Acts (1798), 318–19,
515–16 320, 325
 Index • A157

All Creation Going to the White House Indians and, 199, 200, 201, 227, 229, 229,
(Cruikshank), 444 237, 247–48, 261–62
Allen, Ethan, 197 Loyalists in, 195, 201, 210, 215, 219, 221,
Allen, Richard, 515 223, 224, 227–28, 229, 230–31, 252
almshouses, 144 militias in, 194, 197–200, 216, 218, 219,
al Qaeda, 1475–76 220, 220
Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel nationalism in, 250–51
Workers, 780 Patriot forces in, 195–201, 210, 219, 221,
AME (African Methodist Episcopal) Church, 224, 227
515–16 peace efforts in, 199, 200, 235–37, 236, 237
American Anti-Slavery Society, 546–47, 553 political revolution and, 238–40
American Association for the Advancement of slavery and, 204, 240–41, 243–45
Science, 379 social revolution and, 240–49, 252
American Bible Society, 517 South in, 229–31, 232, 233–35, 235
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 1029 Spain and, 225, 236–37
American Colonization Society, 509, 542–43 spreading conflict in, 197–200
American Crisis, The (Paine), 216 summary of, 210–11, 214–15
American Federation of Labor (AFL), 779–80, Treaty of Paris (1783) and, 235–37, 236, 237
1017, 1065, 1078, 1116 women and, 245–47, 246
American Federation of Labor-Congress of American Society for the Promotion of
Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), Temperance, 536, 553
1250, 1399, 1403 American Sunday School Union, 517
American Indian Movement (AIM), 1365–66, American System, 414–15, 432, 438, 527
1366 American Temperance Union, 536
American Indians, see Indians, American American Unitarian Association, 512
American Medical Association (AMA), American Woman’s Home, The (Beecher), 538
1328–29 Americas
American (Know-Nothing) party, 401, 401, Columbus’s exploration of, 20–22
621, 639 diversity in, 3–4
American Philosophical Society, 147 European biological exchange with, 23–25
American Political Ideas (Fiske), 899 European exploration of, 2–3
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, first migrations to, 2, 7
1492–93 imperial rivalries in, 4
American Revenue Act (1764), see Sugar Act name of, 22
(1764) Norse discovery of, 15–16, 16
American Revolution, 194–207, 210–11, pre-Columbian, 8–15
213–49, 252–55 professional explorers of, 25–26
African-American soldiers in, 220, 243–45 Amish, 41
American society in, 218–21 Amity and Commerce, Treaty of (1778), 225
Boston Tea Party and, 190–91 Anabaptists, 41
British strategies in, 221, 222, 223–25, anaconda strategy, 658
230–33 anarchism, 776
British surrender in, 234–35, 253 Anasazis, 13, 13, 50
causes of, 203–5 Anderson, Robert, 644, 650
and Committees of Correspondence, 190, André, John, 233
192 Andros, Edmund, 162
coup attempt in, 257 Angel Island, 831
events leading to, 180–93 Anglican Church (Church of England),
finance and supply of, 221, 256 42–44, 52, 55, 56, 68, 104, 150, 154,
first battles of, 195, 195–97, 196, 207 494–95
France and, 210, 225, 227, 234–35, 236–37 Puritan views of, 71, 74, 75, 135
frontier in, 227–29, 228 in South, 114
Hessians in, 215, 218, 230 state support of, 248
independence issue in, 200–205, 214 animals, domesticated, 23, 27–28, 108, 574
A158 • INDEX

Anne, Queen, 163 Austin, Stephen F., 579

Anthony, Susan B., 529, 540, 939 Austria, 1015
anti-communism French Revolution and, 301
McCarthyism and, 1240, 1240–41, 1271–73 in Napoleonic wars, 342
Truman and, 1236, 1239 Austria-Hungary
Antietam (Sharpsburg), Battle of (1862), 670, Versailles treaty and, 1015
670–71, 672 in World War I, 984, 987, 1003, 1008, 1015
Anti-Federalists, 276–77, 278, 280, 282 automobiles, 1047–48, 1048
anti-feminism, 1415–16 Ayala, Felipe Guamán Poma de, 37
Anti-Masonic party, 445, 463–64, 469 Aztecs, 9–10, 10, 24, 28, 29, 29–30, 33, 50, 51
anti-Semitism, 830
anti-slavery movements, see abolition “baby-boom” generation, 1252, 1253
movement backcountry, 141, 143, 189
anti-trust laws education in, 149
and regulation, 946–47, 950–51 and lack of organized government, 189
Wilson and, 969–70 Whiskey Rebellion in, 306–8, 307
Apaches, 38, 531, 532 Bacon, Nathaniel, 64, 64–65
Appomattox, surrender at, 699–700 Bacon’s Rebellion, 64, 64–65, 105
apprentices, 131, 482 Bagot, Charles, 417
“Arab Awakening,” 1497–98, 1498 Balboa, Vasco Núñez de, 25, 35
Arabic, sinking of, 991 Baldwin, Hanson, 1199
Arafat, Yasir, 1467, 1468 Balfour, Arthur, 1009, 1067
Arapahoes, 38 Balkans, 1468–69
Arawaks, 21 Ballinger, Richard A., 959–60
Arbella, 71, 72 Baltimore, first Lord (George Calvert), 66,
archaeology, 6 67, 84
architecture in New England, 128, 128–29 Baltimore, fourth Lord, 162
Aristide, Jean-Bertrand, 1467 Baltimore, Md., 357
Armey, Dick, 1484 Baltimore, second Lord (Cecilius Calvert),
Armory Show (1913), 1054 66, 67
arms control negotiations, 1434–35, 1435 Baltimore Carpenters’ Society, 402
Army Appropriation Act (1916), 997 Baltimore Republican, 473–74
Arnautoff, Victor, 1126 Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act (1937),
Arnold, Benedict, 199, 233 1135
Arthur, Chester A., 831, 856–57 Bank of the United States, 294, 294–96, 443,
Articles of Capitulation, 92 467, 528
Articles of Confederation (1781), 173, 211, constitutionality of, 411–12
239–40, 253, 255, 270, 282, 283 Hamilton’s recommendation for, 294,
calls for revision of, 263 294–96
unanimity required under, 276 Jackson and, 446–47, 459–62, 461, 465–66
arts, modernist, 1052–53, 1053 Panic of 1819 and, 421
Ashburton, Lord, 562, 563 second charter of, 412, 439, 461–62
Ashley Cooper, Lord Anthony, 86 Banks, Dennis, 1365
Asia, imperialism in, 920, 920–22, 921 Baptists, 41, 114, 136, 140, 153, 154, 248, 495,
Astor, John Jacob, 407 496, 515, 571, 720
astrolabe, 19 Barbados, 72, 85
asylums, 537–38 Barbary pirates, 333–35, 334, 360–61, 362
Atkins, Josiah, 243–44 Bare Knuckles, 394
Atlanta, Ga., capture of, 683, 692, 693, 694 Barton, Clara, 677, 677
Atlantic Charter (1941), 1158, 1169, 1189 baseball, 838, 838–39, 1226–27, 1227
atomic bombs, see nuclear weapons Bates, Edward, 649
Attucks, Crispus, 188–89 Battle of Lexington, The (Doolittle), 196
Auburn Penitentiary, 537 Bean, Roy, 812
 Index • A159

beans, 23, 50 blood sports, 393–94, 394

Beast of Berlin, The, 999–1000, 1000 Bloody Massacre, The (Revere), 188
Beats, 1265 Bloomfield International Fuse Company, 998
Beaufort, J. J. Smith, 500 Board of Trade, 163
Beauregard, Pierre G. T., 650, 655 Bohemians, 141
Beecher, Catharine, 538, 594 Boleyn, Anne, 43
Beecher, Lyman, 400, 499–500, 512 Bolshevik Revolution (1917), 1002, 1004–5
Begin, Menachem, 1404–5, 1405 “bonanza” farms, 815
Beirut bombing (1983), 1425 Bonaparte, Napoléon, 301, 317, 335, 336, 342,
Belgium, 356 343, 346
in World War I, 987, 1004 Book of Common Prayer, 43
in World War II, 1189 Book of Mormon, 519, 553
Bell, Alexander Graham, 760, 761 Book of Trades (1807), The, 403
Bell, John, 643 Boone, Daniel, 229, 310, 311, 311, 370, 455
Bellow, Saul, 1263 Boone and Crockett Club, 955
Bennington, Battle of (1777), 224 Booth, John Wilkes, 637, 713
Benton, Thomas Hart, 354, 412, 460, 578, Bork, Robert, 1389
585, 602 Bosnia, 1468–69
Bering Strait, 5 “Bosses of the Senate, The,” 854
Berkeley, John, 95 Boston
Berkeley, William, 63, 64, 65, 83, 114 Boston Tea Party, 190–91, 207
Berlin crises, 1222, 1294, 1294–95 class stratification in, 143
Berlin Decree (1806), 343, 346 in colonial period, 140, 143, 144, 161
Berlin Wall, 1315–16, 1316, 1440, 1441 Great Awakening in, 154
Bermuda, 81 police strike in, 1017–18
Bernard, Francis, 182 poverty in, 144
Berry, Chuck, 1266 Boston Massacre, 187–89, 188, 207
Bessemer, Henry, 765–66 Boston Port Act (1774), 191, 191, 192
Bethune, Mary Jane McLeod, 726 Boston Tea Party, 190–91, 207
Beveridge, Albert J., 899, 916 Boudinot, Elias, 457
BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs), 1366 Bourbons (Redeemers), 795–97, 797
Bibb, Henry, 547 Boxer Rebellion (1900), 921, 921–22
Bible, 40, 134, 135, 496, 499, 571, 599, 676 boxing, 394, 394
bicycles, 835, 836 boycotts, 186, 187–88, 192, 193
Biddle, Nicholas, 422, 460, 465–66, 560 Braddock, Edward, 174
Bidlack Treaty (1846), 925 Bradford, William, 68, 74, 80
Bill of Rights, English, 56, 162 Brady, Mathew, 700
Bill of Rights, U.S. Brandeis, Louis D., 975, 977, 1002–3, 1109, 1115
debate on, 289–90 Brant, Joseph, 228, 229
in ratification of Constitution, 277, 279, 325 Braun, Eva, 1194
Bingham, George Caleb, 311, 568 Brazil, 92, 93, 118, 119
bin Laden, Osama, 1475, 1496–97 Breckinridge, John C., 638, 643
Birmingham, civil rights demonstrations in, Breed’s Hill, Battle of (1775), 197–99, 198
1310–12, 1311 Brennan, William J., Jr., 1274
Birney, James Gillespie, 546–47 Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of (1918), 1005
birth control, 975, 1362–63, 1363 Brezhnev, Leonid, 1384
birthrates in colonial period, 109 Briand, Aristide, 1067, 1068
Black Hawk, 576 brinksmanship, 1284
black power, 1331–37, 1332, 1336 British Columbia, 900
Blackwell, Elizabeth, 407 British Empire, 118 –119
Blaine, James G., 855, 857, 857–59, 877, 878 French Empire compared with, 102–3, 110,
“Bleeding Kansas,” 622–24, 623, 624, 626 158, 165–66, 169
Blitzkrieg, 1152–53, 1154 maps of, 176
A160 • INDEX

British Empire (continued) Bureau of Labor Statistics, 778

Spanish Empire compared with, 33, 57, Bureau of Mines, 961
102–3, 158, 165 Burgoyne, John, 197, 221, 223–24, 224
see also American Revolution; colonial Burn, Harry, 974
period; Great Britain burned-over district, 517–18
British military Burns, Anthony, 620–21
quartering of, 181–82, 186 Burnside, Ambrose E., 671, 684
as standing army, 185 Burr, Aaron, 340, 341, 341–42
see also American Revolution; War of 1812 in election of 1796, 313
Broadway and Canal Street, New York City in election of 1800, 321–22
(1836), 391 Hamilton’s duel with, 341, 491
Brook Farm, 541–42 Burton, Mary, 124–25
Brooks, Preston S., 625, 625–26 Bush, George H. W., 1438–39, 1452–53
Brown, H. Rap, 1354 cultural conservatives and, 1446–47
Brown, John domestic initiatives of, 1439
Harper’s Ferry raid by, 635, 635–37, 647 economy and, 1453–54
Kansas violence led by, 624 in election of 1988, 1436–38, 1437, 1438
Brown, William Wells, 547 in election of 1992, 1452, 1456
Brownson, Orestes, 524 foreign policy of, 1439–43, 1441, 1442
Brown University (College of Rhode Island), Panama invasion of, 1443–44
155, 533 Persian Gulf War and, 1444–46
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, Bush, George W., 1472
1276–77 economy and, 1485–87
Bruce, Blanche K., 728, 728 education reform and, 1472–73
Bryan, William Jennings, 888–89, 920 in election of 2000, 1469–72, 1470, 1471
in presidential elections, 874–78, 875, 877, in election of 2004, 1480–82, 1481, 1482
953, 961, 969 Hurricane Katrina and, 1483, 1483–84
at Scopes trial, 1028–31, 1030 Second Gulf War and, 1477–78, 1478, 1485
as secretary of state, 981, 988, 990, 992, second term of, 1482–87
992–93 September 11, 2001 attacks and, 1473–75,
Buchanan, James 1474
Dred Scott decision and, 629–30 terrorism and, 1473–80
in election of 1856, 626–28, 627 Bush doctrine, 1477
in Kansas crisis, 630–31 business
Lecompton constitution supported by, entrepreneurs, 761–68
630–31 in late nineteenth century, 753–54, 786–96
Panic of 1857 and, 631–32 regulation of, 969–70
secession and, 644 Butler, Andrew Pickens, 625
Buchanan, Patrick, 1433–34, 1471 Butler, Benjamin F., 722
Buchanan v. Worley, 1043 Byrd, Harry F., 1277
buffalo, 38–39, 531, 531, 532, 808–9 Byrd, William, II, 122
Buffalo Hunt, Chasing Back (Catlin), 564 Byrnes, James F., 1216
Bulge, Battle of the (1944), 1189
Bull, Amos Bad Heart, 807 Cabeza de Vaca, Álvar Núñez, 34, 35
“Bull Moose” (Progressive) party, 962, 962, Cabot, John, 25, 51
969–72, 977, 979, 994 Cadore, Duke de, 346
Bull Run (Manassas) Cajuns, 174
first Battle of (1861), 656–58, 657, 703 Calhoun, John C., 320, 349–50, 381, 416, 428,
second Battle of (1861), 668, 703 439, 442, 448, 604, 631
Bundy, McGeorge, 1338 Compromise of 1850 and, 609, 611
Bunker Hill, Battle of (1775), 197–99, 198 Eaton Affair and, 445–46
Bunting v. Oregon, 949 Indian conflicts and, 419
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), 1366 internal improvements and, 414, 447
 Index • A161

Jackson’s rift with, 451–53 human rights and, 1403–4

on Mexican War, 600 inauguration of, 1401, 1401
national bank issue and, 412, 436 Iran hostages and, 1406–9, 1407
nullification issue and, 447–55 Carter, Landon, 204
on slavery, 550 Carteret, George, 95
slavery on frontier and, 602 Cartier, Jacques, 44, 51
tariffs and, 413, 434 Casablanca Conference (1943), 1177
Van Buren’s rivalry with, 445 Casey, William, 1427
California Cass, Lewis, 566, 604, 605–6
annexation of, 592, 592–93 Castro, Fidel, 1295–96, 1296, 1314–15
early development of, 570–71 Catawbas, 87, 88
gold rush in, 409, 575, 599, 604–8, 606, 607, Catherine of Aragon, 42
647 Catholic Inquisition, 92
Indians in, 11, 532 Catholicism, Catholic Church
Mexican independence and, 566–67 in England, 42–43, 46, 52, 55
settlers in, 568–70, 570 in French colonies, 167
statehood for, 608–9, 646 Indians and, 22, 32, 32–33, 34, 36–38, 40,
California News (Mount), 606 50, 165, 169, 532, 535–36
Callender, James, 318 Irish Americans in, 397
Calley, William, 1379 missionaries of, 36, 37, 38, 50, 165, 166,
Calvert, George, see Baltimore, first Lord 167, 569–70, 570
(George Calvert) prejudice against, 397–98, 400
Calvert, Leonard, 114 Reformation attacks on, 40–44
Calvin, John, 41–42, 135 in Spanish Empire, 32, 32–33, 36–38,
Calvinism, 41–42, 43 177, 532
Cambodia, 1394, 1396 Catholicism, prejudice against, 830
Cameron, Simon, 649 Catlin, George, 564
Camp David accords (1978), 1404–5, 1405 Catt, Carrie Chapman, 940, 973–74
Camp Winfield Scott, 666 cattle, 108, 115, 574, 683, 810–12, 811
Canada, 44 Cavaliers, 55
in American Revolution, 199–200 CBS, 1045
British acquisition of, 176 CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps), 1104,
in colonial wars, 175 1104
Indian conflicts and, 305–6 Ceausescu, Nicolae, 1440
Loyalist exiles in, 241 Celia (slave), 498–99
War of 1812 and, 349–50, 352–54, 356, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 1242,
357, 358 1285–86, 1375
canals, 371–74, 372–73, 374, 458–59, 464, Central Pacific Railroad, 755–56, 757
465, 487 Central Powers (Triple Alliance), 984, 988,
cannibals, 21 990, 990, 1003, 1006–7
Canning, George, 428 Century of Dishonor, A (Jackson), 809
Capone, Al “Scarface,” 1033–34 Cession, Treaty of, 336
Caribs, 21, 44 Chaing Kai-Shek, 1233
Carleton, Guy, 240 Champlain, Samuel de, 44, 166, 167, 207
Carnegie, Andrew, 764, 764–66, 765, 767, Chancellorsville, Battle of (1863), 685, 685
814–15, 922 Chandler, Zachariah, 682
carpetbaggers, 728–29 Channing, William Ellery, 512, 521
Carson, Rachel, 1373 Chaplin, Charlie, 1045, 1045
Carter, Jimmy, 1401–6 Charles, Ray, 1266
Camp David accords and, 1404–5, 1405 Charles I, 54, 55, 66, 71, 83, 114
in election of 1976, 1396–97, 1401 Charles II, 55–56, 83, 84, 90, 92, 207
in election of 1980, 1409–11, 1411 colonial administration under, 161
Haiti negotiations of, 1467 death of, 162
A162 • INDEX

Charleston, S.C. Christian Coalition, 1446–47

in colonial period, 85, 87, 88, 89, 141, 143 Christianity and the Social Crisis
founding of, 85 (Rauschenbusch), 937
in Revolutionary War, 198, 201, 230 Churchill, Winston
slavery in, 123, 496 Atlantic Charter and, 1158
Charles V, 33, 42–43 at Cairo and Teheran, 1181
Charles VII, 18 at Casablanca, 1177
Chase, Salmon P., 277, 649, 723 cold war and, 1216
Chattanooga, Battle of (1863), 689–90, 703 D-day and, 1184
Chauncey, Charles, 154 on Munich Pact, 1148
Chavez, Cesar, 1364, 1364–65 nuclear weapons and, 1284
Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 458, 477 war aims and, 1176–77
Cherokee Phoenix, 457 at Yalta, 1190–93, 1191
Cherokees, 87, 87, 88, 89, 175, 229, 286, 308 Church of England, see Anglican Church
American Revolution and, 200 (Church of England)
in Civil War, 663 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Jackson and, 355–56 (Mormons), 518–22, 520, 521, 522,
post–Revolutionary War weakness of, 552, 609
261–62 CIA, see Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
removal of, 454, 455–59, 456, 457, 458 cities and towns
Chesapeake, U.S.S., 343–44, 363 allure and problems of, 824–25
Chesnut, Mary Boykin, 489, 489 bosses in, 849, 849–50
Cheves, Langdon, 421–22 in colonial period, 143–46
Cheyennes, 38, 531, 542 in early twentieth century, 823
Chiang Kai-shek, 1382 environment and, 825–26, 826
Chibchas, 9 immigrants in, 826–32
Chicago, Ill. industrialization and, 391, 391–92, 392
Democratic Convention in (1968), 1345, in late nineteenth century, 821, 822, 846
1354–55, 1356 mass transit and, 822–24, 824
race riot in (1919), 1017, 1018 politics and, 849, 849–50
race riot in (1966), 1344 poverty in, 144
Chicago Tribune, 697 technology and, 821–22, 828, 829–30
Chickasaws, 87, 286, 308, 455–57, 456 transportation between, 144, 470–71
child labor, 769–71, 770, 817–18, 947, 947–48, Citizen Genet, see Genet, Edmond-Charles-
976, 978, 1051, 1092, 1094, 1120 Édouard
progressive campaign against, 947–48, 948 citizenship and naturalization, 272–73, 809
Children’s Bureau, U.S., 961 City Life (Arnautoff), 1126
Chile, 3, 31 “Civil Disobedience” (Thoreau), 527
China Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), 1104,
Boxer Rebellion in, 921, 921–22 1104
Japanese aggression in, 1086–87, 1087, Civil Rights Act (1866), 718
1146–47, 1147, 1149 Civil Rights Act (1875), 881
trade with, 263, 438, 463, 618 Civil Rights Act (1957), 1280
China, People’s Republic of Civil Rights Act (1960), 1280
cold war and, 1210, 1452 Civil Rights Act (1964), 1324–26, 1325, 1327,
Korean War and, 1237–38 1329
“loss” of China to, 1233–34 civil rights and liberties
Nixon’s visit to, 1381–82, 1382 Carter and, 1403–4
Chinese Americans, 400, 831, 832, 1451 in Civil War, 681–84, 683
railroads and, 757 Red Scare and (1919-1920), 1018–19
violence against, 773, 773–74 in the 1940s, 1225–32
Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), 831, 832 Truman and, 1226, 1227, 1227–28
Chippewas, 305 civil rights movement
Choctaws, 89, 286, 455–57, 456 black power and, 1331–37, 1332, 1336
 Index • A163

Brown decision and, 1276–77 see also Confederate States of America;

early period of, 1273–81, 1298 Reconstruction
expansion of, 1306–14, 1348 Civil Works Administration (CWA), 1105
federal intervention in, 1310–14, 1311, Clark, George Rogers, 227–28
1313 Clark, William, 337–39, 338, 363
Little Rock crisis and, 1280–81, 1281 Clarke, James Freeman, 524
massive resistance and, 1277 Clay, Henry, 349, 350, 357, 407, 416, 435,
Montgomery bus boycott and, 1277, 447
1277–79, 1280 African colonization and, 543
civil service reform, 854–55 American System of, 415
Civil War, English (1642–1646), 83–84, 96, Compromise of 1850 and, 609, 610,
105, 159 610–11, 613
Civil War, U.S., 648–703 in duel, 492
African Americans attacked in, 661–62 in election of 1824, 430–32, 431
African-American soldiers in, 673, 675–76, in election of 1832, 464–65
676, 724 in election of 1840, 472–73
aftermath of, 705–11 in election of 1844, 583–86, 584
anaconda strategy in, 658 Missouri Compromise and, 424
Antietam and, 670, 670–71 national bank debate and, 412, 433–34,
balance of force in, 654–56, 655 436, 437
Bull Run and nullification and, 454–55
first Battle of, 656–58, 657, 668, 703 Tyler administration and, 527–29, 560
second Battle of, 668, 703 Clayton, Henry D., 969
casualties in, 701 Clayton Anti-Trust Act (1914), 969
causes of, 651 Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850), 925
Chancellorsville and, 685, 685 Clemenceau, Georges, 1002, 1008, 1009
Chattanooga and, 689–90, 703 Clemens, Samuel (Mark Twain), 848, 851,
choosing sides in, 651–54, 652 851–52, 864
civil liberties and, 681–84, 683 Clermont, 370, 409, 456
Confederate command structure in, 684–85 Cleveland, Grover, 860, 892, 912, 972
Confederate finances in, 681 in election of 1884, 858–59
diplomacy and, 658–59 in election of 1888, 860–61, 861
emancipation in, 671, 672–76, 702 in election of 1892, 871
Fredericksburg and, 671 first term of, 859, 859–60
Gettysburg and, 687–89, 688, 689, 703 Hawaii and, 901, 902
government during, 679–85 tariff issue and, 860
Indians in, 663 Cleveland, race riot in (1966), 1344
as modern war, 700–701 Clifford, Clark, 1343
peninsular campaign in, 665–68, 666, 667, Clinton, Bill
703 assessment of presidency of, 1469
presidential transition and, 648, 649 background of, 1454
recruitment and draft in, 659–61, 660, 661 Balkans and, 1468–69
regional advantages in, 655–56 economy and, 1456–57, 1457,
religion and, 678–79 1462–63
secession of South and, 651–54, 652 in election of 1992, 1454–56, 1455
Sherman’s March and, 692, 692–97, 694, in election of 1996, 1461–62
695, 696 first term of, 1456–58
Shiloh and, 663–65 foreign policy of, 1466–69
slavery and, 651, 668–69, 696 Haiti and, 1466–67
strategies in, 702 health care effort of, 1457–58, 1458
Union finances in, 679–80 Middle East policy of, 1467, 1467–68
Vicksburg and, 686, 686–87, 703 Republican Congress and, 1458
West in, 662–63, 664 scandals under, 1464–66, 1465
women in, 676–78, 677 Clinton, De Witt, 372, 458
A164 • INDEX

Clinton, George alcoholic abuse in, 144–45

in election of 1804, 340 architecture in, 128, 128–29
in ratification debate, 277 assemblies’ powers in, 164–65
Clinton, Henry, 197, 230 backcountry in, 141, 143
Clinton, Hillary Rodham, 1437, 1454 birthrates and death rates in, 109–10
in election of 2008, 1487–88, 1488 British folkways in, 107
health care reform and, 1457–58 cities in, 143–46
as secretary of state, 1491, 1494 class stratification in, 143
clipper ships, 375, 378, 378 colonial wars in, 169–79
coal industry, 951, 953 currency shortage in, 133–34
Coasting Act, 426 disease in, 109, 110
Cobbett, William, 535–36 education in, 146, 148–49, 149
“code talkers,” 1174, 1174 Enlightenment in, 146–49, 156
Coercive Acts (1774), 191–93, 207 ethnic mix in, 140–41
coffin ships, 396 European settlement in, 56–78
Cohens v. Virginia, 424 indentured servants in, 61–62, 63, 66,
Cold War, 1215–25, 1232–43, 1244 67, 87, 102, 107, 113, 115–16, 116,
assessment of, 1242–43 117, 156
China and, 1233–34, 1371–72 Indian conflicts in, 63–65, 79, 80–83, 82,
CIA and, 1285–86 86–89, 94–95, 104, 139
containment in, 1217, 1217–19, 1236, labor in, 115–17, 116
1274, 1331, 1428, 1452 land policy in, 140
end of, 1448 mercantile system in, 159–61, 161
Marshall Plan and, 1220–21, 1221 newspapers in, 145–46
Truman Doctrine and, 1219–20, 1233, popular culture in, 392–93
1236, 1331 population growth in, 108–9, 143, 145
Cole, Thomas, 524 postal service in, 145–46
Colfax, Schuyler, 734 religion in, 114, 134–35, 150–55, 156, 157
colleges and universities, 154–55, 494, 495–96 science in, 146–48
Colombia, 9, 31 sex ratios in, 110
Colombia, Panama Canal and, 925, 925–27, slavery in, 3, 87–88, 106, 112, 117, 117–26,
926 120, 124, 157
colonial governments social and political order in, 143–44
assemblies’ powers in, 164–65 society and economy in, 114–43
charters in, 71, 72, 76, 78, 83, 84, 135, middle colonies, 139–41, 142, 143
136–37, 157, 161 New England, 127–39
covenant theory in, 135 southern colonies, 114–27
and Dominion of New England, 162 taverns in, 144–45, 145
English administration and, 159–63 taxation in, 162, 180–85, 186–89, 206
in Georgia, 98–99, 102, 162 trade and commerce in, 86–89, 92,
governors’ powers in, 163, 165 100–101, 104, 126–27, 129, 132–34,
in Maryland, 66–67, 83–84, 162, 164 133, 159, 170, 180–85, 186–89, 191–93
in Massachusetts, 70–73, 83, 162, 164 transportation in, 144
in New Jersey, 165 triangular trade in, 133, 156
in North Carolina, 162 ways of life in, 106–56
in Pennsylvania, 98, 162 witchcraft in, 137–39, 138, 157
in Plymouth, 69–70, 83 colonial wars, 169–79
in Rhode Island, 76, 135 French and Indian War (see French and
self-government developed in, 164–65 Indian War)
in South Carolina, 86, 162 with Indians, 86–89
in Virginia, 61, 63–64, 164 Columbia University (King’s College), 155
colonial period Columbus, Christopher
agriculture in, 56, 57, 108, 114–15, background of, 20
126, 156 voyages of, 6, 19–22, 22, 40, 51
 Index • A165

Comanches, 38 Congress, U.S.

Committee of Correspondence, 190, 192 African Americans in, 726–28, 728
Committee of Safety (Boston), 195 Barbary pirates and, 360–61
Committee on Public Information, 999 Clinton impeachment and, 1464–66, 1465
Committee to Re-elect the President emancipation and, 676
(CREEP), 1387, 1388 executive departments established by, 288
Common Sense (Paine), 200, 207, 216, 216 first meeting of, 287
Commonwealth v. Hunt, 402, 409 George H. W. Bush and, 1453
communication in early nineteenth century, in Great Depression, 1089–90
379–80, 408 health care reform and, 1507
communism and Red Scare after World War I, immigration policy of, 1026
1018–19 Indian policy and, 454–55
Communist Manifesto, The (Marx), 488 internal improvements and, 413–14, 463
Compromise of 1790, 293, 299 Johnson’s conflict with, 718–19
Compromise of 1850, 609–17, 610, 613, 646 Johnson’s impeachment and, 722, 722–23
Compromise of 1877, 740–43, 741 in Korean War, 1234–35
computer revolution, 1429–30, 1431 national bank issue in, 295, 412, 462
Conciliatory Proposition, 194 Nixon and, 1373
Concord, Battle of (1775), 195, 195–97, 207 in Reconstruction, 712–13, 718–23, 719,
Conestogas, 370 732, 735
Coney Island, 837 religion promoted by, 1261
Confederate States of America trade policy of, 417–18
Chancellorsville and, 685, 685 Truman and, 1211
Chattanooga and, 689–90 War of 1812 and, 347, 350, 360
defeat of, 690–700 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), 1309
diplomacy of, 658–59 Connecticut, 359–60
finances of, 681 Connecticut colony, 83
formation of, 651–54, 652 charter of, 84
Gettysburg and, 687–89, 688, 689 European settlement of, 78
politics in, 684, 684–85 Indian conflicts in, 80, 83
recruitment in, 659–60 Connecticut (Great) Compromise, 271
Vicksburg and, 686, 686–87 Connor, Eugene “Bull,” 1308–9, 1311, 1311
also see Civil War, U.S. conquistadores, 28, 31, 33
Confederation Congress, 255, 282 Conscience of a Conservative, The (Goldwater),
Articles of Confederation revision 1326, 1327
endorsed by, 263 conservation, 955–58, 956, 957
diplomacy and, 263–64 Constellation, U.S.S., 316
end of, 279 Constitution, U.S., 267–81, 284–85
finance and, 256 national bank issue and, 411–12, 432–33,
land policies of, 257, 258, 259–62, 434
260, 261 presidency in, 272–75
Loyalist property and, 263 ratification of, 276–81, 278, 279, 280, 281,
Newburgh Conspiracy and, 182–83 282, 284
paper currency issued by, 265 separation of powers and, 273–76
powers of, 255–56 slavery in, 272, 282, 333
trade/economy and, 262–63 Constitution, U.S.S., 316
weaknesses of, 264, 264–67, 266 constitutional amendments, U.S., 289
Confessions of Nat Turner, The (Gray), 504, Eighteenth, 276, 1032, 1049, 1082
504 Fifteenth, 722, 723, 739, 757, 857, 1038, 1165
conformist culture of the 1950s, 1258–63, Fifth, 602
1298 Fourteenth, 557, 716, 717, 719, 721, 739,
Congregationalists, 71, 78, 150, 151, 153, 154, 758, 1038, 1437
155, 249, 494, 495 Nineteenth, 974
Presbyterians’ union with, 514–15 Ninth, 289
A166 • INDEX

constitutional amendments, U.S. (continued) Corps of Discovery, 337

Sixteenth, 961 corruption, 853–55, 854
Tenth, 276, 289, 296 in election of 1824, 431–32
Thirteenth, 272, 645, 676, 703, 704, 711, 739 under Harding, 1069–71, 1070
Twelfth, 340 Cortés, Hernán, 28, 28–29, 30, 31, 35, 51
Twenty-first, 1102 cotton, 381, 381–82, 482
Constitutional Convention (1787), 211, population growth and, 483
267–76, 268, 275, 282, 283 slavery and, 282–83, 484–85, 485, 487–88
call for, 267 trade in, 382, 421, 438, 487, 566, 574, 577
delegates to, 268–70 cotton gin, 381, 381, 409
Madison at, 269, 269, 270, 273, 274 Coughlin, Charles E., 1123–24, 1124
representation issue in, 273–74 Council of the Indies, 33
separation of powers issue in, 273–76 counterculture, 1356–58, 1358
slavery issue in, 272 covenant theory, 135
Virginia and New Jersey Plans at, 270–73, cowboys, 810–12, 811
275 Cowpens, Battle of (1781), 233, 253
consumer culture Cox, Archibald, 1388–89
after World War II, 1249–51, 1250 Crack in the Picture Window, The (Keats), 1262
in early twentieth century, 1044–45, 1045, Crawford, William H., 405, 406, 416, 429, 430,
1046 431, 431–32, 441
containment, 1217, 1217–19, 1244, 1453 Crédit Mobilier, 734
Continental army, 214, 219, 220, 252 Creeks, 87, 88, 89, 262, 286, 308, 354
see also American Revolution Jackson and, 355–56
Continental Association, 193 removal of, 455–57, 456
Continental Congress, First, 192–94, 207 Tecumseh and, 348
Continental Congress, Second, 197, 207, 215, Creel, George, 999
223, 244 CREEP (Committee to Re-elect the
extralegal nature of, 239 President), 1387, 1388
independence voted by, 201, 201–2, 250 crime in colonial period, 143
and Indian rights, 248 Crisis, The, 1043
peace efforts and, 199, 200 Critique of Pure Reason (Kant), 523
contraception, 1362–63, 1363 Crittenden, John J., 644–45
Contract Labor Act (1864), 679 Crockett, Davy, 354, 355, 580, 581
contract rights, 425 Croly, Herbert, 964, 970
Contract with America, 1459–60, 1460 Cromwell, Oliver, 55, 83, 84, 159
Contras, 1423–24, 1424 croquet, 835
Convention of 1818, 417–18, 418, 534 Crown Point, Battle of (1775), 197
Cooke, Jay, 680 Crow Quadrilles, The, 395
Coolidge, Calvin, 1018, 1043, 1059, 1064, Cruikshank, Robert, 444
1067, 1068, 1071–73, 1072, 1073, 1396 Crusaders, 18
Copernicus, Nicolaus, 146 Cuba, 27, 28, 402, 1348
Copperheads, 682 Bay of Pigs invasion of, 1314–15
Coral Sea, Battle of (1942), 1164–65 Castro’s rise in, 1295–96, 1296
Corbin, Margaret, 246 missile crisis in (1962), 1314–19, 1317
CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), 1309 War of 1898 and, 903–4, 908, 910–12, 911
Corey, Giles, 138 Cudahy, Michael, 397
corn (maize), 23, 24, 50, 574 Cullen, Countee, 1039
Cornwallis, Charles, 230, 231, 233, 234–35, cult of domesticity, 394
235, 253 cultural conservatism, 1446–47
Coronado, Francisco Vásquez de, 34, 35 culture, U.S., emergence of, 249–51
corporations, business, 18, 53 Cumberland Gap, 370
corporations, progressivism and regulation Cumberland (National) Road, 413, 416,
of, 946–47, 969–70 420–21, 456
 Index • A167

currency as socialist, 785, 785–86

in colonial period, 133–34, 181 in World War I, 1001
Confederation Congress and, 265 debt
in late nineteenth century, 862–63 after American Revolution, 292
national bank issue and, 460, 467 after Civil War, 561
shortage of, 265 after World War I, 1065–66
silver, 873–74 in early U.S., 309
Currency Act (1764), 181, 189 Reagan and, 1430–32
Custer, George A., 805 Decatur, Stephen, 334
Cutler, Manasseh, 261 Declaration of Independence, 202, 202–3,
CWA (Civil Works Administration), 1105 207, 210, 219
Czechoslovakia, 1221 Declaratory Act, 185, 207
Czolgosz, Leon, 924 Deere, John, 383, 408, 409
de Grasse, François-Joseph-Paul de, 234–35
Daley, Richard, 1335, 1345–46, 1374 deism, 147, 148, 151, 511–12
Daniel Boone Escorting Soldiers through the Delaney, Martin, 708–10, 709
Cumberland Gap (Bingham), 311 Delaware
Danish colonists, 141 Constitution ratified by, 278, 279
Dare, Elinor, 48 voting rights in, 242, 411
Dare, Virginia, 48 Delaware colony, 84, 98, 107
Darrow, Clarence, 1028–31, 1030 Delawares, 141, 229
Dartmouth College, 155, 398–99 De La Warr, Lord, 61
Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 425 DeLeon, Daniel, 785
Darwin, Charles, 841–42, 843 , 843–44, 908, de Lôme letter, 905
1026, 1041 Democratic party, 476
Darwinism in Civil War, 682
banned from public schools, 1028–31, in election of 1832, 464–65
1030 in election of 1848, 604, 605
reform, 845, 845 in election of 1860, 637–38, 638
religious opposition to, 1028–31, 1030 in election of 1868, 732, 732–33
social, 843–44, 846, 899 in election of 1874, 740
Daugherty, Harry, 1069 in election of 1876, 741–43, 742
Daughters of Liberty, 186, 193 in election of 1916, 992–94
Davenport, James, 153 in election of 1924, 1073
Davis, Henry Winter, 712 in election of 1928, 1078–79, 1079
Davis, Ignatius, 117 in election of 1948, 1228–32, 1231
Davis, Jefferson in election of 1956, 1290–91
Civil War strategy of, 658 in election of 1960, 1300–1304, 1303, 1304
as Confederate president, 643, 684, 684–85 in election of 1964, 1326–28
in duel, 492 in election of 1968, 1345–47, 1346, 1347
enlistment efforts and, 660 in election of 1980, 1409–11, 1411
Lee’s relationship with, 667 in election of 1988, 1436–38, 1438
in Mexican War, 594 in election of 1992, 1454–56, 1455
Dawes, Henry L., 809 in election of 1996, 1461–62
Dawes, William, 195, 196 in election of 2000, 1469–72, 1470
Day, Henry, 405 in election of 2004, 1481, 1481–82, 1482
Deadwood, Dakota Territory, 801 in election of 2008, 1487–91, 1488, 1489,
Dean, John, 1388 1490, 1491
Dearborn, Henry, 352 in Kansas-Nebraska crisis, 619–20
death rates in colonial period, 109–10 late nineteenth-century components of,
Debs, Eugene V. 852
pardon of, 1071 origins of, 433
Pullman Strike and, 782–83 slavery issue in, 637–38
A168 • INDEX

demographic shifts in population, 1451, disenfranchisement of African Americans,

1451–52, 1508 878–80
Depression, Great, 1098 divine right of kings, 54, 163
congressional initiatives in, 1089–90 divorce, 245
culture in, 1117–20 Dix, Dorothea Lynde, 537, 677
dust bowl in, 1111, 1111–14, 1112 Dixiecrats, 1229–30, 1230
farmers and, 1075, 1086–87, 1090–92, Dodd-Frank Act, see Wall Street Reform and
1091–92 Consumer Protection
hardships of, 1084, 1088, 1088–89, Dodge, Richard, 808
1110–14, 1111, 1112 Dole, Bob, 1461–62, 1462
Hoover’s efforts at recovery, 1085–86 dollar diplomacy, 982–83
human toll of, 1084, 1088, 1088–89, Dominican Republic, 21
1096–1102 Dominion of New England, 162, 207
labor movement in, 1133–35, 1134 Donner, George, 577
market crash and, 1081–84, 1083 Donner party, 577, 599
World War I veterans in, 1090–92, 1092 Doolittle, Amos, 196
see also New Deal Double V campaign, 1170–72, 1172
Depression of 1893, 872, 872–73 Douglas, Aaron, 1040
desegregation, see segregation and Douglas, Stephen A., 378, 618, 633, 634–37
desegregation Compromise of 1850 and, 612–13
Deslondes, Charles, 503, 509 death of, 682
de Soto, Hernando, 34, 35 in election of 1860, 638–39, 643
Detroit Daily News, 1045 Kansas-Nebraska issue and, 617–21, 618,
Dewey, George, 907–8 622
Dewey, John, 844–45 Lincoln’s debates with, 632–35, 634, 647
Dewey, Thomas E., 1188, 1229–31, 1231 Douglass, Frederick, 547, 547–48, 673, 675,
Dial, 524 728
Dias, Bartholomeu, 19 downsizing, 1453
Dickinson, Emily, 527, 528, 528, 676 draft in Civil War, 659–61, 660, 661
Dickinson, John, 199 draft in Vietnam War, 1378
Dien Bien Phu, Battle of (1954), 1287, 1288 Drake, Francis, 46
Dingley Tariff (1897), 888 Drayton, John, 126
diphtheria, 110 Drayton, William Henry, 243
diplomacy DREAM Act, 1506
Civil War and, 658–59 Dred Scott v. Sandford, 628–30, 629, 632, 639,
Confederation Congress and, 263–64 647, 707
nationalist, 428–29 Duarte, José Napoleón, 1428
direct primaries, 944 Dubinksy, David, C
disarmament and arms reduction, 1066–68, Du Bois, W. E. B., 686, 887, 887–88, 890, 1007,
1067 1042
discovery and exploration, 14–38, 50 duels, 340, 341, 491–92
of Africa, 19–20 Dukakis, Michael, 1436–38, 1438
biological exchange from, 24, 23, 23–25 Duke, James Buchanan “Buck,” 792
by Columbus, 6, 19–22, 22, 51 Dulles, John Foster, 1278, 1280, 1282–84,
Dutch, 25 1283, 1284, 1285, 1400
English, 25, 44, 45, 47–49, 48, 50, 53 Dunmore, Lord (John Murray), 243,
French, 25, 44, 45, 51, 165–69 244
Norse, 15–16, 16 Durand, John, 144
Spanish, 18–19, 20–21, 25–26, 26, 31–36, 35 dust bowl, 1106, 1111, 1111–14, 1112
technology in, 17 Dutch Americans, 95, 140, 144, 145, 149
disease Dutch East India Company, 90
in colonial era, 109, 110 Dutch Empire, 83, 84, 89–92, 91, 102
Indian susceptibility to, 24, 25, 27, 31, 50, Dutch Reformed Church, 42, 92, 93, 140,
80, 87, 94 150, 155
 Index • A169

Dutch Republic, 89, 169 Edison General Electric Company, 761

Dutch West India Company, 90–91, 93 education
Dwight, Timothy, 514 of African Americans, 725–26, 754, 756,
Dylan, Bob, 1355–56 762, 1243
Dynamic Sociology (Ward), 845 in backcountry, 149
dysentery, 110 in colonial period, 146, 148–49, 149
GI Bill of Rights and, 1251, 1251–52
Earhart, Amelia, 1047 higher, 533–35, 534, 841
Earth Day, 1373 in nineteenth century, 531–35, 534, 721,
East Asia, imperialism in, 920, 920–22, 921 726, 839–43
Eastern Woodlands Indians, 14 public, 839–40
East India Company, 190 2002 reform of, 1472–73
Eaton, John, 445 segregation and desegregation in, 1276–77,
Eaton, Peggy, 445–46 1280–81, 1281, 1307, 1308, 1365–66,
Eaton Affair, 445–46, 446 1437
Eckford, Elizabeth, 1280–81, 1281 vocational training, 840, 840, 978
Economist, The, 1484, 1505 women and, 842
economy Edwards, Jonathan, 151, 151–54, 157, 514
after American Revolution, 262–63, Edward VI, 43
264–65, 290–98 EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity
after War of 1812, 380–84 Commission), 1324
after World War II, 1212–13, 1248–49, 1298 Egypt
agriculture and, 380–84, 415–16 “Arab Awakening” and, 1497–98, 1498
American System and, 414–15 Suez War in, 1291–93, 1292
Clinton and, 1456–57, 1457, 1462–63 Ehrlichman, John, 1368, 1388
in colonial America, 114–43 Eighteenth Amendment, 276, 1032, 1049,
middle colonies, 139–41, 142, 143 1082
New England, 127–39 eight-hour workday, 947, 976
southern colonies, 114–27 Einstein, Albert, 1050–51, 1051
Depression of 1893 and, 872, 872–73, Eisenhower, Dwight D.
1135–36 assessment of presidency of, 1296–97
in early nineteenth century, 366, 380–84, background of, 1271
408, 410–15, 414–16, 436–37, 438–39, civil rights movement and, 1273–74, 1280
450–71 dynamic conservatism of, 1271–72, 1298
George H. W. Bush and, 1453–54 in election of 1952, 1268–70, 1269, 1270
George W. Bush and, 1485–87 in election of 1956, 1290–91
Hamilton’s views on, 290–98 foreign policy of, 1282
in late nineteenth century, 865 Indochina and, 1287–88, 1289, 1290
Nixon and, 1374–76, 1375 McCarthyism and, 1272–73
Obama and, 1492–93, 1504 religion promoted by, 1261
Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement and, Sputnik and, 1293–94
1502–4, 1503 Suez War and, 1291–93
Panic of 1819 and, 420–22 U-2 summit and, 1295
Reagan and, 1410, 1418–19, 1419, 1448 in World War II, 1176, 1177, 1180, 1182,
in 1920s, 1017–18, 1046–48, 1048, 1074–76, 1182–84, 1186–87
1081–84, 1083, 1098 Eisenhower Doctrine, 1294
silver and, 873–74 Elaine, Ark., race riot in (1919), 1018
slave, 126 elections and campaigns
of South, 508, 791–92 of 1796, 313–14
stock market and, 1081–84, 1083, 1406, of 1800, 321–23, 322
1406–7, 1436 of 1804, 340
in World War II, 1165–67, 1200–1201 of 1808, 346
ecosystem, see environment of 1816, 416
Edison, Thomas, 760, 761 of 1820, 417
A170 • INDEX

elections and campaigns (continued) Electronic Numerical Integrator and

of 1824, 430–32, 431, 440, 441 Computer (ENIAC), 1429, 1431
of 1828, 398, 422, 434, 435, 435–37, 436, Eliot, John, 81
441 Eliot, T. S., 1054–55
of 1832, 463–65 Elizabeth I, 43, 43, 44, 46–47, 48, 49, 50, 52,
of 1836, 469–70 54, 55, 57
of 1840, 472, 472–74, 473, 560, 598 Elizabethtown, 95
of 1844, 583–86, 584 Elkins Act (1903), 954
of 1848, 604, 605 Ellis Island, 827, 828–29, 829
of 1852, 616–17 Ellison, Ralph, 1263, 1263
of 1856, 626–28, 627 Ellsberg, Daniel, 1380, 1388
of 1860, 637–41, 638, 640, 643 El Salvador, 1423
of 1868, 732, 732–33 emancipation, 672–76, 708–10
of 1872, 736–37 in Civil War, 672–76
of 1874, 740 freedmen’s plight after, 708–10
of 1876, 741–43, 742 in Revolutionary War, 245
of 1880, 855–57 Emancipation Proclamation (1863), 671, 702,
of 1884, 857, 857–59 703, 707, 712
of 1888, 860–61, 861 Embargo Act (1807), 344–46, 363, 466
of 1892, 870–71, 871 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 367, 524–25, 525, 527,
of 1896, 874–78, 875, 877 600, 654
of 1900, 923–24 Emerson, William, 196
of 1904, 953 employment, see labor
of 1908, 958–59 Empress of China, 263
of 1912, 963–67, 964, 966, 978 enclosure movement, 53–54
of 1916, 992–94, 993 encomenderos, 37
of 1918, 1008 encomiendas, 31, 33
of 1920, 1061–62 engineering, 406
of 1924, 1073 England
of 1928, 1078–79, 1079 after Wars of the Roses, 18
of 1932, 1092–96, 1094, 1095 background on, 52–56
of 1936, 1129–31, 1130 Catholics in, 46, 52, 55
of 1940, 1155–56 colonial administration under, 102–3, 158,
of 1944, 1188–89 159–63
of 1948, 1228–32, 1229, 1230, 1231, 1232 explorations by, 25, 44, 45, 47–49, 48,
of 1952, 1268–70, 1269, 1270 50, 53
of 1956, 1290–91, 1293 government of (see Parliament, British)
of 1960, 1300–1304, 1303, 1304 liberties in, 53
of 1964, 1326–28, 1327 marriage in, 109
of 1968, 1343–44, 1345–47, 1346, 1347 monarchy of, 53, 54–56, 158
of 1972, 1385–87 nobles in, 53
of 1976, 1396–97 population explosion in, 53–54
of 1980, 1409–11, 1411 privateers from, 46
of 1984, 1426 Reformation in, 42–44
of 1988, 1436–38, 1437, 1438 Scotland’s union with, 54
of 1992, 1454–56, 1455 Spanish Armada defeated by, 46–47, 47,
of 1996, 1461–62, 1462 50, 51
of 2000, 1469–72, 1470, 1471 taxation in, 53, 55, 180
of 2004, 1480–82, 1481, 1482 traders from, 35
of 2006, 1485–86 see also Great Britain
of 2008, 1487–91, 1488, 1489, 1490, 1491, English Civil War (1642–1646), 83–84, 96,
1508 105, 159
electoral college, in Constitution, 272, ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and
274–75 Computer), 1429, 1431
 Index • A171

Enlightenment, 146–49, 156, 503, 510 Farm Tenant Act (1937), 1135
Enola Gay, 1198 Farragut, David, 683
entrepreneurs, 761–68 Faubus, Orval, 1281
see also specific entrepreneurs FCC (Federal Communications
environment, 1373, 1373–74 Commission), 1045
cities and, 825–26, 826 FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance
conservation and, 955–58, 956, 957 Corporation), 1103
European attitude toward, 108 Federal Communications Commission
Indians and, 107–8 (FCC), 1045
industrialization and, 389–91, 390 federal court system, 288
mining and, 804 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), (FDIC), 1103
1374 Federal Emergency Management Agency
Episcopal Church, 248, 495 (FEMA), 1483–84
Equal Employment Opportunity Federal Emergency Relief Administration
Commission (EEOC), 1324 (FERA), 1104–5
equality Federal Farm Board, 976, 1069, 1073
American Revolution and, 242 Federal Farm Loan Act (1916), 976
Jacksonian era and, 407 Federal Highways Act (1916), 414, 976
Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), 1361, 1415 Federal Housing Administration (FHA), 1103
“Era of Good Feelings,” 415–20, 438 Federalist, The (Hamilton, Madison, and Jay),
Erie Canal, 371–74, 372–73, 374, 409, 458–59, 277–78, 278, 282, 283
459 Federalists, 211, 267, 316, 390
Eries, 95 Alien and Sedition Acts of, 318–19
Eriksson, Leif, 16 in election of 1796, 313–14
Erik the Red, 16 in election of 1800, 321–23, 322
Erskine, David, 346 in election of 1808, 346
Ervin, Samuel J., Jr., 1387 in election of 1816, 416
Escobedo v. Illinois, 1306 in election of 1820, 417
Espionage Act (1917), 1000–1001 land policy of, 309–10
Esquire, 1334 Louisiana Purchase as seen by, 336
Ethiopian Regiment, 243 Napoleonic wars and, 345, 345–46
ethnic cleansing, 1468 in ratification debate, 276–78, 278, 280
Europe Republican opposition to, 298–300
American biological exchange with, 24, 23, War of 1812 and, 361
23–25 Federal Radio Commission, 1045
expansion of, 17–19 Federal Reserve Act (1913), 968, 968–69
see also specific countries Federal Reserve System, 968–69, 978, 1052,
evangelism, evangelists, 33, 148, 150, 152, 153, 1070, 1073, 1075, 1087, 1435, 1465
154, 496–500 Federal Trade Commission (FTC), 969, 1087,
executive branch, see presidency 1103, 1120
exploration, see discovery and exploration Federal Writers’ Project, 1125–26
Export Control Act (1940), 1159 FEMA (Federal Emergency Management
Agency), 1483–84
Fair Deal, 1227, 1227–28, 1244 Feminine Mystique, The (Friedan), 1358–59,
Fallen Timbers, Battle of (1794), 306 1359
Falwell, Jerry, 1414, 1446 feminism, 1358–62, 1359, 1361
families FERA (Federal Emergency Relief
in colonial period, 110 Administration), 1104–5
slave, 499–500, 500 Ferdinand II, king of Aragon, 18–19, 20, 21
“family slavery,” 123 Ferguson, Patrick, 231
Farewell to Arms, A (Hemingway), 1024, 1056 Ferraro, Geraldine, 1426
Farmers’ Alliances, 866–68, 867 feudalism, 91
farm politics, 868–70, 869, 890 FHA (Federal Housing Administration), 1103
A172 • INDEX

Fifteenth Amendment, 722, 723, 739, 757, Fort Christina, 90

857, 1038, 1165 Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh, Pa.), 171, 174
Fifth Amendment, 602 Fort Greenville, 305
Fillmore, Millard, 616, 619, 662 Fort Henry, 663
Compromise of 1850 and, 612, 612–14 Fort Jackson, Treaty of, 356
in election of 1856, 627, 627–28 Fort Laramie Treaty (1851), 575–77, 576,
Finney, Charles Grandison, 517–18, 541, 553 599
Finnish settlers, 90, 95, 140 Fort Le Boeuf, 171
“First, Second, and Last Scene of Mortality, Fort Mandan, 337
The” (Punderson), 112 Fort McHenry, 357
First African Church, 725 Fort Mims, 354, 355, 356
First Continental Congress, 192–94, 207 Fort Necessity, 171
fishing in New England, 129, 130, 136, 469–70 Fort Orange, 90, 92
Fisk, Jim, 733 Fort Stanwix, Battle of (1777), 224
Fiske, John, 899 Fort Stanwix, Treaty of (1784), 261–62, 283
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 1023–24, 1034, 1035, 1053, Fort Sumter, 644, 649–51, 650, 703
1053, 1056–57 Fort Ticonderoga, 197, 200
Fitzhugh, George, 550 Foster, Stephen, 395
Five-Power Naval Treaty (1922), 1145 Fourteen Points, 1005–7
Fletcher, Tom, 1330 Fourteenth Amendment, 557, 716, 717, 719,
Fletcher v. Peck, 424, 439 721, 739, 758, 1038, 1437
Florida, 50, 98, 99, 262 Fox, George, 96
acquisition of, 418–20 France
after American Revolution, 237 after Hundred Years’ War, 18
in colonial wars, 176–77 American Revolution and, 210, 225, 227,
in election of 2000, 1471, 1471–72 234–35, 236–37
exploration of, 34 Citizen Genet and, 302–3
Huguenots in, 36 in colonial wars, 169–79
Louisiana Purchase and, 337 explorations of, 25, 44, 45, 51, 165–69
secession of, 642 in Indochina, 1286–88, 1289, 1290
Seminoles in, 419, 419, 429, 432 late eighteenth-century conflict with,
Spanish exploration and colonization of, 314–17, 315, 318, 318–19
34–36, 532 in League of Nations, 1009
War of 1812 and, 349, 358 Louisiana purchased from, 335–36,
Flying Cloud, 375 396–97
folklore, African-American, 501–2 Monroe Doctrine and, 428
Food Administration, 997 in Napoleonic Wars, 342–47, 344, 401–2,
Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 1362 532
food in colonial New England, 129 Normandy invasion in, 1182–85, 1184
football, 838 Paris Peace Conference and, 1008
Foran Act (1885), 778 privateers from, 44
force bill (1833), 436, 454 Revolution in, 300–302, 325
Ford, Gerald Second Gulf War and, 1480
in election of 1976, 1396–97 in Suez War, 1292–93
presidency assumed by, 1391–94, 1393 traders from, 35
Ford Motor Company, 1048, 1048 Vichy government of, 1159–60, 1170
foreign policy in World War I, 984, 1003–4
Clinton and, 1466–69 World War II and, 1153, 1182–85, 1184,
George H. W. Bush and, 1439–43, 1441, 1442 1185, 1241
in the 1950s, 1282–84, 1298 see also French Empire
Wilson and, 980–83 Franciscans, 36, 37, 38, 569–70, 570
Forest and Stream, 955 Franco, Francisco, 1146
Fort Caroline, 36 Franklin, Battle of (1864), 694
 Index • A173

Franklin, Benjamin, 117, 136, 147–48, 148, Overland Trails and, 572–75, 573, 574, 575
152, 173, 178, 218–19 religious revivals on, 514–17, 517
at Albany Congress, 173 Santa Fe Trail and, 572, 573
on Constitution, 279 southern, 505–7
at Constitutional Convention, 268–69 westward expansion and, 563–78, 598
Declaration of Independence and, 202, 203 early development of California, 570–71
on German immigrants, 141 Rocky Mountains and Oregon Country,
Paxton Boys and, 189 567–68
on peace commission, 237, 237 settlement of California, 568–70, 570
Plan of Union of, 173 Spanish West and Mexican
on population growth, 109 independence, 566, 566–67
as postmaster-general, 200 Western Indians, 564–65
Franklin, William, 218–19 Wilderness Road and, 310–12, 311
Franklin, William Temple, 237 women and, 816, 816
Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, 984 see also West
Fredericksburg, Battle of (1862), 671 FSM (free speech movement), 1352, 1353
free blacks, 327, 423, 424, 493, 493–94, 708–10 FTC (Federal Trade Commission), 969, 1103
Freedmen’s Bureau, U.S., 710–11, 711, Fugitive Slave Act (1850), 614–15, 615
713–14, 720 Fulani tribesmen, 126
freedom of religion, see religious freedom Fuller, Margaret, 524
freedom riders, 1309–10, 1310 Fulton, Robert, 370, 426, 427, 456
Freeport Doctrine, 634 Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, 86
Free-Soil party, 603–4, 617, 646, 647 fundamentalism, 1028, 1392–93, 1402
free speech movement (FSM), 1352, 1353 Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, 135
Free-State Hotel, 623 fur trade, 81, 95, 471
Frémont, John Charles, 577, 577–78, 593, Dutch, 79, 90
626–28, 627 French, 79, 166, 169
French Americans, 141, 145 Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, 1845
French and Indian War, 170, 170–79, 172, 176, (Bingham), 568
206, 207
French Empire, 90, 118, 168 Gaddafi, Muammar, 1499
British Empire compared with, 102–3, 110, Gadsden Purchase, 561, 619, 620, 621, 647
158, 165–66, 169 Gage, Thomas, 191, 192, 195
colonization in, 35–36 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 1262
fur trade in, 79, 166, 169 Gallatin, Albert, 330, 333, 350, 357, 360
in Indian conflicts, 95, 166 Gama, Vasco da, 19–20
Indian relations with, 165–66, 167 Gambia, 126
maps of, 168, 176 Gandhi, Mahatma K., 527
missionaries in, 166, 167 Garfield, James A., 855–57
trade in, 35–36, 170 Garrison, William Lloyd, 272, 543, 543–46,
see also France 550–51, 553, 621
French Revolution, 300–302, 325 Garvey, Marcus, 1041–44, 1042
Freud, Sigmund, 1034–35 Gaspee, 190
Frick, Henry C., 780–81, 954 Gastonia Strike (1929), 1077
Friedan, Betty, 1358–59, 1359, 1360 Gates, Bill, 1430
From Here to Eternity (Jones), 1263 Gates, Horatio, 200, 223–24
frontier, 563–78 Gates, Robert, 1491, 1494
American Revolution and, 227–29, 228 Gates, Thomas, 61
closing of, 816–17 Gauguin, Paul, 792
in colonial period, 189 Gay Liberation Front (GLF), 1367
in early U.S., 305, 305–6 gays
Great Plains ecology, 575–77 AIDS and, 1433–34
Indian conflicts on, 804–8, 806, 807, 808 rights of, 1367, 1506
A174 • INDEX

Geary Act, 774 Geronimo, Chiricahua Apache chief, 807

General Assembly of Virginia, 63 Gerry, Elbridge
General Court, Massachusetts, 72–73, 75, 77 at Constitutional Convention, 269, 273
Genet, Edmond-Charles-Édouard, 302–3 in ratification debate, 277
Geneva Medical College, 407 XYZ affair and, 316
gentrification, 1432 Gettysburg, Battle of (1863), 687–89, 688, 689,
geography, Renaissance, 17 703
George Barrell Emerson School, 534 Gettysburg Address (1863), 689
George I, 163 Ghent, Treaty of (1814), 358, 363, 417
George II, 98, 163, 175 Ghost Dance, 808
George III, 175, 178, 179, 190, 206, 210, 229, Gibbons, Thomas, 426
236, 240, 241 Gibbons v. Ogden, 426–27, 439
accession of, 175 GI Bill of Rights (1944), 1251, 1251–52,
on Boston Tea Party, 191 1257–58
on colonial rebellion, 193 Gideon v. Wainwright, 1306
Grenville and, 180 Gilbert, Humphrey, 47–48
ministerial changes of, 185, 187 Gilded Age, 849–53, 890
Paine on, 200 Gilded Age, The (Twain and Warner), 848
peace efforts and, 199 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 1036
George Washington at Princeton (Peale), 218 Gingrich, Newt, 1459–60, 1460, 1465
Georgia Ginsberg, Allen, 1265
Civil War fighting in, 683, 688, 691–95, 694 Gladden, Washington, 936–37
Constitution ratified by, 278, 279 glasnost, 1440
land claims of, 258, 261 GLF (Gay Liberation Front), 1367
secession of, 642 Glidden, Joseph, 811
voting rights in, 242, 410 globalization, 1463
Georgia colony, 99 global warming, 8
backcountry of, 143 Glorious Revolution, 56, 162–63, 169, 206,
European settlement of, 98–99, 102, 105 207
government of, 98–99, 102, 162 Godwin, Abraham, 297
Indians in, 88 gold, 26–27, 33, 37, 165
slaves in, 122, 126 gold rush, California, 409, 575, 599, 604–8,
German Americans, 95, 98, 99, 115, 140–41, 606, 607, 647
143, 145, 156, 380, 395–96, 475, 476, Goldwater, Barry, 1326–28, 1327, 1339, 1396
479–80, 488, 580 Gompers, Samuel, 778, 779, 779–80, 1018,
in Civil War, 659 1078
in nineteenth century, 398–400, 399 Gone With the Wind, 479
German Beer Garden, New York (1825), 399 Good, Sarah, 137–38
German Reformed Church, 42 “good neighbor” policy, 1143
Germany Goodyear, Charles, 380
East, 1222, 1224, 1440, 1441 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 1434–35, 1435, 1436,
health care in, 1457 1440, 1442–43
Paris Peace Conference and, 1008 Gore, Albert, Jr., 1455, 1456, 1469–72, 1470
reparations from, 1010–12 Gorges, Ferdinando, 78
West, 1221–23, 1224, 1440, 1441 Gould, Jay, 733, 759, 759
in World War I, 984, 1002–2, 1003, government
1006–7 in Civil War, 679–85, 707–8
Germany, Nazi of early U.S., 287, 324
Blitzkrieg tactics of, 1152–53, 1154 English (see Parliament, British)
collapse of, 1193–96, 1194, 1195 progressive reforms and, 944–46, 946
Hitler’s rise and, 1144, 1145 separation of powers in, 273–76
Poland invaded by, 1150–51 transportation and, 378, 463
in Tripartite Pact, 1159 Graduation Act (1854), 382
see also World War II Grady, Henry W., 791
 Index • A175

Grange (Patrons of Husbandry), 865–66 Greene, Nathanael, 220, 231, 233, 452
Grant, Ulysses S., 596, 652, 663, 683, 691, 744 Greenland, 16
at Chattanooga, 690 Green Mountain Boys, 197
in election of 1868, 732, 732–33 Greensboro, N.C., sit-in in (1960), 1307–8,
in election of 1872, 736–37 1308
Lee pursued by, 690–92, 693 Greenspan, Alan, 1463
Lee’s surrender to, 699–700 Greenville, Treaty of (1795), 306, 325
at Shiloh, 665 Grenada invasion (1983), 1425
at Vicksburg, 686, 687 Grenville, George, 180–82, 184, 185–86
Grapes of Wrath, The (Steinbeck), 1106, 1119 Grimké, Angelina, 545, 546
Graves, Billy, 577 Grimké, Sarah, 545, 546
Gray, L. Patrick, 1388 Grinnell, George Bird, 955
Gray, Thomas, 504 Griswald, Roger, 320
Great Awakening (First), 150–55, 156, 157, Grovey v. Townsend, 1116
513 Grundy, Felix, 349
Great Awakening (Second), 513–22, 552 Guadalcanal, 1185
burned-over district and, 517–18 Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of (1848), 521,
frontier revivals, 514–17, 517 595, 599
Mormons and, 518–22, 520, 521, 522 Guam, 26, 1185
Great Britain Guatemala, 29, 1285–86
colonial trade with, 129 Guinn v. United States, 1043
in colonial wars, 169–79 Gulf War (First), 1444–46, 1445, 1448
Convention of 1818 and, 417–18 Gulf War (Second), 1477–78, 1478, 1485,
creation of, 54 1494–96, 1495
French Revolution and, 301 Gullahs, 501
health care in, 1457 Gutenberg, Johannes, 17
Indian conflicts and, 286 Guzman, Arbenz, 1286
industry in, 385
Jay’s Treaty with, 303–5 Habeas Corpus Act (1863), 682
in League of Nations, 1009 Haber, Al, 1351
in Napoleonic wars, 342–47, 344 haciendas, 33
Oregon Country and, 428, 587–88 Haig, Alexander, 1368
Paris Peace Conference and, 1008 Haiti, 21, 335, 1466–67
Second Gulf War and, 1480 Halberstam, David, 1344
in Suez War, 1292–93 Haldeman, H. R., 1368, 1388, 1392
U.S. trade with, 392, 394, 417, 421, 438, 441, Hale, John P., 617
574 Half-Breeds, 854–55
War of 1812 and, 349, 352, 353, 353–54, Half-Way Covenant, 136, 157
356, 357–58, 359 Halleck, Henry, 665
in World War I, 984, 987, 989–91, 996, 997, Hamer, Fannie Lou, 1333
1004 Hamilton, Alexander, 211, 235, 257, 306, 307,
in World War II, 1153–54, 1182, 1184, 1186, 317, 324, 328
1194, 1241 Adams administration and, 316
see also American Revolution; British background of, 291
Empire; England; Parliament, British; Burr’s duel with, 340, 341, 491
War of 1812 Constitutional Convention and, 269, 273,
Great Charter, see Magna Carta (1215) 274
Great (Connecticut) Compromise, 271 economic vision of, 290–98
Great Depression, see Depression, Great and election of 1800, 322
Great Plains in election of 1796, 313, 314
environment of, 575–77 Federalist and, 277–78, 278, 282
horses and, 38–40, 531 French Revolution and, 302
Greeley, Horace, 623, 736–37, 737 Jefferson compared with, 299–300
greenbacks, 732, 734–35, 891, 895 Jefferson’s continuation of programs of, 333
A176 • INDEX

Hamilton, Alexander (continued) Hell’s Angels, 1358

national bank promoted by, 292, 294, Hemingway, Ernest, 1024, 1056
294–96 Henrico (Richmond), 61
in ratification debate, 277 Henrietta Maria, Queen, 66
as secretary of the Treasury, 288, 290–98, Henry, Joseph, 379
291 Henry, Patrick, 299
Hammond, G. H., 811 Constitutional Convention avoided by, 268
Hammond, James H., 488, 642 at Continental Congress, 194, 194
Hancock, John, 196, 204 in ratification debate, 277, 279, 282
Hancock, Winfield Scott, 856 Henry VII, 18, 25, 46, 54
Hardenbergh, Isabella “Bell,” see Truth, Henry VIII, 42–43
Sojourner Hepburn Act (1906), 954
Harding, Warren G., 1023, 1072 Herbert, Victor, 397
appointments and policy of, 1062–65, 1065 Herrán, Tomás, 925
corruption under, 1069–71, 1070 Hessians, 215, 218, 230
death of, 1071 Hicks, Edward, 310
in election of 1920, 1061–62 Hidalgo y Costilla, Miguel, 566, 566
Latin American policy of, 1069 higher education, 533–35, 534
Harlan, John Marshall, 679 highways and roads, 370, 387–88, 415,
Harlem Renaissance, 1038–40, 1040 420–21, 456–57
Harper’s Ferry, Va., 636 to frontier regions, 370, 455–56
Harper’s Weekly, 705, 725, 844 Wilderness Road, 310–12, 311, 370, 455
Harrington, Michael, 1324 Hill, John, 374
Harrison, Benjamin “hippies,” 1356–58
in election of 1888, 860–61, 861 Hiroshima, atomic bombing of (1945), 1197,
in election of 1892, 871 1198–99, 1199
reform under, 861–62, 862 Hispanics
Harrison, William Henry, 348–49, 354, 477, definition of, 1063
560 rights of, 1363–65, 1364
Hartford, Treaty of (1638), 81 Hispaniola, Columbus in, 21
Hartford Convention (1814), 359–60, 362, Hiss, Alger, 1239, 1239–40
363, 423 History of the Standard Oil Company
Harvard Medical School, 406 (Tarbell), 943
Harvard University, 154–55, 157 History of the U.S. Decision Making Process in
“Harvest of Death, A” (O’Sullivan), 689 Vietnam, The (McNamara), 1379
Hathorne, John, 139 Hitler, Adolf, 1145, 1146, 1147, 1157, 1179
Haugen, Gilbert N., 1075 death of, 1194
Hawaii, 901–3 Poland and, 1150–51
Hawthorne, John, 527 rise of, 1144, 1145
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 462, 492, 524, 527, 542 see also Germany, Nazi
Hay, John, 910–11, 925 HIV/AIDS, 1433, 1433–34
Hayden, Tom, 1351–52, 1354 Hobbs, Abigail, 139
Hayes, Rutherford B., 809, 854–55 Ho Chi Minh, 1286, 1286–87
Hay-HerránTreaty (1903), 925 Hoffman, Abbie, 1354–55
Haymarket Affair, 776–77, 777 Hohokam-Anasazi culture, 10, 13
Hayne, Robert Y., 449–51, 485 Holder, Eric, 1491
Haynes, Lemuel, 249 Holland, see Netherlands
Hays, Mary Ludwig (Molly Pitcher), 246, 246 Holocaust, 1195, 1195–96
Hayward, James, 197 homelessness, 1432–33
headright system, 140 Homestead Act (1862), 679, 705–6, 814
health care reform, 1457–58, 1458, 1493–94, Homestead steel strike, 780–81
1506–7 honor in the South, 491–92
Hearst, William Randolph, 904, 1111–12 Hood, John B., 693, 694
Heisenberg, Werner, 1051–52 Hooker, Joseph E., 685, 689
 Index • A177

Hooker, Thomas, 78 Hundred Years’ War, 18

Hoover, Herbert, 1074, 1078–86, 1080 Hungarian Americans, 659
in election of 1928, 1078–79, 1079 Hungary
in election of 1932, 1092–93, 1095, 1096 Soviet domination of, 1284–85, 1291,
Manchuria invasion and, 1086–87 1400
recovery efforts of, 1085–86 U.S. peace with, 1015
in World War I, 997 Hunt, Harriet, 406
Hoover, J. Edgar, 1019, 1312 Hurons, 95, 166
Hoover (Boulder) Dam, 814, 814 Hurston, Zora Neale, 1039
Hopis, 13, 531 Hussein, Saddam, 1444, 1478, 1479, 1480
Hopper, Edward, 1259 Hutchinson, Anne, 76, 76–78, 505
Hopwood v. Texas, 1464 Hutchinson, Thomas, 192
horses, 108, 683
Indians and, 38–40, 39, 531 ICC (Interstate Commerce Commission),
Spanish introduction of, 27–28, 38–40 860, 1309
Horseshoe Bend, Battle of (1814), 356, 363 illegal immigration, 1451, 1451–52, 1506
House, Edward M., 988 immigration, 6, 140–41
House of Burgesses, 164, 184 attraction of U.S. for, 827–28
House of Commons, British, 53, 73, 225, of British, 400
236 from British regions, 107
House of Lords, British, 53, 73 of Chinese, 400
House of Representatives, U.S. Constitutional Convention and, 272–73
in Constitution, 272 Ellis Island and, 827, 828–29, 829
Johnson’s impeachment in, 722, 722–23 of Germans, 95, 98, 99, 115, 366, 398–400,
see also Congress, U.S. 399
House of the Seven Gables, The (Hawthorne), illegal, 1451, 1451–52, 1506
527 of Irish, 366, 396–98, 397
House Un-American Activities Committee in late nineteenth century, 826–32, 846
(HUAC), 1239–40 nativism and, 400–401, 401, 830, 867,
housing 1023–25
in colonial New England, 128, 128–29 in nineteenth century, 395–401, 408
GI Bill of Rights and, 1257–58 restrictions on, 831, 832, 1026
in suburbs, 1252–55, 1254 of Scandinavians, 400
Houston, Sam, 581–82, 582 of Scotch-Irish, 23, 141, 143
in duel, 492 surge in, 1451, 1451–52
Kansas-Nebraska Act denounced by, 319 Immigration Act (1924), 1026
Howe, Elias, 380, 409 Immigration and Nationality Services Act
Howe, William, 197, 214–15, 216, 221, 223 (1965), 1329–30
HUAC (House Un-American Activities impeachment
Committee), 1239–40 of Andrew Johnson, 722, 722–23
Hudson, Henry, 90 of Clinton, 1464–66, 1465
Huerta, Victoriano, 981 Nixon and, 1464
Hughes, Charles Evans, 993–94, 1067, imperialism, 898–900, 930
1131–32 in East Asia, 920, 920–22, 921
Hughes, Langston, 1038 global, 898–99
Hughson, John, 124–25 Open Door policy and, 920, 920–21, 935,
Huguenots, 35–36, 42, 85, 141, 166 1129–30, 1133
Hull, William, 352–53 in Pacific, 900–903, 901
Hull-House, 938 religion and, 915–16, 930
human rights, Carter, Jimmy and, see civil theory of, 899–900
rights and liberties impressment, 343
Humphrey, Hubert H., 1228, 1376 Incas, 9–10, 31, 33, 51
in election of 1964, 1327 indentured servants, 61–62, 63, 66, 67, 87, 102,
in election of 1968, 1337, 1345, 1354–55 107, 110, 113, 115–16, 116, 117, 156
A178 • INDEX

Independence Day, 250 in Pennsylvania colony, 141, 179

Indian conflicts Plymouth colony and, 68–69
Andrew Jackson in, 419–20, 420, 546 pre-Columbian civilizations of, 6, 7,
Canada and, 305–6 8–10–15, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13
in colonial period, 63–65, 79, 80–83, 82, Quakers’ relations with, 98
87–89, 94–95, 104, 139, 179 religious beliefs of, 79
in Connecticut colony, 80, 83 removal of, 452, 454, 455–59, 456, 457, 458,
in early U.S., 286 477
French in, 88, 166, 167 reservation system and, 575–77, 576
Great Britain and, 286 rights of, 1365–67, 1366
in Revolutionary War, 248 as slaves, 27, 86–89
Spain and, 308, 309 technology of, 27
Treaty of Paris (1763) and, 176–78 tribal groups of, 10–13, 14–15
between tribes, 15 Virginia colony and, 57–58, 60, 63–65, 179
War of 1812 and, 347–50, 354–56 wagon trains and, 572, 573–74
in West, 804–8, 806, 807, 808 Western, 14, 564–65
Indian Removal Act (1830), 476, 477 westward migration and, 805–8
Indians, American women, 14, 39–40
agriculture of, 8, 50, 57–58, 80, 107–8 in World War II, 1173–74, 1174
Americanization of, 809 see also specific tribes
American Revolution and, 199, 200, 201, indigo, 111
227, 229, 229, 237, 247–48, 261–62 Indochina
Americas settled by, 2 French in, 1286–88, 1289, 1290
buffalo herds and, 38–39, 808–9 Japanese aggression in (1940-1941),
Catholicism and, 22, 32, 32–33, 36–38, 40, 1148–49, 1159
50, 165, 169 Industrial Revolution, 384–92, 566
citizenship of, 809 cities and, 391–92
in Civil War, 663 early textile manufactures and, 384–86
colonial trade with, 56, 79, 81, 86–89, environment and, 389–91, 390
100–101 Lowell System and, 386–89, 387, 388
Columbus’s conflict with, 21, 22 Industrial Revolution, Second, 753–54, 788
and diseases contracted from Europeans, industrial war, 986–87
24, 25, 27, 31, 50, 80, 87, 94 Industrial Workers of the World (IWW),
in early U.S., 286 786–87
education and, 155 inflation after World War II, 1212–13
English vs. French relations with, 79–80, Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-
166, 169 1783, The (Mahan), 899
environment and, 107–8 initiative, right of, 944
forced labor of, 2, 3, 27 In re Debs, 783
in French and Indian War, 174 Institutes of the Christian Religion, The
French relations with, 79, 165, 166, 167, (Calvin), 41
169, 169 internal improvements, 413–14, 414, 446–47,
fur trade and, 79, 81, 95, 166, 169 447
Great Plains wars of, 804–8 International Typographical Union, 404
horses and, 38–40, 39 interstate commerce, regulation of, 426–27,
Jackson’s policy toward, 455–59, 456, 457, 427
458 Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC),
languages of, 11 860, 1309
massacres of, 63, 80–81, 88, 805–8, 807 Into Bondage (Douglas), 1040
missionaries to, 37, 81, 88 Intolerable Acts, see Coercive Acts (1774)
in New England, 75, 78–83 inventions, 760–61, 761
in New York colony, 94–95 Invisible Man (Ellison), 1263, 1263
Old Northwest land of, 259, 260, 261–62 Iran, U.S. hostages in, 1406–9, 1407
 Index • A179

Iran-Contra scandal, 1426–28, 1427, 1448 inaugural address of, 379

Iraq inauguration of, 443, 444
First Gulf War and, 1444–46, 1445, 1448 in Indian conflicts, 419–20, 420
rebuilding, 1479, 1479–80 Indian policy of, 455–59, 456, 457, 458
Second Gulf War and, 1477–78, 1478, internal improvements and, 446–47, 447
1494–96, 1495 national bank issue and, 459–62, 461,
“surge” in, 1485 465–66
Ireland, 52, 54, 57 nullification issue and, 453–54, 528
Irish Americans, 107, 115, 140, 141, 145, 156, tariff issue and, 467
380, 580 ten-hour workday and, 404
in nineteenth century, 396–98, 397 in War of 1812, 350, 354–56, 358, 359
prejudice against, 397–98, 400 Jackson, Frankie “Half Pint,” 1041
Irish potato famine, 396 Jackson, Helen Hunt, 809
iron industry, 486 Jackson, Jesse, 1436
Iroquoians, 14 Jackson, Rachel, 435
Iroquois League, 90, 94–95, 167, 170, 248 Jackson, Thomas “Stonewall,” 596, 667–68
French conflict with, 166, 167 at Chancellorsville, 685, 685
post–Revolutionary War weakness of, 261 death of, 685
Tuscaroras in, 88 at first Bull Run, 656
Irving, Washington, 92 nickname given to, 656
Isabella I, 18–19, 20, 21 at second Bull Run, 668
Islam, 112 “Jack the Dripper,” 1264, 1265
isolationism Jamaica, 72, 84
after World War I, 1065–69, 1067, 1098 James, William, 844, 844
to intervention, 1142–43 James I, 54, 54–55, 56, 61, 68, 163
Israel, 1225, 1467, 1467–68 James II, 55, 56
Italian Americans, 141, 659 accession of, 162
Italy colonization and, 92
in League of Nations, 1009 overthrow of, 162, 163
Mussolini’s rise to power in, 1144, 1145 Jamestown colony, 3, 36, 38, 57–58, 60–63, 65,
Paris Peace Conference and, 1008 71, 104, 105, 109–10, 157
in Tripartite Pact, 1159 Japan
in World War I, 003, 984 Asian expansion of, 1145–47, 1146, 1147,
in World War II, 1157, 1175, 1175, 1180–81, 1159–60, 1160
1189, 1212, 1213 atomic bombing of, 1196–1200, 1198,
IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), 1199
786–87 China invaded by, 1086–87, 1087, 1146–47,
1147, 1148, 1149, 1150, 1227
Jack (Zealy), 497 in League of Nations, 1009
Jackson, Andrew, 420, 430, 440, 442, 462–63, Paris Peace Conference and, 1008
476, 579, 601 Pearl Harbor attack of, 1161–62, 1163
assessment of presidency of, 474–75 in Russo-Japanese War, 927–28
background of, 442–43 in Tripartite Pact, 1159
Calhoun’s rift with, 451–53 in World War I, 984, 1006
in duel, 492 in World War II, 1185, 1186–87, 1188,
Eaton Affair and, 445–46, 446 1196–97, 1202, 1241, 1275
in election of 1824, 431, 431–32 Japanese Americans, 1174–75, 1175
in election of 1828, 398, 434, 435, 435–37, Jay, John, 288
437 background of, 288–89
in election of 1832, 464, 465 Federalist and, 277–78, 278, 282
election of 1844 and, 583–88 on peace commission, 237, 237
government appointments of, 444–45 in ratification debate, 277
Houston and, 582 treaty negotiated by, 303–5
A180 • INDEX

Jay’s Treaty (1795), 303, 303–5, 313, 315, 325 Reconstruction plans of, 714–16, 718–19
Jazz Age, 1040–41, 1041, 1058 Johnson, James Weldon, 1038, 1039
Jefferson, Thomas, 148, 210, 211, 250, 299, Johnson, Lyndon B.
317–18, 324, 329–31, 341, 345, 362, antipoverty efforts of, 1323–26, 1365
372, 380–81, 385, 410, 416, 451, 599 civil rights and, 1324–26, 1325, 1329,
and Alien and Sedition Acts, 320–21 1333–34
background of, 299 in election of 1960, 1303
Barbary pirates and, 333–35, 334 in election of 1964, 1326–28
Burr conspiracy and, 341 election of 1968 and, 1343–44
colonial protests and, 192, 193 Great Society and, 1322–31, 1348
debt issue and, 293 Kennedy assassination and, 1321, 1321
Declaration of Independence and, 202–3, Vietnam War and, 1338–40, 1341–42, 1344,
510 1344, 1396
domestic reforms of, 332–33 war on poverty of, 1323–24, 1323–26
as early Republican leader, 298–300 Johnson, Richard Mentor, 349
economic policies of, 299–300, 466 Johnson, William, 493
in election of 1796, 313 Johnston, Albert Sidney, 663
in election of 1800, 321–23, 322 Johnston, Joseph E., 656, 687, 689, 695,
in election of 1804, 340 696–97
exploration of West promoted by, 337–39, joint-stock companies, 53
338 Jones, James, 1263, 1491
French Revolution and, 301, 302 Jones, John Paul, 234
Hamilton compared with, 299–300 Jones, Mary Harris “Mother,” 783–84, 784
inauguration of, 329–31 Jones Act (1916), 918
internal improvements and, 413 Joseph, Nez Perce chief, 807, 808
Jay’s Treaty and, 304 Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,
on John Adams, 237 338, 338–39
land policy and, 259, 260–61 journeymen, 131, 482
Louisiana Purchase and, 335–37, 339–40 Jubilee Convention (1913), 1031
in Marbury v. Madison, 331–32 Judaism, 92–94, 571
Napoleonic wars and, 342, 344–45 judicial review, 332, 398–99
national bank and, 296 Judiciary Act (1801), 322
as secretary of state, 288, 303 Julian, George W., 682, 712
on Shays’s Rebellion, 267 Junction of the Northern and Western Canals
slavery and, 245, 323 (Hill), 374
War of 1812 and, 349 Jungle, The (Sinclair), 954
on Whiskey Rebellion, 317 juvenile delinquency, 1266
on women’s rights, 247
Jeffersonian Republicans, see Republicans, Kansas, 799, 799–800
Jeffersonian Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), 617–28, 619,
Jeremiah, Thomas, 245 620, 646, 647
Jesuits, 36, 166, 167, 169 “Bleeding Kansas” and, 622–24, 623, 624
Jewish Americans, 92–94, 93, 99, 141 proposed by Douglas, 617–21, 618
Jews, Holocaust and, 1195, 1195–96 sectional politics and, 626–28, 627
“Jim Crow” laws, 756, 757, 758, 758, 759, 761, violence in Senate and, 624–26, 625
879–80 Whig party destroyed over, 621
John I, 18 Kansas Territory
Johnson, Andrew, 682, 714, 715, 727, 1318 Lecompton constitution in, 630–31
assassination plot against, 713 violence in (1856), 623–24
congressional conflicts with, 718–19 Kant, Immanuel, 523
impeachment and trial of, 722, 722–23 Katrina, Hurricane, 1483, 1483–84
Radical Republicans’ conflict with, 717–19, Kearney, Denis, 773, 773
718–19 Kearny, Stephen, 593
 Index • A181

Kearny, U.S.S., 1159 King, Rufus, 340, 346, 416

Keating-Owen Child Labor Act (1916), 976 King Cotton Captured, 487
Keats, John, 1262 King Philip’s (Metacomet’s) War, 81–83, 82,
Kelley, Florence, 938 104, 105
Kellogg, Frank B., 1068 King’s College (Columbia University), 155
Kellogg-Briand Pact (Pact of Paris) (1928), Kingsley, Bathsheba, 153
1068 King’s Mountain, Battle of (1780), 231
Kennan, George F., 1217, 1217–18, 1283, 1341 King William’s War, 169–70
Kennedy, Jacqueline, 1322 Kiowas, 38, 531, 543
Kennedy, John F. Kissinger, Henry, 1368–69, 1381, 1382
assassination of, 1321–22 “shuttle diplomacy” of, 1384, 1384
background of, 1301 Vietnam and, 1377–78, 1385, 1394
cabinet of, 1304–5 KKK (Ku Klux Klan), 736, 736–37, 1026–28,
civil rights and, 1312 1027, 1278
Cuban missile crisis and, 1314–19, 1317 Knights of Labor, 775, 775–76
in election of 1960, 1300–1304, 1303, 1304 Know-Nothing (American) party, 401, 401,
foreign policy of, 1314–20 621, 639
New Frontier and, 1300–1306, 1348 Knox, Henry, 200, 288
Nixon’s debate with, 1302, 1303 Korean War, 1234–39, 1235, 1237, 1244
poverty and, 1325–26 armistice in, 1282
Vietnam and, 1319–20 Red Scare and, 1239
Kennedy, Robert Kosovo, 1468
assassination of, 1344–45 Ku Klux Klan (KKK), 736, 736–37, 1026–28,
as attorney general, 1309, 1310, 1314 1027, 1278
Chavez and, 1364 Ku Klux Klan Act (1871), 737
in election of 1968, 1343 Kuril Islands, 1193
Kent State University, 1379, 1380
Kentucky, 286, 455 labor
agriculture in, 310–11, 573 apprentice-journeyman system of, 328, 482
Indian lands ceded in, 262 child, 769–71, 770, 947–48, 948, 976, 978,
Kentucky Resolutions (1798 and 1799), 1051, 1092, 1094, 1120
319–20, 423 in colonial America, 115–17, 116
Kerouac, Jack, 1265 in early nineteenth century, 402–5, 404, 408
Kerry, John, 1481, 1481–82, 1482 indentured servants, 61–62, 63, 66, 67, 87,
Key, Francis Scott, 357 102, 107, 110, 113, 115–16, 116, 117, 156
Khan, Kublai, 18 in Lowell System, 386–89, 387, 388
Khmer Rouge, 1396 organized, 402–5, 404, 408
Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah, 1406–7 rise of professions, 405–7
Khrushchev, Nikita, 1248, 1284–85, 1287, of women, 112–13, 406–7, 465, 467–69,
1287–88, 1290, 1291, 1313 468, 521, 674–75, 938–42, 939, 941,
crises in Berlin and, 1294, 1294–95 999–1000, 1000, 1036, 1163–64, 1252,
Cuban missile crisis and, 1315–18 1350, 1368, 1423
and U-2 summit, 1295 in World War I, 997–99, 998
King, Boston, 240 see also slavery; slaves
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 527, 1281, 1303, labor movement, 788
1308, 1337, 1342 anarchism and, 776
assassination of, 1344–45 in Great Depression, 1133–35, 1134
background of, 1278 Haymarket Affair, 776–77, 777
“I Have a Dream” speech of, 1313, 1313 Homestead strike and, 780–81
“Letter from Birmingham City Jail” of, Knights of Labor in, 775, 775–76
1310–12 permanent unions and, 774, 788
in March on Washington, 1312–13 Pullman Strike and, 780, 781–83, 782
in Montgomery bus boycott, 1279, 1279–80 in 1920s, 1076–78, 1077
A182 • INDEX

labor movement (continued) at Antietam, 670–71

“Sand Lot” incident in, 772–73 at Chancellorsville, 685
socialism and, 784–86, 785 Confederate side chosen by, 654
Wobblies in, 786–87 at Gettysburg, 687–89
Lafayette, Gilbert du Motier, Marquis of, 227 Grant’s pursuit of, 690–92, 693
La Follette, Robert M., 946, 946, 1073 at Harper’s Ferry, 636
Lake Champlain, Battle of, 356, 357 surrender of, 699–700, 701, 703
Land Act (1800), 310, 421 legal system as profession, 405–6
Landon, Alfred M., 1129 Legal Tender Act (1862), 680
Land Ordinance (1785), 259, 283 leisure, working women and, 836–37
landownership Le Moyne, Jean-Baptiste, 167
and confiscation of Loyalist estates, 263, Le Moyne, Pierre, 167
425 lend-lease program, 1156, 1156–57
in New England, 136 Lenin, V. I., 995, 1005
land policy Leopard incident, 343–42
African Americans and, 708–9 Lesser Antilles, 21
under Articles of Confederation, 257, 258, “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” (King),
259–62, 260, 261 1310–12
in colonial period, 140 Levitt, William, 1254
in early U.S., 309–10 Levittowns, 1254, 1254–55, 1262
Reconstruction and, 708–9, 723, 724 Lewinsky, Monica, 1464
for surveys and sales, 309–10, 452–53 Lewis, Isham, 502
Lane Theological Seminary, 400 Lewis, Lilburn, 502
Langford, Nathaniel Pitt, 956 Lewis, Meriwether, 337–39, 338, 363
Lanphier, Jeremiah, 632 Lexington, Battle of (1775), 195, 195–97, 196,
Lansing, Robert, 988 207
Larkin, Thomas O., 589 Leyte Gulf, Battle of (1944), 1185, 1188
Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 33 Liberator, 543, 544
Lasn, Kalle, 1502 Liberty party, 553
Latin America Libya, 1499–1500
dollar diplomacy and, 982–83 Liebowitz, Samuel, 1116
Harding and, 1069 Lie Down in Darkness (Styron), 1263
see also specific countries Lienzo de Tlaxcala, 28
Latinos, definition of, 1363 Liliuokalani, Queen of Hawaii, 902, 903
see also Hispanics Lincoln, Abraham, 712–14, 714
Laurens, Henry, 204, 237 assassination of, 634, 713–14, 714
Lawrence, 354 cabinet appointments of, 649, 716
Lawrence, Kans. depression and, 697
Civil War destruction of, 662 Douglas’s debates with, 632–35, 634, 647
proslavery violence in, 623–24, 647 between election and inauguration, 641–44
Lawrence, Richard, 462 in election of 1860, 639–41, 640, 643
lawyers, 405–6 emancipation and, 671, 672–76, 703
League of Nations, 1009–10, 1010, 1012, first inauguration of, 649, 703
1126–27, 1133, 1134, 1188, 1218 Gettysburg Address of, 689
Lease, Mary Elizabeth, 869, 869–70 on Kansas-Nebraska Act, 622
Leaves of Grass (Whitman), 527, 530, 553 McClellan’s antagonism toward, 665–66,
Lecompton Constitution, 630–31, 633, 647 668, 670
Lee, Ann (Mother Ann), 540–41 Mexican War opposed by, 590
Lee, Henry, 307 military strategy of, 665–66
Lee, Richard Henry Reconstruction plans of, 710, 711, 712–13
at Continental Congress, 201 secession and, 641–44
in ratification debate, 277 second inauguration of, 557, 698, 698–99
Lee, Robert E., 596, 666–68, 700 slavery issue and, 668–69, 696
 Index • A183

Union command structure and, 665, 668, Lovejoy, Elijah P., 549
684, 688 Lowell girls, 387, 388, 388
on Wilmot Proviso, 602 Lowell System, 386–89, 387, 388
Lincoln, Willie, 663 Loyalists, 187, 190
Lincoln-Douglas debates, 632–35, 634, 647 after American Revolution, 240–42, 241
Lindbergh, Charles A., Jr., 1046–47 in American Revolution, 195, 201, 210, 215,
Literary Digest, 987 219, 221, 223, 224, 227–28, 229,
literature 230–31, 252
in Great Depression, 1118 confiscated estates of, 263, 425
Harlem Renaissance and, 1038–40 Luce, Clare Boothe, 1362–63
in mid-twentieth century, 1263, 1263 Lusitania, 989–91, 990, 992
modernist, 1052–53, 1053 Luther, Martin, 40–41, 42
in nineteenth century, 527–31 Lutheranism, 36, 41, 140, 479
transcendentalism and, 523–25, 524 Luxembourg, 1189
Little, Malcolm, see Malcolm X Lynch, Charles, 219
Little Bighorn, Battle of (1876), 807, 807–8 Lyon, Mary, 534
Little Richard, 1266 Lyon, Matthew, 319, 320
Little Rock, Ark., desegregation in, 1280–81,
1281 MacArthur, Douglas
Livingston, Robert R., 202, 335, 370, 426, 427, in Korean War, 1236, 1237–38
456 in World War II, 1185, 1188, 1196
Livingstone, Gilbert, 276 Macdonough, Thomas, 356
Lochner v. New York, 948 MacKaye, Benton, 1022
Locke, John, 86, 163, 203 Macon, Nathaniel, 346
Locofocos, 403 Macune, Charles W., 868
Lodge, Henry Cabot, 899, 906, 1010, 1012–14, Maddox, U.S.S., 1339
1293 Madero, Francisco I., 981
Logan, George, 316 Madison, Dolley, 357
Logan Act (1799), 316 Madison, James, 148, 211, 285, 318, 335, 356,
“Log Cabin and Hard Cider” campaign, 474 447
London, Treaty of, see Jay’s Treaty (1795) African colonization and, 543
London School of Medicine for Women, 407 Bill of Rights and, 289
Long, Huey P., Jr. “Kingfish,” 1106-7, 1122, at Constitutional Convention, 269, 269,
1122 270, 273, 274
Long Island, Battle of (1776), 215 debt issue and, 293
“Long Parliament,” 55 as early Republican leader, 299
Lords of Trade, 161 in election of 1808, 346
lost generation, 1056, 1056–57 Federalist and, 277–78, 278, 282
Louisiana, 1483, 1483–84 government strengthening recommended
cotton in, 487 by, 411
secession of, 642 on Indians, 454, 455
Louisiana Purchase (1803), 335–37, 339, 362, internal improvements and, 414
363, 620 Napoleonic Wars and, 347
boundaries of, 417, 420 national bank and, 295, 411–12
slavery in, 423 in ratification debate, 277
Louisiana territory as secretary of state, 330
border of, 420 as slaveholder, 323
Burr conspiracy and, 341 tariff policy and, 290–91
French settlement of, 166–67, 168, 169 War of 1812 and, 346–47, 349, 350, 352,
Jefferson’s purchase of, 335–37 357, 361
in Treaty of Paris (1763), 177 Magellan, Ferdinand, 25–26
Louis XIV, 55, 166, 169 Magna Carta (1215), 53
Louis XVI, 301 Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 899
A184 • INDEX

Mailer, Norman, 1261 Marx Brothers, 1119, 1120

Maine, 44 Mary, Queen of Scots, 46, 54
in colonial period, 78 Mary I, 43, 46, 162
Indians in, 80 Mary II, 56, 162, 163
statehood for, 422 Maryland, 670, 670–71, 672
Maine, U.S.S., explosion of (1898), 904–6, 905 Maryland colony, 66, 66–67, 83, 104, 105
maize (corn), 23, 24, 50, 574 charter of, 67
Makohoniuk, Graham, 1500 European settlement of, 66–67, 104
malaria, 110, 683 government of, 66–67, 83–84, 162, 164
Malcolm X, 1335–37, 1336 Indians in, 179
Mamout, Yarrow, 492 slavery in, 126
Manassas (Bull Run), first Battle of (1861), tobacco in, 114
656–58, 657, 703 Maryland Toleration Act (1649), 84
Manassas (Bull Run), second Battle of (1862), Mason, George
668, 703 Bill of Rights and, 289
Mandan Sioux, 337 at Constitutional Convention, 269, 272,
manifest destiny, 550, 554–55, 563–64 273, 274
Manila Bay, 907–8, 909 in ratification debate, 277
Mann, Horace, 532 Mason, John, 78
manufactures, 760–61, 761 Masonic order, 464
in early nineteenth century, 384, 384–86, Massachusetts
386–87, 407–8, 465–66 Civil War troops from, 692
in early U.S., 296–97 constitution of, 245
Lowell System and, 386–89, 387, 388 Constitution ratified by, 278, 279, 279, 281
in South, 486, 486–87 outlawing of forced labor, 3
Mao Zedong, 1233, 1381–82 Revolutionary War fighting in, 195–99
Marbury, William, 331–32 Revolutionary War troops from, 197, 244
Marbury v. Madison, 331–32, 362, 363, 424, Shays’s Rebellion in, 265–67, 266
629 Massachusetts Bay Company, 70–73, 83, 90,
March on Washington (1963), 1312–13 104, 105, 135, 138, 149
“March to the Sea,” 692, 692–97, 694, 695, 696 Massachusetts Centinel, The, 281
Marco Polo Bridge, 1146–47, 1147 Massachusetts colony, 113
Mariana Islands, 1185 in border disputes, 78
Marion, Francis, 231 charter of, 71, 72, 78, 83, 84, 135, 136–37,
marriage, 725 157, 161
African, 119–20 in colonial taxation disputes, 182, 184–85,
of African Americans, 125, 725 187, 193–94
of clergy, 43 in colonial wars, 170
in colonial period, 109, 110–11 European settlement of, 70–73, 107
of slaves, 125, 590 government of, 70–73, 83, 162, 164
Marshall, George C., 1218, 1220–21 religious freedom in, 136–37
Marshall, John, 296, 330, 362, 425, 432 shipbuilding in, 130–32
African colonization and, 543 Massachusetts Government Act (1774), 191,
Burr conspiracy and, 341, 342 225
Indian lands and, 458–59 massive resistance, 1277
judicial nationalism of, 424–27, 438 massive retaliation, 1283–84
in Marbury v. Madison, 331–32, 362 Mather, Cotton, 81, 111, 134, 137, 138
named as chief justice, 323 Mayas, 8, 9, 10, 50
XYZ affair and, 316 Mayflower, 68
Marshall Plan, 1220–21, 1221 Mayflower Compact (1620), 68–70, 105, 135
Martin, Luther, 277 Mayhew, Jonathan, 154
Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, 424 Maysville Road Bill (1830), 447, 447, 477
Marx, Karl, 488 McAuliffe, Tony, 1189
 Index • A185

McCain, John, 1488–91, 1489, 1491 Mexica, see Aztecs

McCarthy, Eugene, 1343, 1344, 1354 Mexican Americans, 1026, 1424–25
McCarthy, Joseph R., 1240, 1240–41, 1272–73, in New Deal, 1114–16, 1115
1296 northward migration of, 1257–58
McCarthyism, 1240, 1240–41, 1244, 1272–73 World War II and, 1172–73
McClellan, George B., 596 Mexican War (1845-1848), 589–97, 591, 592,
at Antietam, 670–71 594, 598, 599, 600
Lincoln’s antagonism toward, 665–66, 668, California annexation and, 592, 592–93
670 casualties in, 596–97
peninsular campaign of, 665–68, 666, 667 opposition to, 590
at second Bull Run, 668 outbreak of, 589–90
McClure, Sam, 943 peace treaty in, 521, 595
McClure’s, 943, 943 preparations for, 590–92, 591
McCormick, Cyrus Hall, 383, 383, 408, 409 Scott and, 591–92, 595
McCormick’s Reaping Machine, 383 Taylor and, 589, 592, 593–95
McCoy, Joseph G., 810 Mexico
McCulloch v. Maryland, 439, 460 as heart of Spanish Empire, 33
McDowell, Irvin, 656, 657 independence of, 566, 566–67, 599
McFarlane, Robert, 1427, 1428 smallpox in, 25
McGovern, George S., 1386–87 Texas independence from, 580–82, 581
McKay, Claude, 1039 Mexico, Wilson’s intervention in, 981–82,
McKinley, William 1020
assassination of, 924 Mexico City (Tenochtitlán), 9, 29, 30–31, 591,
in election of 1896, 874–78, 877 591–92
in election of 1900, 923–24 middle class
Hawaii and, 903 in antebellum South, 490
Philippines and, 908 in South, 490
War of 1898 and, 904–7, 912–13, 915 middle colonies, 139–41, 142, 143
McKinley Tariff (1890), 863, 901–2 Middle East
McLane, Louis, 465 “Arab Awakening” and, 1497–98, 1498
McNamara, Robert S., 1379 Clinton and, 1467, 1467–68
McNary, Charles L., 1075 Reagan and, 1424–25
McNary-Haugen Bill (1927), 1075–76 see also specific countries
Meade, George, 688–89 Middle Passage, 121
Meany, George, 1250 Midway Island, 1164–65
meat-packing industry, 954–55, 955 Milan Decree (1807), 346
mechanical reaping machine, 383, 383–84 Military Academy, U.S. (West Point), 533
Medicare, 1331 Military Reconstruction Act (1867), 720–21
medicine as a profession, 406 militias in American Revolution, 194,
Mellon, Andrew W., 1062, 1070, 1072, 1073, 197–200, 216, 218, 219, 220, 220
1396 Milliken v. Bradley, 1372
“melting pot,” 107 Milosevic, Slobodan, 1468, 1469
Melville, Herman, 440, 527, 528–29, 542 mining
Mencken, H. L., 1029, 1031 environment and, 804
Mennonites, 41, 140 in West, 800–801, 801, 802–3, 804, 818
mercantile system, 159–61, 161, 206 minstrel shows, 395, 395
Meredith, James H., 1310 Mint Act (1792), 862
mestizos, 36, 532 Minuit, Peter, 90
Metacomet (King Philip), 81–83, 82 Minutemen, 196
Metacomet’s (King Philip’s) War, 81–83, 82, Miranda v. Arizona, 1306
104, 105 missionaries
Methodists, 154, 248, 495, 513, 515, 571 Catholic, 32, 36, 37, 38, 50, 165, 166, 167,
Meuse-Argonne offensive, 1002 569–70, 570
A186 • INDEX

missionaries (continued) Mother Jones (Mary Harris Jones), 783–84,

French, 166, 167 784
Puritan, 81 Mott, Lucretia, 539, 540
Spanish, 32, 36, 37, 38, 88, 532, 535–36 Moubarak, Hosni, 1498
Mississippi, 642 Mount, William Sidney, 606
Mississippian culture, 12, 12, 13 mountain men, 567
Mississippi Plan, 880 Mount Vernon, 313
Missouri, 439 muckrakers, 942–44, 943, 978
Missouri Compromise (1820), 422–24, 423, Mugwumps, 858–59
438, 601, 604, 618, 629–30 Muhammad, Elijah, 1336
Mitchell, George, 1365 Mulberry Grove, 381
Moby-Dick (Melville), 440, 527, 529, 530 Muller v. Oregon, 948
Model T, 1047 Munich Agreement (1938), 1148
modernism, literature of, 1052–53, 1053, 1058 Murray, John, see Dunmore, Lord (John
Mohawks, 90, 229, 248 Murray)
Molasses Act (1733), 180 Murray, Judith Sargent, 246
Molly Maguires, 771 music
Molotov, Vyacheslav, 1216 African-American, 1266
monarchy, English, 53, 54–56, 158, 164 Jazz Age and, 1040–41
Mondale, Walter F., 1426 rock ‘n’ roll, 1266–68, 1267
money, see currency Mussolini, Benito, 1144, 1145, 1145, 1175,
Monroe, James, 277, 415–17, 416, 420 1189
African colonization and, 543 My Lai massacre, 1379, 1395
in American Revolution, 218
description of, 416 NAACP (National Association for the
in election of 1816, 416 Advancement of Colored People),
in election of 1820, 417, 429 886, 972, 1043, 1043, 1275, 1275–76
foreign policy under, 417–18, 419, 428–29 Nader, Ralph, 1471
Missouri Compromise and, 424 NAFTA (North American Free Trade
and relations with Britain, 417–4181 Agreement), 1457, 1457
as slaveholder, 323 Nagasaki, atomic bombing of (1945),
Monroe Doctrine, 428–29, 438, 439, 927 1200
Montezuma II, 30 Narragansetts, 75, 80
Montgomery, Richard, 199 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Montgomery bus boycott (1955-1956), 1277, (Douglass), 547–48, 553
1277–79, 1280 Narváez, Pánfilo de, 34, 35
Montreal, 44 NASA (National Aeronautics and Space
Moral Majority, 1413–15 Administration), 1294
Moravians, 99, 140 Nash, Beverly, 726
Morgan, Daniel, 231, 233 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 1291–93
Morgan, J. Pierpont, 766, 766–67, 767, 951, Nast, Thomas, 717
954, 961 National Aeronautics and Space
Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- Administration (NASA), 1294
day Saints), 518–22, 520, 521, 522, 552, National Association for the Advancement of
553, 609 Colored People (NAACP), 886, 972,
Morocco, trade with, 262 1043, 1043, 1275, 1275–76
Morocco crisis (1905), 928–29 national bank, see Bank of the United States
Morrill Land Grant Act (1862), 679, 706, 845 National Banking Act (1863), 679, 705
Morris, Robert, 256 National Defense Education Act (NDEA),
Morse, Jedidiah, 126 1294
Morse, Samuel F. B., 379, 380 National Federation of Independent Business v.
Morse, Wayne, 1339 Sebelius, 1506–7
Moses, Robert “Bob,” 1332, 1332–33 National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA),
Mossadegh, Mohammed, 1406 1107, 1124, 1133
 Index • A187

nationalism in rebellion against Spain, 44

after War of 1812, 361, 361 trade with, 262
Clay’s American System and, 414–15 Neutrality Act (1935), 1148
development of, 250–51 Neutrality Act (1937), 1149
in diplomacy, 428–29 Neutrality Act (1939), 1159
economic, in early nineteenth century, New Amsterdam, 90, 91, 92, 93
410–15 Newburgh Conspiracy, 256–57, 283
judicial, 424–24 New Deal, 895–96, 1100–1141
Tyler and, 598 agriculture in, 1105–6
National Labor Relations Act, 1126–27, conservative criticism of, 1121–24, 1122,
1134–35 1124
National Labor Union (NLU), 774 First, 1103
National Organization for Women (NOW), industrial recovery program in, 1107–8,
1359–61, 1361 1108
national politics in Gilded Age, 850–51, 890 legacy of, 1136–39, 1138
National Recovery Administration (NRA), minorities and, 1114–16, 1115
1107–8, 1108 regional planning in, 1109, 1109, 1110
National Security Agency (NSA), 1242 regulation in, 1105–9, 1108, 1110
National Security Council (NSC), 1242 Second, 1125–26, 1126
National Trades’ Union, 403, 409 Social Security in, 1127, 1127–29
National Typographical Union, 404 Supreme Court and, 1124–25
National Woman Suffrage Association Truman’s support of, 1211
(NWSA), 939, 940 “new economy,” 1462–63
National Youth Administration (NYA), 1126 New England
Native American Association, 400 agriculture in, 129, 136, 156
Native Americans, see Indians, American architecture in, 128, 128–29
nativism, 400–401, 401 colonial life in, 127–39
after World War I, 1024, 1058 in colonial wars, 170
anti-Catholic strain in, 830 currency in, 181
NATO, see North Atlantic Treaty Organization diversity and social strains in, 136–37
(NATO) education in, 149, 149
Nausets, 80 European settlement of, 67–78, 70
Navajos, 38, 531 fishing in, 129, 130, 136
Navigation Act (1651), 159 in French and Indian War, 170
Navigation Act (1660), 160 Great Awakening in, 150–55
Navigation Act (1663), 160 Indians in, 75, 78–83
Navigation Act (1817), 417 landownership in, 136
navigation acts, enforcement of, 161, 162, 163, religion in, 67, 104, 127, 134–35, 150–55
180 (see also Puritans)
Navy, U.S., 316, 351, 351, 384, 385, 391 sex ratios in, 110
Nazism, 1134, 1144 shipbuilding in, 130–32, 131
see also Germany, Nazi slaves in, 119, 123, 127
NBC (National Broadcasting Company), townships, 127–28
1045 trade and commerce in, 132–34, 133, 285,
NDEA (National Defense Education Act), 407–8, 466
1294 in War of 1812, 347, 359
Netherlands, 44, 45, 46 witchcraft in, 137–39, 138, 157
American Revolution and, 225 New England, Dominion of, 162, 207
colonial trade with, 132 New England Confederation, 83
colonization by, 89–92, 91 New England Primer, The, 149
Dutch Republic and, 89, 169 Newfoundland, 15, 16, 34, 48, 392
empire of, 83, 84, 89–92, 91 New France, 44, 110, 165–66, 167, 168, 169
in fur trade, 79, 90 New Freedom, 965
privateers from, 44, 46 New Frontier, 1300–1306, 1348
A188 • INDEX

New Guinea, 1185 New York Infirmary for Women and

New Hampshire, 279, 279 Children, 407
New Hampshire colony, 78 New York Journal, 904
New Haven colony, 83, 84 New York Mechanick Society, 297
New Jersey New York Times, 1054, 1220, 1312, 1335, 1361,
constitution of, 247 1375, 1387, 1407
Constitution ratified by, 278, 279 New York Weekly Journal, 145
Revolutionary War fighting in, 216, 217, New York World, 904
218, 221, 226, 227 Ngo Dinh Diem, 1319, 1319
New Jersey, College of (Princeton University), Nguyen Van Thieu, 1377
155 Nicaragua, 1423–24, 1424, 1428–29
New Jersey colony, 84, 165 Nicodemus, 799
European settlement of, 95, 96, 107 Niña, 20
government of, 162 Nineteenth Amendment, 974
New Jersey Plan, 270–73, 275 Ninety-five Theses (Luther), 40
Newlands Act (Reclamation Act) (1902), 957 Ninth Amendment, 289
New Mexico, 32, 34, 36–38, 51, 531, 533 NIRA (National Industrial Recovery Act),
New Nationalism, 960 1107, 1124, 1133
New Negro movement, 1039 Nixon, Richard M., 1245, 1340, 1346
New Netherland colony, 83, 84, 89–92, 93, 95, background of, 1301, 1367–68
104, 149 China policy of, 1381–82, 1382
New Orleans, Battle of (1815), 358–59, 359, economy under, 1374–76, 1375
363, 478 in election of 1956, 1290–91
New Orleans, La., 167, 457–58, 470, 1483, in election of 1960, 1300–1304, 1303, 1304
1483–84 in election of 1968, 1345–47, 1346, 1347,
Newport, R.I., 143 1367–68
Newsom, Robert, 498–99 in election of 1972, 1385–87
New Spain, 32, 33, 34, 110 Hiss affair and, 1239–40
newspapers Kennedy’s debate with, 1302, 1303
in colonial period, 145–46 resignation of, 1390, 1391
in nineteenth century, 531, 531 segregation and, 1371–72
New Sweden, 90 shuttle diplomacy and, 1383–84, 1384
Newton, Huey P., 1354 Soviet Union and, 1382–83
Newton, Isaac, 146–47 Vietnam War and, 1376–80
New View of Society, A (Owen), 541 Watergate and, 1387–92, 1391, 1398
New York NLU (National Labor Union), 774
canals in, 372–73, 373–74, 374, 458–59 nobles, English, 53
Constitution ratified by, 279, 279 No Child Left Behind (2002), 1472–73
Indian lands ceded in, 261 Nonseparating Congregationalists, 71, 135
land claims of, 258 Noriega, Manuel, 1443, 1444
Revolutionary War fighting in, 215–16, 217, Norris, George W., 1065
218, 222, 223 Norris v. Alabama, 1117
slavery in, 245 Norse explorers, 15–16, 16
New York City, N.Y. North, Lord Frederick, 187–88, 190, 191, 191,
in colonial period, 143 193, 194, 225, 235
ethnic mix in, 141 North, Oliver, 1427, 1428
in nineteenth century, 391, 391 North American Free Trade Agreement
poverty in, 144 (NAFTA), 1457, 1457
slaves in, 123–25 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
New York colony, 84 building of, 1223, 1223
Dutch origins of, 89–92, 91, 140, 141 former Yugoslavia and, 1469
Indians in, 94–95 North Carolina, 883, 883–84
New York Herald, 611 Constitution ratified by, 281
 Index • A189

Indian lands ceded in, 262 Obama Doctrine, 1494–14966

Indians removed from, 262, 429–32 Oberlin College, 518, 534
land claims of, 261 Observations Concerning the Increase of
Revolutionary War fighting in, 230–31, 232, Mankind (Franklin), 109
233 Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement,
voting rights in, 242, 446 1502–4, 1503
North Carolina colony ocean transportation, 375, 378, 378, 462–63
European settlement of, 84–85, 85, 86 Office in a Small City (Hopper), 1259
government of, 162 Ogden, Aaron, 426
Indians in, 86, 88, 89 Oglethorpe, James E., 99, 102
tar in, 115 Ohio, 262
Northwest Ordinance (1787), 259–62, 260, Ohio Company, 171, 261
261, 283, 604, 611 Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company, 631
Norway, 15–16 oil industry, 762–64, 763, 1375, 1375–76
Norwegian settlers, 400 Ojibwas, 174
Nova Scotia, 173 Okinawa, 1196
NOW (National Organization for Women), Oklahoma, 34
1359–61, 1361 Old Northwest, 259–62, 260, 261, 347
Noyes, John Humphrey, 541 Old Southwest, 506
NRA (National Recovery Administration), Olive Branch Petition, 199
1107–8, 1108 Oliver, James, 383
NSA (National Security Agency), 1242 Olmsted, Frederick Law, 835
NSC-68, 1234 Omaha World-Herald, 1199
NSC (National Security Council), 1242 Omoo (Melville), 529
nuclear weapons Oñate, Juan de, 36–37
Dulles and, 1284 O’Neale, Margaret (Peggy), 445
Soviet Union and, 1434–35, 1435, 1443 Oneida Community, 541
in World War II, 1196–1200, 1198, 1199 Oneidas, 248
nullification and interposition, 447–55, 476 O’Neill, Thomas Phillip (Tip), Jr., 1403, 1420
Calhoun and, 447–55 one-party politics, 429–37
Jackson and, 436, 439, 453–54, 528 corruption and, 431–32
South Carolina Ordinance and, 453, 453–54 presidential nominations and, 430–31
Webster-Hayne debate on, 449–51, 450 “On the Equality of the Sexes” (Murray), 246
Nurse, Rebecca, 128 On the Origin of Species (Darwin), 841–42
NWSA (National Woman Suffrage OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Association), 939, 940 Countries), 1376, 1398
NYA (National Youth Administration), 1126 Open Door Policy, 920, 920–21, 935, 1129–30,
1133
Obama, Barack Operation Desert Shield, 1444, 1445
background of, 1488 Operation Desert Storm, 1445
bipartisanship and, 1504–6 Operation Overlord, 1182, 1183–84
cabinet of, 1491 Order of the Star Spangled Banner, 400–401
economy and, 1492–93, 1504 Ordinance of Secession (South Carolina)
in election of 2008, 1487–91, 1489, 1490, (1860), 642
1491 Oregon Country, 417, 533–35, 561, 567–68
first 100 days of, 1491–92 Great Britain and, 428, 587–88
gay rights and, 1506 Polk and, 587, 587–89, 588
health care reform and, 1493–94, 1506–7 Oregon fever, 568
inauguration of, 1491 Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Libya and, 1499–1500 Countries (OPEC), 1376, 1398
Wall Street Reform and, 1494 organized labor, 402–5, 404, 408
and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 1494–96, Orlando, Vittorio, 1009
1495 Ortega, Daniel, 1428
A190 • INDEX

Osborne, Sarah, 138 kings’ conflicts with, 55, 56, 83, 158, 159
Osceola, 457 Restoration and, 55
O’Sullivan, John L., 563, 589, 595 taxation and, 53, 180–81
O’Sullivan, T. H., 689 trade regulated by, 159
Oswald, Lee Harvey, 1321 partisan politics in Gilded Age, 851–52
Other America, The (Harrington), 1324 Patent Office, U.S., 760
Otis, James, 187 Pathet Lao, 1319
Ottawas, 305 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
Our Country (Strong), 900 (PPACA), 1493–94, 1506–7
outdoor recreation, 835–36, 836 Patriot Act, 1476
Overland Trails, 572–75, 573, 574, 575 Patrons of Husbandry (Grange), 865–66
Owen, Robert, 541 patroonships, 91, 140
OWS (Occupy Wall Street) movement, Patterson, Heywood, 1116
1502–4, 1503 Patton, George S., Jr., 1180, 1181
Paul, Alice, 973, 974
Pacific Railroad Company v. Illinois, 860 Paul, Ron, 1505
Page, Walter Hines, 988 Paxton Boys, 189
Paine, Thomas Peabody, Elizabeth, 524
The American Crisis, 216 Peabody, Sophia, 524
Common Sense, 200, 207, 216, 216 Peale, Charles Willson, 218, 492, 582
painting in the 1950s, 1263–64, 1264 Pea Ridge, Battle of (1862), 653
Pakenham, Edward, 358 Pearl Harbor, attack on, 1161–62, 1163
Paleo-Indians, 5 Pelosi, Nancy, 1484
Palestine, Palestinians, 1223–25, 1374, 1385, Penn, William, 95, 97–98, 104, 140, 149, 162
1440–41 Pennsylvania
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Indian lands ceded in, 261
1425, 1467, 1467–68 Revolutionary War fighting in, 222, 223,
Palmer, A. Mitchell, 1019 227
Palmer, Phoebe Worrall, 516 slavery in, 245
Panama, 31 voting rights in, 242, 410
Panama, U.S. invasion of (1989), 1443–44 Whiskey Rebellion in, 306–8
Panama Canal, 925, 925–27, 926, 962, 1131, Pennsylvania, University of (Philadelphia
1383 Academy), 147, 155
Panic of 1819, 382, 420–22, 432, 434, 452 Pennsylvania colony, 84, 95–98, 96, 104, 105
Panic of 1837, 459, 463, 470, 470–71, 477, 484, backcountry of, 141
530, 534 discontent on frontier of, 189
Panic of 1857, 631–32 education in, 149
Panic of 1873, 739–40 ethnic groups in, 98, 140, 141
Paragon, 427 European settlement of, 95–98, 96, 107
Paris, Treaty of (1763), 176–78, 179, 203, 206 government of, 98, 162
Paris, Treaty of (1783), 235–37, 236, 237, 253, Indians in, 141, 179
255, 263, 303 in land disputes, 189
Paris Peace Conference (1919), 1007–9, 1009 and Quakers, 97–98
Parker, John, 196, 197 religion in, 86, 95–98, 140–41
Parker, Theodore, 523, 524, 634 Pennsylvania Dutch, 140
Parkman, Francis, 167 Pennsylvania Gazette, 147
Parks, Rosa, 1277, 1277–78 Pennsylvania Journal, 183
Parliament, British Pentagon Papers, 1379–80
American Revolution and, 224 Pequots, 80
in colonial taxation disputes, 184–85, 186, Pequot War (1637), 80–81, 104, 105
187, 189, 191 perestroika, 1440
Continental Congress and, 193–94 performing arts in early nineteenth century,
currency policies of, 181 394–95, 395
 Index • A191

Perot, H. Ross, 1456 Pittsburgh, Pa. (Fort Duquesne), 171,

Perry, Oliver Hazard, 354 174, 391
Pershing, John J., 982 Pizarro, Francisco, 31, 35, 51
Personal Responsibility and Work Plains Indians, 38–40, 39, 530–32, 542
Opportunity Act (PRWOA), 1460–61 Plains of Mesa, Battle of, 592
Perth Amboy, 95 Planck, Max, 1051
Peru, 31, 51, 165 plantations, 57, 115, 488–90, 583–84
pet banks, 465 Plattsburgh, Battle of, 356
Philadelphia “Pledge of Allegiance,” 1261
in colonial period, 140, 141, 143, 145 PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization),
and First Continental Congress, 192–93 1425, 1467, 1467–68
founding of, 98 Plow That Broke the Plains, The, 1119
Second Continental Congress and, 197 Plunkitt, George Washington, 854
Philadelphia, 334, 334–35 Plymouth colony, 36, 68–70, 74, 83, 84, 104,
Philadelphia Academy (University of 105
Pennsylvania), 147, 155 government of, 69–70
Philadelphia-Lancaster Turnpike, 370, 409, Indian relations with, 8–69
455 as Virginia Company division, 56
Philip (Metacomet), King, 81–83, 82 Pocahontas, 62, 62, 67
Philip II, 46, 47 Poe, Edgar Allan, 528, 529
Philippine-American War, 913–15, 914, 915, Poindexter, John, 1428
917–20, 918 Poland, 1150–51
Philippines, 26 Polish Americans, 141, 659
annexation debate about, 912–13 political stalemate in Gilded Age, 852–53
U.S. conquest of, 913–15, 914, 915 Politics in an Oyster House (Woodville), 531
in War of 1898, 907–8, 909 Polk, James Knox, 586, 596
in World War II, 1163–64, 1164, 1181–84, background of, 586
1184, 1185, 1189, 1192 in election of 1844, 583–86, 584
physicians, 406 Mexican War and, 560, 561, 589–90, 593
Pickens, Andrew, 229 Oregon Country and, 587, 587–89, 588
Pickering, Thomas, 340 slavery issue and, 601–3
Pickering, Timothy, 316, 318–19 Texas and, 586–87
Pierce, Franklin Polk’s Dream, 587
in election of 1852, 616–17 Pollock, Jackson, 1264, 1264
in election of 1856, 626 Polo, Marco, 18
pigs, 50, 108, 574, 683 polygamy, 39, 501, 522, 629
Pilgrims, 68, 70, 105 Ponce de León, Juan, 34, 35, 51
Pinchback, Pinckney B. S., 728 Pontiac, Chief, 179, 207
Pinchot, Gifford, 956–57, 957, 959–60 Poor Richard’s Almanac (Franklin), 147
Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth, 315 Popé, 38, 51
in election of 1800, 321 Pope, John, 668
in election of 1804, 340 popular culture
in election of 1808, 346 in colonial period, 392–93
Pinckney, Elizabeth Lucas, 111 in early nineteenth century, 392–95
Pinckney, Thomas, 315 in early twentieth century, 1044–49
in election of 1796, 313, 314 in late nineteenth century, 832–39, 846
and treaty with Britain, 308–9 outdoor recreation, 835–36, 836
Pinckney Treaty (1795), 308, 308–9, 325, 419 performing arts, 394–95, 395
Pinkertons, 781 in 1930s, 1118–20, 1119
Pinta, 20 saloons and, 834–35
Pitcairn, John, 195, 196 sports and, 837–39, 838, 1221
Pitcher, Molly (Mary Ludwig Hays), 246, 246 urban recreation and, 393–94, 394
Pitt, William, 175, 185, 224 vaudeville, 833, 833–34
A192 • INDEX

popular sovereignty, 602–3, 620, 631, 635 nominations for, 430–31, 436
population see also elections and campaigns
in 1800, 327 Presley, Elvis, 1266–67, 1267
of cities, 391, 392 press, muckrakers in, 942–43
in colonial period, 108–9, 143, 145 Preston, Levi, 204–5
demographic shifts in, 1451, 1451–52, 1508 primaries, direct, 944
density Princeton, Battle of (1777), 218
in 1820, 384 Princeton University (College of New Jersey),
in 1860, 385 155
slave, 494, 494–95, 495 Principles of Scientific Management, The
in South, 483 (Taylor), 945
Populist party (People’s party), 869, 870–71, printing technology, 17, 511
871, 890 prison reform movements, 537–38
Portsmouth, Treaty of (1905), 927 privateers
Portugal Dutch, 44, 46
colonial trade with, 132 English, 46
exploration and discovery by, 18, 19–20, 25, French, 44
26, 44 Proclamation Line of 1763, 237
in slave trade, 3, 21 Proclamation of 1763, 179, 180
Portuguese colonists, 141 Proclamation of Amnesty (1865), 715
postal service, 145–46 Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction
potatoes, 23, 50, 574, 574 (1863), 712
Potawatomi, 305 professions, rise of, 405–7
Potsdam Declaration (1945), 1197–98 Progressive (“Bull Moose”) party, 962, 962,
Pottawatomie Massacre (1856), 624, 647 969–72, 977, 979, 994
Potter, John “Bowie Knife,” 635 progressivism, 932–79
Pound, Ezra, 1054–55 corporate regulation and, 942, 946–47,
poverty 969–70
in colonial period, 144 democratic reforms in, 944–45
Johnson’s efforts against, 1323–26, 1365 efficiency and, 945–46, 946
war on, 1323–26 features of, 944–50
Powderly, Terence V., 776 limits of, 977
Powell v. Alabama, 1117 muckrakers and, 942–44, 943
Power of Positive Thinking, The (Peale), 1261 reform and, 934–35, 949
Powhatan, Chief, 57, 58, 58, 62 religion and, 935–37
Powhatans, 57–58, 104 resurgence of, 975–76
PPACA (Patient Protection and Affordable settlement house movement and, 937–38,
Care Act), 1493–94, 1506–7 938
pragmatism, 844, 844–45 social justice promoted in, 942, 947,
praying towns, 81 947–49, 948, 970
pre-Columbian Indian civilizations, 6, 7, Theodore Roosevelt and, 950–58
8–15, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 50 for whites only, 971–72, 9741
Preemption Act (1830), 382 Wilson and, 967–76, 977, 978
prehistoric humans, 6 women’s employment and activism and,
prejudice 938–42, 939, 941, 972–74, 974
in colonial America, racial, 117–19, 123 Prohibition movement, 980, 1031–34, 1033
against Irish Americans, 397–98, 400 Prohibitory Act (1775), 225
nativism and, 294–96, 295 Promise of American Life, The (Croly), 964
Presbyterians, 42, 55, 141, 151–52, 154, 155, property and voting rights, 164–65, 411, 478,
248, 494, 514–15 483
Prescott, Samuel, 196 proprietary colonies, 66
presidency prostitution, 113
in Constitution, 272–75 Protestantism, 36, 52, 57, 75, 400, 579
 Index • A193

Protestant Reformation, 40–44, 50, 51 Rabbit Run (Updike), 1263

Providence Plantations, 76 Rabin, Yitzhak, 1467, 1468
Prussia race riots
French Revolution and, 301 in Chicago (1919), 1017, 1018
trade with, 262 in Chicago (1966), 1344
PRWOA (Personal Responsibility and Work in Cleveland (1966), 1344
Opportunity Act), 1460–61 in Elaine, Ark. (1919), 1018
public schools, 839–40 in Washington, D.C. (1919), 1018
public schools, early, 532–33 racial prejudice in colonial America, 117–19,
Pueblo Revolt, 38 123
Pueblos, 13, 34, 37, 38, 531, 532 racism
Puerto Ricans, 1257 against Asians, 832, 1167–68
Puerto Rico, 27, 34, 402, 918–19 during the 1890s, 878–85, 882, 883
Pulitzer, Joseph, 904 see also segregation and desegregation
Pullman, George, 782–83 Radical Republicans
Pullman Strike (1894), 780, 781–83, 782 assessment of, 729–30
Punderson, Prudence, 112 in Civil War, 682, 683
Puritans, 83–84, 104, 114, 129–30, 134, Johnson’s relations with, 717–19, 718–19
136–37 in Reconstruction, 712–13, 717–19, 729–30
Andros’s conflict with, 12 radio, 1045, 1046
Anglican Church as viewed by, 71, 74, Radio Corporation of America (RCA), 1045
135 railroads
in Connecticut, 80 building of, 754–58, 756, 757
Cromwell and, 83, 159 in early nineteenth century, 374–75, 376,
dissension among, 74–75, 75, 154 377, 421, 459–62, 460, 461, 463
education and, 149 financing of, 758–60
in England, 42, 55 Great Strike of 1877, 772
Harvard founded by, 154 ICC and, 860
lifestyle of, 134 Morgan and, 767
in Massachusetts, 68, 70–72, 74–75, 107, transcontinental, 754–58, 756, 757
113 Rainbow, 409
missionaries of, 81 Raleigh, Walter, 47, 48, 51
in New England, 67, 127, 141, 154 Randolph, Edmund, 279, 288
Separatists, 43, 68, 71, 135 Randolph, John, 340–41, 350
in Virginia, 114 range wars, 813
witchcraft and, 137–39 Rapalje Children, The (Durand), 144
Rauschenbusch, Walter, 937
Quakers (Society of Friends), 41, 97, 114, Ray, James Earl, 1344
136, 140, 141, 149, 189 RCA (Radio Corporation of America), 1045
educational efforts of, 149 Reagan, Ronald, 1412, 1412–13
and founding of Pennsylvania, 95–98, 104, anti-feminism and, 1415–16
107 anti-liberalism of, 1421
in Virginia, 114 arms-reduction agreement and, 1434–35,
women as, 96, 97, 111 1435
Quantrill, William C., 662 background of, 1412
Quartering Act (1765), 181–82, 186, 189 budget cuts of, 1419–20
Quartering Act (1774), 191 Central America and, 1423–24, 1424,
Quayle, Dan, 1437 1428–29
Quebec conflicts of interest under, 1420–21
founding of, 44, 166, 207 defense buildup under, 1421–23, 1422
Revolutionary War attack on, 199–200 deficits and, 1430–32
Quebec Act (1774), 192 economy and, 1410, 1418–19, 1419, 1448
Queen’s College (Rutgers University), 155 in election of 1976, 1396
A194 • INDEX

Reagan, Ronald (continued) Harrison and, 861–62, 862

in election of 1980, 1409–11, 1411 for prisons and asylums, 537–38
in election of 1984, 1426 religion and, 935–37
first term of, 1417–25 temperance, 535–37, 536
Grenada invasion and, 1425 utopian, 540–42
Iran-Contra affair and, 1426–28, 1427 for women’s rights, 538, 538–40, 539,
legacy of, 1435–36 596–97
Middle East and, 1424–25 see also progressivism
Moral Majority and, 1413–15 Regents of University of California v. Bakke,
second term of, 1425–29 1372
Reaganomics, 1410, 1418–19, 1419, 1448 regulation of corporations, government,
recessions, 1453, 1486–87, 1504 946–47, 950–51, 953–54, 955–56,
Reclamation Act (Newlands Act) (1902), 957 974–75, 1092–94
Reconstruction, 704–45, 730 Regulators, 189
African Americans in, 708–10, 716–17, 717, religion
724–28, 725, 727, 728 African, 120–21
black codes in, 714, 716 African-American, 112, 501–2, 720, 725,
carpetbaggers in, 728–29 725, 727, 760
Compromise of 1877 and, 740–43, 741 American Indian, 79
Congress in, 712–13, 718–23, 719, 732, 735 Aztec, 30
conservative resurgence in, 737–39 Civil War and, 678–79
end of, 743, 744 in colonial period, 114, 134–35, 150–55,
Freedmen’s Bureau and, 710–11, 711, 720 156, 157
Johnson’s plans for, 714–16, 718–19 deism and, 511–12
land policy in, 708–9, 723, 724 Enlightenment and, 147
Lincoln’s plans for, 710, 711, 712–13 fundamentalism and, 1028–31, 1392–93,
Panic of 1873 and, 739–40 1402
political, battle over, 711–19 Great Awakening
Radical Republicans and, 712–13, 717–19, First, 150–55, 156, 157, 513
729–30 Second, 513–22, 552
religion in, 730–31, 731 imperialism and, 915–16, 930
scalawags in, 728–29 in Massachusetts, 136
southern intransigence over, 716–17, 717 in New England, 67, 104, 127, 134–35,
white terror in, 735, 735–36 150–55, 156
Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), in post-World War II era, 1260–61
1089–90 progressivism and, 935–37, 949
recreation rational, 511–13
in early nineteenth century, urban, 393–94, in Reconstruction, 730–31, 731
394 religious right and, 1446–47
outdoor, 835–36, 836 in South, 114, 481–82
Red Eagle (Creek chief), 356 Unitarianism and, 512–13
Redeemers (Bourbons), 795–97, 797 Universalism and, 512–13
Red Scare (1919), 1018–19 women and, 111–12, 153, 154, 498, 572,
Reed, Mary, 153 677
referenda, 944 religious freedom, 92, 96, 324
Reformation, 40–44, 50, 51 after American Revolution, 248–49
Calvinism and, 41–42 in Bill of Rights, 289–90
in England, 42–44 in Maryland, 84
Reform Darwinism, 845, 845 in Massachusetts, 136–37
reform movements, 535–42, 552 in Pennsylvania, 86, 97–98
antislavery (see abolition movement) Roger Williams and, 74–76
for civil service, 854–55 and separation of church and state,
education, 531–35, 534 74–75
elements of, 934–35 in South Carolina, 86
 Index • A195

religious right, 1446–47 Revenue Act (1767), 186

Renaissance, 17 Revenue Act (1916), 992
“Report on Manufactures” (Hamilton), 295, Revenue Act (1935), 1129
296, 299 Revenue Act (1942), 1166
“Reports on Public Credit” (Hamilton), 292, Revere, Paul, 82
295 The Bloody Massacre, 188
Representative Men (Emerson), 527 warning ride of, 195–96
Republican party Revival of 1857–1859, 632
Contract with America and, 1459–60, revivals, religious
1460 First Great Awakening, 150–55
in election of 1860, 639–41 Second Great Awakening, 513–22
in election of 1872, 736–37 RFC (Reconstruction Finance Corporation),
in election of 1876, 741–43, 742 1089–90
in election of 1888, 860–61 Rhode Island
in election of 1908, 958 Constitution ratified by, 281, 283
in election of 1928, 1078–79, 1079 paper currency in, 265
in election of 1936, 1129–31 Revolutionary War troops from, 244
in election of 1948, 1228–32, 1231 slavery in, 245
in election of 1952, 1268–70, 1269, 1270 Rhode Island, College of (Brown University),
in election of 1956, 1290–91 155, 514–15
in election of 1960, 1300–1304, 1303, 1304 Rhode Island colony
in election of 1964, 1326–28 charter of, 76, 84, 135
in election of 1968, 1345–47, 1346, 1347 European settlement of, 74–76
in election of 1980, 1409–11, 1411 in events before American Revolution,
in election of 1988, 1436–38, 1437, 1438 190
in election of 1992, 1456 government of, 76, 135
in election of 1996, 1461–62, 1462 Ricard, Cyprien, 493
in election of 2000, 1469–72, 1470 rice, 115, 384, 573, 704
in election of 2004, 1480–82, 1481, 1482 Rice, Thomas D., 879
in election of 2008, 1488–91, 1489, 1491 rich in colonial period, the, 143
emergence of, 621–22, 647 Richmond, Va., 62, 706
late nineteenth-century components of, Ripley, George, 523, 524
851–52 Roanoke Island, 48, 48–49, 51
Mugwumps in, 858–59 Roaring Twenties, 1034–44, 1058
Stalwarts vs. Half-Breeds in, 854–55 African Americans and, 1037–40, 1038,
Republicans, Jeffersonian, 211, 317–18 1040
Alien and Sedition Acts and, 318–19, 320 Garveyism and, 1041–44, 1042, 1043
divisions in, 340–42 Harlem Renaissance and, 1038–40,
in election of 1796, 313–14 1040
in election of 1800, 321–23, 322 Jazz Age and, 1040–41, 1041
in election of 1816, 416 women and, 1034–37, 1035
in election of 1820, 417 Roberts, John G., 1507
formation of, 298–300 Robertson, Pat, 1446
French conflict and, 316, 318, 318–19 Robinson, Jackie, 1226–27, 1227
French Revolution and, 302 rock and roll, 1266–68, 1267
Jay’s Treaty and, 303, 303–5 Rockefeller, John D., 762, 762–64, 844, 849,
Jefferson’s role with, 330–31 879, 1052
Louisiana Purchase and, 336 Rockingham, Lord, 185
War of 1812 and, 353, 361 Rocky Mountains, 567
Whiskey Rebellion and, 307–8 Roe v. Wade, 1360, 1414
reservation (Indian) system, 575–77, 576 Rolfe, John, 61, 62, 63, 67
Restoration, English, 55 Rolfe, Rebecca (Pocahontas), 62, 62
Reuben James, U.S.S., 1159 Rolfe, Thomas, 62
Revels, Hiram, 728, 728 Rolling Stones, 1358
A196 • INDEX

romanticism, 522–27, 552 Russia

Thoreau and, 526, 526–27 Alaska and, 900
transcendentalism and, 523–25, 524 Bolshevik Revolution in, 1002, 1004–5
Romney, Mitt, 1507 in Russo-Japanese War, 927–28
Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1120–21, 1121 Second Gulf War and, 1480
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 895–96, 903 in World War I, 984, 996, 1002, 1006
Atlantic Charter and, 1158 see also Soviet Union
at Cairo and Teheran, 1181 Russia in Napoleonic wars, 342
at Casablanca, 1177 Russo-Japanese War, 927–28
court-packing plan of, 1131–33, 1132 Rutgers University (Queen’s College), 155
death of, 1215 Rutledge, John, 271
in election of 1932, 1092–96, 1094, 1095
in election of 1936, 1129–31, 1130 Sacagawea, 337–38
in election of 1940, 1155–56 Sacco, Nicola, 1024–25, 1025
in election of 1944, 1188–89 Sadat, Anwar el-, 1384, 1384, 1404–5, 1405
first inauguration of, 1096–97 Salem, Mass., 74, 128, 137–39, 138, 157
growing war involvement and, 1145–47, saloons, 834–35, 867, 950
1155 SALT I (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks I),
racial issues ignored by, 1117 1383
U.S. neutrality and, 1148–50, 1150, SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks II),
1151–52 1406
war aims and, 1176–77 salutary neglect, 163, 206
in Yalta, 1190–93, 1191 Samoa, 900–901
see also New Deal Sampson, Deborah, 246
Roosevelt, Theodore, 899, 942–43, 950, 952, Sandinistas, 1424
968, 972, 1025, 1048, 1050 “Sand-Lot” incident, 772–73
assassination attempt on, 963–64 Sandwich, Lord, 195
big stick diplomacy of, 927, 927, 930 Sandys, Edwin, 62
coal strike and, 951, 953 Sanger, Margaret, 975
conservation promoted by, 955–58, 956, San Salvador, 20–21
957 Santa Anna, Antonio López de, 579–80, 582,
in election of 1900, 923–24 593
in election of 1904, 953 Santa Fe, N.Mex., 37, 38, 538
in election of 1912, 964–67, 966 Santa Fe Trail, 572, 573
executive action favored by, 951 Santa Maria, 20
Japan relations and, 927–28 Santo Domingo, 27, 428
on League of Nations, 1010 Saratoga, Battle of (1777), 224, 224, 225, 252,
Panama Canal and, 925, 925–27, 926 253
progressivism of, 950–58 Sassacus, 80
rise of, 922–24, 924 Sassamon, John, 81
second term of, 953–58 SAVAK, 1406
Taft’s break with, 960–62, 961, 962 Savannah, Battle of (1778), 230
Taft selected as successor by, 958–59 Savannah, Ga., 98–99, 99
War of 1898 and, 906–7, 908–9, 914 Savio, Mario, 1352, 1353
World War I and, 990, 992 scalawags, 728–29
Roosevelt Corollary, 927, 927 Scandinavia, 41, 90
Rossiter, Thomas Pritchard, 275 Scandinavian Americans, 400, 659
Rough Riders, 908 Scarlet Letter, The (Hawthorne), 527
Roundheads, 55 Schanzer, Carlo, 1067
Royal Proclamation of 1763, 242–43 Schechter Poultry Corporation v. United States,
Ruckelshaus, William, 1389, 1389 1124
Rudd, Mark, 1355 Schenck v. United States, 1001
Rush, Richard, 417 Schlafly, Phyllis, 1415
Rush-Bagot Agreement (1817), 417 Schrank, John, 964
 Index • A197

Schumacher, Ferdinand, 399 Seize the Day (Bellow), 1263

Schurz, Carl, 715 “Self-Reliance” (Emerson), 525
Schwenkfeldians, 41 Seminoles, 286, 419, 419, 455–57, 456
science Senate, U.S.
in colonial period, 146–48 Louisiana Purchase approved by, 336
in late nineteenth century, 841–43, 842 violence on floor of (1856), 624–26, 625
in twentieth century, 1050–52, 1051 see also Congress, U.S.
Scopes, John T., 1028–31, 1030 Seneca Falls Convention (1848), 553
Scotland, 42, 52, 54, 55 “separate but equal,” 881–82, 882, 1291,
Scots-Irish Americans, 23, 99, 141, 143, 145, 1293
156, 496, 580 Separatists, 43, 68, 71, 135
Scott, Dred, 628–30, 629 Sephardi, 19, 92–93, 99
Scott, Harriet Robinson, 628–29 September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,
Scott, Winfield, 351, 471 1473–75, 1474
in Civil War, 654, 658, 663 Serbia, 984, 1012
in election of 1852, 616–17 settlement house movement, 937–38,
in Mexican War, 591, 591–92, 595 938
Scottish Americans, 95, 98, 107, 140, 145, 580 Seven Years’ War, see French and Indian
Scottsboro case, 1116, 1116–17 War
SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative), 1422, Seward, William H., 900, 901
1422–23 appointed secretary of state, 649
SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), Compromise of 1850 and, 611–12
1351, 1355, 1355–56 in election of 1860, 639
Sears, Roebuck and Company, 767–68, 768 election of 1856 and, 626
secession of South, 602, 641–44, 642, 646, 647, sewer systems, 380
651 sewing machines, 380, 409
Buchanan’s response to, 644 sex ratios in colonial period, 110
choosing sides in, 651–54, 652 sexual relations
efforts at compromise in, 644–45 Puritans on, 134
Second Continental Congress, 197, 207, 215, slavery and, 498–99
223, 244 Seymour, Horatio, 733
extralegal nature of, 239 Shame of the Cities, The (Steffens), 943
independence voted by, 201, 201–2, 250 sharecropping, 792–95, 793, 794
and Indian rights, 248 Share-the-Wealth program, 1122–23
peace efforts and, 199 Sharpsburg (Antietam), Battle of (1862), 670,
Second Great Awakening, 513–22, 552 670–71
burned-over district and, 517–18 Shaw, Anna Howard, 940
frontier revivals, 514–17, 517 Shaw, Robert Gould, 675–76
Mormons and, 518–22, 520, 521, 522 Shawnees, 179, 200, 229, 305, 348, 348–49,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 445
1103 Shays, Daniel, 266, 266
Sedition Act (1798), 318–19, 320, 325 Shays’s Rebellion, 265–67, 266, 282, 283
Sedition Act (1918), 1000, 1001 Sherman, John, 733, 853, 878
segregation and desegregation Sherman, Roger, 202, 269, 271
in education, 1276–77, 1280–81, 1281, Sherman, William Tecumseh, 706
1307, 1308, 1365–66, 1437 Atlanta destroyed by, 683
in housing, 1255, 1256, 1256–58 March to th Sea, 692, 692–97, 694, 695, 696,
Montgomery bus boycott and, 1277, 706
1277–79, 1280 Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890), 969
NAACP and, 1275, 1275–76 Sherman Silver Purchase Act (1890), 863,
in nineteenth century, 880–82, 882, 890 872–73
Nixon and, 1371–72 Shiloh, Battle of (1862), 663–65, 703
“separate but equal” rubric of, 881–82, 882, shipbuilding, 130–32, 131
1291, 1293 Shoemaker, The, 403
A198 • INDEX

Shultz, George, 1428 in colonial period, 87–88, 112, 117, 117–18,

shuttle diplomacy, 1383–84, 1384 119–26, 124
Siberia, 5, 51 community of, 500–501
“Significance of the Frontier in American culture of, 123–26, 124
History, The” (Turner), 816–17 family and, 499–500, 500
Signing the Constitution (Rossiter), 275 fugitive slave laws and, 614–15, 615
Silent Spring (Carson), 1373 Indians as, 27, 37, 86–89
silver, 33, 37, 165, 873–74 marriage of, 125
Simmons, William J., 1026–27 population of, 494, 494–95, 495
Simpson, Jeremiah “Sockless Jerry,” 870 rebellions, 121, 122, 123, 124–25, 502–5,
Sinclair, Upton, 954 504, 509, 638, 639
Singer, Isaac Merritt, 380 runaway, 122–23, 240, 245, 419, 498
“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” sexual exploitation of, 498–99
(Edwards), 157 in South, 117, 117, 119–26, 124, 156, 286,
Sioux, 38, 429, 531, 543 492–505
Sioux War (1860s–1870s), 805–6 in southern mythology, 479–80
sit-ins, 1307–10, 1308 women, 125–26, 497–99, 592
Sixteenth Amendment, 961 slave trade, 3, 85, 87–88, 120, 121–22, 122,
“slash-and-burn” techniques, 108 123, 133, 494–96, 499
Slater, Samuel, 385 end of, 363, 494, 496, 509
slavery, 3, 480–81 smallpox
American Revolution and, 204, 240–41, American Revolution and, 199, 200, 221,
243–45 244
banned from Old Northwest, 261 epidemics, 24, 25, 31, 50, 80
California and, 608–9 Smith, Alfred E., 1078–79, 1079, 1302
Civil War and, 651, 668–69, 672–76 Smith, Ellison D. “Cotton Ed,” 1138
in colonial period, 76, 87–88, 106, 117, Smith, Emma, 520
117–26, 120, 124, 156, 157 Smith, Gerald L. K., 1124
Compromise of 1850 and, 609–17, 610, 613 Smith, Hyrum, 521
in Constitution, 272, 282, 333 Smith, John, 58, 60, 62
cotton and, 282–83, 484–85, 485, 487–88 Smith, Joseph, 519, 520, 553
defense of, 479, 549–51, 552 Smith-Hughes Act (1917), 976
Dred Scott case and, 628–30, 629 Smith-Lever Act (1914), 976
economics of, 126 Smithson, James, 380
emancipation and, 671, 672–76, 702, 704 SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Free-Soil party and, 603–4 Committee), 1307–8, 1332, 1352
in Kansas-Nebraska crisis, 617–28 social Darwinism, 843–44, 846, 899
Lincoln-Douglas debates on, 632–35 social gospel, 935–37
Missouri Compromise and, 422–24, 423 socialism, 784–86, 785
origins of, 118–19 Social Security, 1127, 1127–29, 1227,
popular sovereignty and, 602–3 1270, 1306, 1322, 1397, 1410, 1443,
rural and urban, 496, 496–97 1457
southern defense of, 481 Social Security Act (1935), 1127, 1127–28
in territories, 601–9 Sons of Liberty, 186–87
Wilmot Proviso and, 601–2 South, 380–81, 478–80, 791–97
see also abolition movement; slaves; slave African-American culture in, 117, 117,
trade 119–26, 124, 492–505, 508
Slavery is Dead? (Nast), 717 agriculture in, 114–15, 126, 127, 482,
slaves, 102, 270 482–85, 483, 485, 576–79, 792–95, 793,
in Africa, 112, 119–20, 121 794
African roots of, 50, 51, 118–23, 120 in American Revolution, 229–31, 232,
in American Revolution, 192 233–35, 235
black ownership of, 493–94 Bourbons (Redeemers) in, 795–97, 797
 Index • A199

Civil War devastation of, 706, 706–7 dissolution of, 1452

in colonial period, 114–27 Marshall Plan and, 1221
labor in, 115–17, 116 Sputnik launched by, 1293, 1293–94
trade in, 126–27 in World War II, 1157–58, 1175–76, 1192,
distinctiveness of, 480–87 1199–1200, 1241
economy of, 508, 791–92 see also Cold War; Russia
education in, 149 space program, 1293, 1293–94, 1306, 1370,
frontier of, 505–7 1370
honor and violence in, 491–92 Spain
land policies in, 140 American Revolution and, 225, 236–37
manufactures in, 486, 486–87 Civil War in, 1145–46, 1148–49
masculine culture in, 506 colonial trade with, 132
middle class in, 490 early U.S. relations with, 264, 305
mythology of, 479–80 explorations by, 18–19, 20–21, 25–26, 26,
plantations in, 488–90, 583–84 31–36, 35
poor whites in, 490–91 as imperialist nation, 909–10
religion in, 114, 481–82 Indian conflicts and, 308, 309
secession of, 602, 641–44, 642, 646, 647, Mexican independence from, 545, 566,
651–54, 652 566–67
slaves in, 117, 117–26, 124, 156, 286, Mississippi River access and, 264
492–505 (see also slavery; slaves; slave in Napoleonic wars, 428, 532
trade) in slave trade, 3
white society in, 487–92 War of 1812 and, 349
in World War II, 1168–69 see also Spanish Empire
see also Civil War, U.S.; Confederate States Spanish Americans, 141, 659
of America; Reconstruction Spanish Armada, 46–47, 47, 49, 50, 51
South Carolina Spanish Empire, 26–40, 50, 88
Indian lands ceded in, 262 British Empire compared with, 33, 57,
Indians in, 248 102–3, 158, 165
land claims of, 258 Catholicism and, 32, 32–33, 36–38, 165, 532
nullification and, 453, 453–54, 477 challenges to, 44, 45, 46–49, 47, 48
post–Revolutionary War debt in, 293 colonization in, 36–37
Revolutionary War fighting in, 201, 230–31, conquests of, 26–33
232, 233 Cromwell’s conflicts with, 84
Revolutionary War troops from, 244 decline of, 165, 392
secession of, 641, 642, 644, 647 European diseases spread in, 27, 31
South Carolina colony Florida as territory of, 33, 34–36, 177,
agriculture in, 114–15 418–20, 532
backcountry of, 143, 189 maps of, 176, 177
European settlement of, 84, 85, 85–86 Mexico as territory of, 33, 536–37
government of, 86, 162 missionaries in, 36, 88, 569–70, 570
Huguenots in, 36 privateers’ attacks against, 44, 46
Indians in, 86, 86–89, 87 Spanish flu, 1015–17, 1016
slaves in, 119, 122, 123, 124, 126, 156 Specie Circular, 438, 466–67
trade and commerce in, 126–27 Spencer, Herbert, 843–44
South Carolina Exposition and Protest spirituals, 501
(Calhoun), 434, 439, 449–50 spoils system, patronage, 444–45
South Carolina Ordinance, 453, 453–54, 477 sports
Southwest, Old, 506 baseball, 838, 838–39, 1226–27, 1227
Soviet Union bicycling, 835, 836
Berlin crises and, 1222, 1287–88, 1313 croquet, 835
Cuban missile crisis and, 1315–18 football, 838
détente with, 1382–83 in nineteenth century, 393–94, 394
A200 • INDEX

sports (continued) Stone, William J., 202

spectator, 837–39, 838, 1048–49 Stonewall Inn, 1367
tennis, 835 Stono uprising (1739), 123, 157
Sputnik, 1293, 1293–94 Story, Joseph, 360, 443
Squanto, 68 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 479, 509, 615, 616, 809
“Square Deal,” 978 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks I (SALT I),
squatter sovereignty, 602–3 1383
S.S. Pennland, 827 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks II (SALT II),
St. Augustine, Fla., 36, 51 1406
St. Leger, Barrimore, 223 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), 1422,
stagecoaches, 144 1422–23
stagflation, 1375, 1381, 1387, 1394 Strauss, Levi, 399–400, 606
Stalin, Joseph, 1151, 1157, 1181, 1190–93, Strong, Josiah, 899–900
1191, 1212, 1227 Stuart, Gilbert, 229
Stalwarts, 854–55 Stuart, J. E. B., 636
Stamp Act (1765), 181–82, 189, 205 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
colonial protests against, 183, 183–85 (SNCC), 1307–8, 1332, 1352
repeal of, 184, 185, 207 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS),
Stamp Act Congress (1765), 184 1351, 1355, 1355–56
Standard Oil Company of Ohio, 762–63 Study for a Wild Scene (Cole), 524
Standish, Miles, 68 Stuyvesant, Peter, 92, 93
Stanton, Edwin M., 682, 716, 718 Styron, William, 1263
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 529, 529, 540, 939, submarines
939, 940 in World War I, 988–91, 991
Stark, John, 224 in World War II, 1146–47, 1155, 1159, 1169,
“Star-Spangled Banner, The,” 357 1171, 1174–75
state and local power after Civil War, 853 suburbs
State Department, U.S., 288 criticisms of, 1262, 1262–63
Statue of Liberty, 828 housing in, 1252–55, 1254
steamboats, 371, 456–58, 458, 464, 465, Suez War, 1291–93, 1292
370–371 Suffolk Resolves, 193
steel industry, 765, 765–66, 780–81, 1208 sugar, 72, 574, 704, 902, 902–3
Steffens, Lincoln, 943 Sugar Act (1764), 180–81, 189, 207
Steichen, Edward, 766 Sullivan, John, 228–29
Stein, Gertrude, 1054–55, 1056, 1056 Sumner, Charles, 625, 625–26, 647, 682, 712,
Steinbeck, John, 1106 713, 714, 715
Steinway, Heinrich, 399 Sumter, Thomas, 231
Stephens, Alexander, 684, 711 Sun Also Rises, The (Hemingway), 1056
Stephens, Uriah S., 775 Supreme Court, U.S.
Steuben, Frederick Wilhelm, baron von, 226–27 on abortion, 1360, 1414
Stevens, John, 219 on affirmative action, 1463–64
Stevens, Thaddeus, 682, 717, 722, 726, 728 appointments to, 288, 322–23
Stevenson, Adlai in Brown case, 1276–77
in election of 1952, 1269–70, 1270 in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 458, 477
in election of 1956, 1293 in Dred Scott case, 628–30, 647, 707
Stewart, Alexander T., 397 election of 2000 and, 1472
Stiles, Isaac, 154 on health care reform, 1506–7
Stimson, Henry L., 1086–87 implied powers broadened by, 296
Stockman, David, 1419–20 in Marbury v. Madison, 331–32, 362,
stock market 424
1929 crash of, 1081–84, 1083 in McCulloch v. Maryland, 460
1987 crash of, 1431, 1432 in New Deal, 1124–25
Stockton, Robert F., 593 Sussex, sinking of (1916), 991
 Index • A201

Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of in Constitution, 271

Education, 1372 Grenville’s program of, 180–82
Sweden, 262 voting rights and, 242, 410–11
Swedish Americans, 95, 140, 145, 400 on whiskey, 306
Swedish colonies, 90 Taylor, Frederick W., 945
Swift, Gustavus, 811 Taylor, Zachary
Swiss Americans, 141 California statehood and, 608
Switzerland, Reformation in, 41–42 Compromise of 1850 and, 609, 612, 613
Syria, 1497 in election of 1848, 604
in Mexican War, 589, 592, 593–95
Taft, William Howard, 831, 958, 1009 Taylorism, 945
Ballinger-Pinchot controversy and, Tea Act (1773), 190
959–60 teaching, 405
in election of 1912, 963–67, 966 Tea Party, 1500–1501, 1501, 1505
Philippines and, 918–19 Teapot Dome scandal, 1070, 1070–71
Roosevelt’s break with, 960–62, 961, 962 technology
selected as Roosevelt’s successor, 958–59 cities and, 821–22, 828, 829–30
as Supreme Court chief justice, 1063 in early nineteenth century, 379–80, 408,
Taft-Hartley Act (1947), 1214, 1214 464–65
Tainos, 21 exploration aided by, 17, 50
Taliban, 1477 of Indians, 27
Tallmadge, James, Jr., 422 printing, 17, 511
Tallmadge Amendment, 422, 439 of Spanish vs. Indians, 27
Tammany Hall, 403 Tecumseh, Shawnee chief, 348, 348, 354
Taney, Roger B., 465, 629 Teheran Conference (1943), 1181
Tappan, Arthur, 544 Tejanos, 579
Tappan, Lewis, 544 telegraph, 380, 465, 606, 660
tar, 115 Teller Amendment (1898), 907
Tarbell, Ida M., 943, 943 temperance, 535–37, 536
Tariff of 1816, 413, 438 tenancy, 792–95, 793, 794
Tariff of 1824, 434 ten-hour workday, 404
Tariff of 1828 (Tariff of Abominations), Tennent, Gilbert, 152
477 Tennent, William, 151–52
Tariff of 1832, 453 Tennessee, 262
Tariff of 1833, 466 Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), 1109, 1109,
Tariff of 1857, 631 1110, 1327
tariffs and duties tennis, 835
after War of 1812, 389, 412–13 Tenochtitlán, 9, 29, 30–31
in early U.S., 264, 264–65, 290–91, 297 Tenskwatawa, 348
economic nationalism and, 389, 412–13 Tenth Amendment, 276, 289, 296
Jackson on, 467 Tenure of Office Act (1867), 720
in late nineteenth century, 860, 882, 895, terrorism, 1473–80, 1508
910 September 11, 2001, attacks and, 1473–75,
Taft and, 959 1474
Wilson and, 967–68 war on, 1475–76, 1476
Tarleton, Banastre, 231, 233 Terror of 1793-1794, 301
TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) Tet offensive (1968), 1342–43, 1343
(2008), 1487 Texas, 34, 36, 38, 394, 402, 532, 538, 545–48,
taverns, 144–45, 145, 472–73 609, 867, 867
taxation annexation of, 579–83, 581, 599
British, 53, 55, 178, 180 in election of 1844, 583
in colonial period, 162, 180–85, 186–89, independence from Mexico, 580–82, 581,
206 598
A202 • INDEX

Texas (continued) Napoleonic Wars and, 342–47

Polk and, 586–87 in New England, 132–34, 133, 285
secession of, 642 in southern colonies, 126–27
Texas v. White, 722 in Spanish Empire, 34–35
textile industry, 384, 384–86, 414–15, 465–70, with West Indies, 132–33, 139, 392
467, 468, 566 Trafalgar, Battle of, 342
Lowell System and, 386–89, 387, 388 Trail of Tears, 457, 457–59, 458, 477
water power and, 389–91, 391 Transcendental Club, 523–24, 553
Thames, Battle of the, 354 transcendentalism, 523–25, 524
Thanksgiving, 69 transcontinental railroads, 754–58, 756, 757,
Thayendanegea, see Brant, Joseph 758
The Bloody Massacre, 188 Transcontinental Treaty (Adams-Onís Treaty)
Thirteenth Amendment, 272, 645, 676, 703, (1819), 420, 428
704, 711, 739 transportation
Thirty Years’ War, 90 in colonial period, 144
This Side of Paradise (Fitzgerald), 1023, 1034, in early nineteenth century, 370–78, 408,
1056 455–63, 456–57
Thomas, George H., 690, 694 government role in, 378, 463
Thoreau, Henry David, 367, 524, 526, 526–27, highways and roads, 370, 387–88, 390, 415,
530, 553, 623 420–21, 455, 456–57, 463
Thurmond, J. Strom, 1229–30, 1230, 1231 ocean, 375, 378, 378, 462–63
Tillman, Benjamin, 879–80 railroads, 374–75, 376, 377, 421, 459–62,
Tippecanoe, Battle of (1811), 348–49, 363, 473 460, 461, 463
Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act urban growth and, 822–24, 824
(1972), 1360 water, 370–74, 371, 372–73, 374, 462–63
Tituba (slave), 137–38 Travis, William B., 580
tobacco, 127, 792 treason, 342
in Maryland colony, 114 Treasury Department, U.S.
Rolfe’s experiments with, 61 Hamilton and, 209, 297–98
in Virginia colony, 61, 63, 114, 115 under Van Buren, 471–72
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 535, 1201 Treatise on Domestic Economy, A, 538
Tokugawa, Iyesato, 1067 Tredegar Iron Works, 486
Toltecs, 8 Trent affair, 659, 703
Tonkin Gulf Resolution (1964), 1339 Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire (1911), 949
Toombs, Robert, 684 triangular trade, 133, 156
Tordesillas, Treaty of, 21 Trinidad, 22
Tories, see Loyalists Tripartite Pact, 1153, 1159
Townsend, Francis E., 1123, 1124, 1127 Triple Alliance (Central Powers), 984, 988,
Townshend, Charles, 185–86 990, 990, 1003, 1006–7
Townshend Acts (1767) Trotter, William, 972
colonial protest against, 186 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)
modification and repeal of, 188, 189, 225 (2008), 1487
townships, New England, 127–28 Truman, Harry S.
trade and commerce anti-communism and, 1236, 1239, 1400,
after American Revolution, 262–63 1452
in colonial period, 86–89, 92, 100–101, 104, atomic bomb and, 1197, 1199–1200
126–27, 132–34, 133, 159, 170, 180–85, background of, 1210–11
186–89 civil rights and, 1226, 1227, 1227–28
in Confederation period, 262–63, 264–65 demobilization under, 1210–14
in French colonies, 170 in election of 1948, 1228–32, 1231, 1232
with Indians, 56, 86–89, 100–101 Fair Deal of, 1227, 1227–28, 1244
interstate, regulation of, 426–27, 427 Israel recognized by, 1224
mercantile system in, 159–61, 161 Korean War and, 1234–35, 1237
 Index • A203

Truman Doctrine, 1219–20, 1233, 1236, 1331 Universal Negro Improvement Association
Trumbull, Lyman, 718 (UNIA), 1041–42
Truth, Sojourner, 547, 548, 553 Updike, John, 1263
Tunisia, 1497–98 urban recreation in early nineteenth century,
Turner, Frederick Jackson, 816–17, 821 393–94, 394
Turner, Nat, 504, 504, 509 Ursuline Convent, 400
turnpike, 370 Ury, John, 125
Tuscaroras, 88 utopian communities, 540–42
Tuscarora War, 88, 104 U-2 summit, 1295
Tuskegee Airmen, 1170, 1171
TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority), 1109, 1109, VA (Veterans Administration), 1251
1110, 1327 Valens, Ritchie, 1266
Twain, Mark (Samuel Clemens), 848, 851, Vallandigham, Clement L., 682, 683
851–52, 864 Valley Forge, winter quarters at (1777–1778),
Tweed, William “Boss,” 850, 850 223, 226, 226–27
Twelfth Amendment, 340 Van Buren, Martin, 432, 434, 468–74, 469,
Twenty-first Amendment, 1102 582
Twice-Told Tales (Hawthorne), 527 Calhoun’s rivalry with, 445
Twining, David, 310 in election of 1832, 465
Two Treatises on Government (Locke), 163 in election of 1836, 469–70
Tydings-McDuffie Act (1934), 918 in election of 1840, 472, 473, 473–74
Tyler, John, 473, 645 in election of 1848, 604, 605, 617
domestic affairs and, 561–62 independent Treasury under, 471–72
foreign affairs and, 562 ten-hour workday and, 404
presidency of, 560–62, 583, 587, 599 Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 759–60, 760
Typee (Melville), 529 Van Rensselaer, Stephen, 352
Vanzetti, Bartolomeo, 1024–26, 1025
U-boats, 988–89 vaudeville, 833, 833–34
UMW (United Mine Workers), 784, 951, 953, Verdun, Battle of, 985, 986
1078, 1133 Vermont
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe), 479, 479, 509, constitution of, 245
615–16, 616, 809 Revolutionary War fighting in, 224
Underground Railroad, 548 Revolutionary War troops from, 197
Underwood-Simmons Tariff (1913), 968 Verrazano, Giovanni da, 44
UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Versailles Treaty (1919), 1012–15, 1013, 1020,
Association), 1041–42 1023, 1136, 1145
Union Manufactories, 387 Vesey, Denmark, 509
Union Pacific Railroad, 755–56, 757 Vespucci, Amerigo, 22
Unitarianism, 512–13 Veterans Administration, 1251
United Farm Workers (UFW), 1364, Vicksburg, Battle of (1863), 686, 686–87,
1364–65 703
United Mine Workers (UMW), 784, 951, 953, Viet Cong, 1290, 1319, 1329, 1331, 1332, 1333,
1078, 1133 1338, 1339, 1358, 1362, 1378
United Nations (U.N.) Viet Minh, 1286
Grenada invasion condemned by, 1425 Vietnam, 1286–87, 1288, 1290, 1340
Israel and, 1225 gradual withdrawal from, 1377, 1377–78
Korean War and, 1235–37 Vietnam War, 1338–44, 1348
Libya and, 1499 casualties in, 1395
origins of, 1215 collapse of South Vietnam in, 1394–96,
Second Gulf War and, 1477–78 1395
Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine, context for policy in, 1341–42
The, 285 domestic opposition to, 1353
Universalism, 512–13 draft in, 1378
A204 • INDEX

Vietnam War (continued) vocational training, 840, 840

end of, 1044, 1398 Volstead Act (1919), 1032
escalation of, 1339–40 Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA),
Kennedy and, 1319–20 1351
My Lai massacre in, 1379, 1395 voter turnout, 1484–85
negotiations in, 1385 voting rights
Nixon and, 1376–80 for African Americans, 164, 720, 726–28,
Tet offensive in, 1342–43, 1343 727, 728, 732
Vietnamization of, 1378 property qualifications and, 164–65, 411,
View of the Attack on Bunker Hill, 198 446, 478, 483
vigilantes, 189, 608 taxation and, 242, 410–11
Vikings, 15, 15–16 women and, 111, 164, 245, 519
Villa, Francisco Pancho, 982, 983 women’s suffrage and, 972–74, 974
violence in the South, 491–92, 506 Voting Rights Act (1965), 1333–34, 1371
Virginia
Civil War fighting in, 655–56, 657, 663–65, Wabash Railroad v. Illinois, 860
667, 669, 672, 684, 689–91, 691, 692 WAC (Women’s Army Corps), 1169
Constitution ratified by, 279, 279 Wade, Benjamin F., 682, 710, 712
land claims of, 258, 261 Wade-Davis Bill, 712
post–Revolutionary War debt in, 293 Wade-Davis Manifesto, 713
religious freedom in, 248 Wagner, Robert F., 1126
Revolutionary War fighting in, 200, 231, Wagner Act, see National Labor Relations
234–35 Act
Virginia colony, 58, 59, 67, 68, 83, 141 Wagner-Steagall National Housing Act
agriculture in, 57–58 (1937), 1135
Anglican Church in, 150, 154 Wald, Lillian, 938
Bacon’s Rebellion in, 64, 64–65 Walden (Thoreau), 526–27, 553
charter of, 60 Wales, 52
in colonial taxation disputes, 187 Walker, Robert J., 630, 631
Committees of Correspondence in, 190, Wallace, George, 1310, 1345, 1385–87
192 Wallace, Henry A., 1230
first permanent settlement in, 57–58, Walloons, 141
60–64 Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection,
government of, 61, 63–64, 164 1494
Indians and, 57–58, 60, 63–65, 179 Walpole, Robert, 163
John Smith’s administration of, 58, 60 Walton Road, 370, 455
population of, 83, 108–9 Wampanoags, 80, 81–82
religion in, 61, 114 wampum, 94
Roanoke colony, 48, 48–49, 51 Ward, Aaron Montgomery, 767
as royal colony, 66 Ward, Lester Frank, 845, 845
slavery in, 112, 118, 119, 122, 126, 157 Warehouse Act (1916), 752
Stamp Act and, 184 War Industries Board (WIB), 997
“starving time” in, 60–61 Warner, Charles Dudley, 848
tobacco in, 61, 63, 114 War of 1812, 362
Virginia Company, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60–61, 61, aftermath of, 360–61, 362
63, 71, 104, 158 Canada and, 349–50
Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), 248, 289 causes of, 347–48
Virginia Plan, 270–73, 275 in Chesapeake, 356–58
Virginia Resolutions (1798), 319–21, 423 Hartford Convention and, 359–60, 362
Virginia Statue of Religious Freedom (1786), Indian troubles in, 347–50, 354–56
248–49, 253 New Orleans, Battle of, 358–59, 359
VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), northern front of, 352–54, 353
1351 preparations for, 350–51
 Index • A205

southern front of, 354–56, 355 Watervliet Arsenal, 655

Washington, D.C. captured in, 356–57 Watt, James, 385
War of 1898, 930 WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer
annexation debate after, 912–13 Emergency Service), 1169, 1169
Cuba in, 903–4, 908, 910–12, 911 Wayne, Anthony, 305–6
Maine incident and, 904–6, 905 WCTU (Women’s Christian Temperance
organizing acquisitions from, 917–20, 918 Union), 852, 940, 947, 947, 950,
Philippines in, 907–8, 909, 913–15, 914, 1031
915 weapons of mass destruction, 1477–78,
pressure for, 904–7, 905, 906 1480
religion and, 915–16 Weathermen, 1356
Warren, Earl, 1274, 1274, 1276, 1306 Weaver, James B., 871
Warren, Joseph, 198 Webster, Daniel, 425, 434, 440, 550, 562
Warriors’ Path, 311 African colonization and, 543
Wars of the Roses, 18 Compromise of 1850 and, 609, 611
Washington, Booker T., 886, 886–87, 888 Hayne’s debate with, 449–51, 450
Washington, D.C., 1018 on Jackson, 443
first inauguration in, 329–30 national bank issue and, 412, 433–34
as new capital, 329, 329 Texas annexation and, 587
in War of 1812, 356–57 in Tyler administration, 528, 530,
Washington, George, 218, 250, 267, 288, 300, 560
313, 315, 345, 463 Webster-Ashburton Treaty (1842), 562, 563,
in American Revolution, 197, 199, 599
200, 210, 213–16, 217, 218, 218, 220, Webster-Hayne debate, 449–51, 450
221, 223, 226–27, 230, 234, 244, 252, Weinberger, Caspar, 1422, 1427
253, 256, 257 welfare, 1331, 1461
appearance and background of, 197 Wells, Ida B., 885, 885–86, 890
Bill of Rights and, 289 Welsh Americans, 99, 140, 141, 156, 580
called from retirement, 317 Wesley, John, 513, 513
chosen as commander in chief, 197 West, 563–78, 598, 797–801, 802–3, 804–20
on Common Sense, 200 African Americans in, 799, 799–800
on Constitution, 279 agriculture in, 382–84, 383, 450, 452–54,
at Constitutional Convention, 268, 268–69, 574
275 cattle and cowboys in, 810–12, 811
at Continental Congress, 192 in Civil War, 662–63, 664
death of, 379 end of open range in, 812, 812–13
Declaration of Independence and, 202, 203 farmers in, 813–15, 814
farewell address of, 312, 325 Great Plains ecology, 575–77
on foreign alliances, 312 Indian conflicts in, 804–8, 806, 807, 808,
in French and Indian War, 171–72, 174, 197 818
French Revolution and, 300–302, 303 Indian policy, 809
Jay’s Treaty and, 304 Jefferson’s promotion of exploration,
on national bank issue, 295–96 337–39, 338
in presidential elections, 284, 287, 300, 325 map of, 802–3
on Shays’s Rebellion, 267 migratory stream to, 798–99
Whiskey Rebellion and, 306–7, 307 mining in, 800–801, 801, 802–3, 804,
Washington Federalist, 344 818
Watergate scandal, 1387–92, 1389, 1391, 1398 Overland Trails and, 572–75, 573, 574,
Waterloo, Battle of, 356 575
water-powered textile industry, 389–91, range wars in, 813
391 Rocky Mountains and Oregon Country,
water transportation, 370–74, 371, 462–63 567–68
canals, 371–74, 372–73, 374, 458–59, 464 Santa Fe Trail, 572, 573
A206 • INDEX

West (continued) Wilson, James, 269, 274

Spanish, Mexican independence and, Wilson, Woodrow, 848, 962
566–67 anti-trust laws and, 969–70
women in, 816, 816 background of, 962–63
in World War II, 1168 in election of 1912, 963–67, 964, 966
see also California; frontier in election of 1916, 992–94, 993
West, Benjamin, 237 Federal Reserve and, 968, 968–69
West African tribal kingdoms, 119–21 foreign policy of, 980–83
Western Federation of Miners, 786 Fourteen Points of, 1005–7.
Western Indians, 14, 564–65 Latin American policy of, 982–83
West Indies, 27, 31, 72, 73, 118, 119, League of Nations and, 1009–10
302 Mexican intervention of, 981–82,
French-U.S. conflict in, 315 1020
Napoleonic wars and, 342 at Paris Peace Conference, 1007–9, 1009
trade with, 132–33, 139, 186, 303, preparedness issue and, 992
417 progressivism of, 967–76, 971, 977, 978
Westinghouse, George, 761 social justice and, 970
Westmoreland, William C., 1339 stroke suffered by, 1014, 1019
Weyler, Valeriano, 904 tariffs and, 967–68
Wheatley, Phillis, 204, 204 U.S. entry into World War I and, 995–1001
Whig party U.S. neutrality and, 987, 990–91, 991,
destruction of, 621 994–95
in election of 1840, 473–74, 528 Versailles Treaty promoted by, 1012–15,
in election of 1848, 604, 605 1013, 1020, 1023
in election of 1852, 616–17 women’s suffrage and, 972–74, 974
in election of 1856, 626–27 Winthrop, John, 71, 71–72, 74, 77, 78, 97,
formation of, 468, 476 110, 111
Free-Soil party and, 603–4 Wirt, William, 464, 465
slavery issue in, 603, 608 witchcraft, 137–39, 138, 157
Whigs, British, 182 Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World),
whiskey, tax on, 306 786–87
Whiskey Rebellion, 306–8, 307, 325 Woman Rebel, 975
White, John, 23, 86 women
Whitefield, George, 152, 152, 153, 157 African-American, 111–12
white society in the Old South, 487–92 American Indian, 39–40
Whitman, Walt, 527, 530–31, 553, 650 American Revolution and, 245–47,
Whitney, Eli, 381, 381–82, 409 246
WIB (War Industries Board), 997 birth control and, 1362–63, 1363
Wilderness Road, 310–12, 311, 370, 409, in Civil War, 676–78, 677
455 in colonial period, 109–13, 112, 156
Wilhelm II, 928 domestic role of, 112–13, 518–19,
Wilkinson, Eliza, 272 578–79
Willard, Emma, 534 education and, 842
Willard, Frances Elizabeth, 947, 947 employment of, 112–13, 406–7, 465,
William and Mary, College of, 155 467–69, 468, 521, 674–75, 938–42, 939,
William III, 56, 162, 163, 169 941, 999–1000, 1000, 1036, 1163–64,
Williams, Roger, 74–75, 76, 81, 104 1252, 1350, 1368, 1423
Willkie, Wendell L., 1155–56 legal status of, 110–11, 519
Wilmington Insurrection, 883, 883–84 in Lowell System, 387, 388, 388
Wilmot, David, 601–2, 604 marriage and child-bearing patterns of,
Wilmot Proviso, 601–2, 604 109, 287
Wilson, Edith, 983, 992–93, 1014 in mining frontier (California), 608
Wilson, Ellen, 983, 984 on Overland Trails, 574, 574–75
Wilson, Henry, 732 Puritan, 71, 134
 Index • A207

Quaker, 96, 97, 111 atomic bombs in, 1196–1200, 1198, 1199
religion and, 111–12, 153, 154, 572, Battle of the Atlantic in, 1180
677 Blitzkrieg in, 1152–53, 1154
in 1920s, 1034–37, 1035 D-day in, 1182, 1182–85, 1184
in 1950s, 1258–60, 1260 demobilization after, 1210–14
sexual revolution and, 1362–63, 1363 domestic mobilization in, 1165–67, 1167
slave, 125–26, 497–99, 592 drive toward Berlin in, 1175–85
on southern plantations, 489, 489–90 economy in, 1165–67, 1200–1201
voting rights and, 972–74, 974 final ledger from, 1200–1201
in West, 816, 816 financing of, 1166
witchcraft and, 138–39 Holocaust in, 1195, 1195–96
working, leisure and, 836–37 Indians in, 1173–74, 1174
in World War II, 1169, 1169 Japanese Americans in, 1174–75, 1175
Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency maps of, 1178–79, 1186–87
Service (WAVES), 1169, 1169 North Africa fighting in, 1177, 1178–79,
Women’s Army Corps (WAC), 1169 1180
Women’s Christian Temperance Union Pacific fighting in, 1163–64, 1164, 1185,
(WCTU), 852, 940, 947, 947, 950, 1031 1186–87, 1188, 1196–97, 1202
women’s rights, 538, 538–40, 539 Pearl Harbor attack in, 1161–62, 1163
voting and, 111, 164, 245, 519, 521 social effects of, 1167–75
women’s suffrage movement, 939, 939–41, strategic bombing in, 1182
941, 947, 972–74, 974 submarines in, 1155
Woodstock Music Festival (1969), 1357–58, U.S. neutrality in, 1148–50, 1150, 1151–52,
1358 1202
Woodville, Richard Caton, 531 V-E day in, 1194, 1194–95
Worcester v. Georgia, 458–59, 477 war aims and strategy in, 1175–77, 1176
workers, see labor women in, 1169, 1169
working class, 768–69 Worthington, Amanda, 707
child labor and, 769–71, 770 Wounded Knee, S.Dak.
women in, leisure and, 836–37 FBI-AIM standoff at (1973), 1366, 1366
Workingmen’s party, 403–4, 512 massacre at (1890), 808
Working People and Their Employers WPA (Works Progress Administration),
(Gladden), 936 1125
Works Progress Administration (WPA), 1125
World Court, 1068–69 XYZ affair, 316, 325
World Trade Center, 1473–75, 1474
World War I, 980–1021 Yale College, 155
casualties in, 1007 Yalta Conference (1945), 1190–93, 1191, 1212,
civil liberties and, 1000–1001 1213
decisive role of U.S. in, 1001–7 Yamasees, 88–89
domestic unrest in, 1007–9, 1009 Yamasee War, 89, 104
Paris Conference after, 1007–9, 1009 Yancey, William, 638
propaganda in, 999–1000, 1000 yellow journalism, 904
reparations after, 1010–12, 1065–66 Yellowstone National Park, 956, 956
submarines and neutral rights in, 988–91, Yeltsin, Boris, 1442, 1442
991 yeomen, 490
U.S. entry into, 995–1001, 1020 Yom Kippur War (1973), 1376, 1398
U.S. neutrality in, 983–95 Yorktown, Battle of (1781), 234–35, 235,
U.S. preparedness in, 992 253
veterans of, 1090–92, 1092 Young, Brigham, 521, 521–22, 553
western front in, 1002, 1002–4, 1003, 1004 young people
women in, 998, 999 juvenile delinquency and, 1266
World War II, 1142–1204 in 1960s, 1351
African Americans in, 1170, 1171 in the 1950s, 1265–66, 1266
A208 • INDEX

Young Women’s Christian Association Zealy, Joseph T., 497

(YWCA), 941 Zenger, John Peter, 145–46, 157
Yugoslavia, 1468–69 Zimmermann, Arthur, 994
YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Zunis, 13, 531
Association), 941