History of the United States (1865–1917)
The United States of America | |||
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1865–1917 | |||
Chronology
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History of the United States | |
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1981–1991 | |
1991–2008 | |
Post-Cold War Era | 1991–2008 |
2008–present | |
Modern Era | 2008–present |
The history of the United States from 1865 to 1917 was marked by the
This period of rapid economic growth and soaring prosperity in the Northern United States and the Western United States saw the U.S. become the world's dominant economic, industrial, and agricultural power. The average annual income (after inflation) of non-farm workers grew by 75% from 1865 to 1900, and then grew another 33% by 1918.[1]
With a victory in 1865 over the Southern
In an unprecedented wave of European immigration, 27.5 million new arrivals between 1865 and 1918[2] provided the labor base necessary for the expansion of industry and agriculture, as well as the population base for most of fast-growing urban America.
By the late nineteenth century, the United States had become a leading global industrial power, building on new technologies (such as the
It was also during this period that the United States began to emerge as a global superpower. The U.S. easily defeated Spain in 1898, which unexpectedly brought a small empire. Cuba quickly was given independence, and the Philippines eventually became independent in 1946. Puerto Rico (and some smaller islands) became permanent U.S. territories, as did Alaska (added by purchase in 1867). The independent Republic of Hawaii was annexed by the U.S. as a territory in 1898.
Reconstruction era
Reconstruction was the period from 1863 to 1877, in which the federal government temporarily took control—one by one—of the Southern states of the Confederacy. Before his assassination in April 1865, President Abraham Lincoln had announced moderate plans for reconstruction to re-integrate the former Confederates as fast as possible. Lincoln set up the Freedmen's Bureau in March 1865, to aid former enslaved people in finding education, health care, and employment. The final abolition of slavery was achieved by the Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in December 1865.[4] However, Lincoln was opposed by the Radical Republicans within his own party who feared that the former Confederates would never truly give up on slavery and Confederate nationalism, and would always try to reinstate them behind-the-scenes. As a result, the Radical Republicans tried to impose legal restrictions that would strip most ex-rebels' rights to vote and hold elected office. The Radicals were opposed by Lincoln's vice president and successor, Tennessee Democrat Andrew Johnson. However, the Radicals won the critical elections of 1866, winning enough seats in Congress to override President Johnson's vetoes of such legislation. They even successfully impeached President Johnson (in the House of Representatives), and almost removed him from office (in the Senate) in 1868. Meanwhile, they gave the South's "freedmen" new constitutional and federal legal protections.
The Radicals' reconstruction plans took effect in 1867 under the supervision of the
U.S. Representative Thaddeus Stevens was one of the major policymakers regarding Reconstruction, and obtained a House vote of impeachment against President Andrew Johnson. Hans Trefousse, his leading biographer, concludes that Stevens "was one of the most influential representatives ever to serve in Congress. [He dominated] the House with his wit, knowledge of parliamentary law, and sheer willpower, even though he was often unable to prevail."[5]
Reconstruction ended at different times in each state, the last in 1877, when Republican
The end of Reconstruction marked the end of the brief period of civil rights and civil liberties for African Americans in the South, where most lived. Reconstruction caused permanent resentment, distrust, and cynicism among white Southerners toward the federal government, and helped create the "Solid South," which typically voted for the (then-)socially
Historians' interpretations of the Radical Republicans have dramatically shifted over the years, from the pre-1950 view of them as tools of big business motivated by partisanship and hatred of the white South, to the perspective of the neoabolitionists of the 1950s and afterwards, who applauded their efforts to give equal rights to the freed slaves.[10]
In the South itself the interpretation of the tumultuous 1860s differed sharply by race. Americans often interpreted great events in religious terms. Historian Wilson Fallin contrasts the interpretation of Civil War and Reconstruction in white versus black using Baptist sermons in Alabama. White preachers expressed the view that:
- God had chastised them and given them a special mission – to maintain orthodoxy, strict Biblicism, personal piety, and traditional race relations. Slavery, they insisted, had not been sinful. Rather, emancipation was a historical tragedy and the end of Reconstruction was a clear sign of God's favor.
In sharp contrast, Black preachers interpreted the Civil War, emancipation and Reconstruction as:
- God's gift of freedom. They appreciated opportunities to exercise their independence, to worship in their own way, to affirm their worth and dignity, and to proclaim the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Most of all, they could form their own churches, associations, and conventions. These institutions offered self-help and racial uplift, and provided places where the gospel of liberation could be proclaimed. As a result, black preachers continued to insist that God would protect and help them; God would be their rock in a stormy land.[11]
Historians in the 21st century typically consider Reconstruction to be a failure, but they "disagree on what caused Reconstruction to fail, focusing on whether it went too far, too fast or did not go far enough."[12]
However, historian Mark Summers in 2014 sees a positive outcome:
- if we see Reconstruction's purpose as making sure that the main goals of the war would be filled, of a Union held together forever, of a North and South able to work together, of slavery extirpated, and sectional rivalries confined, of a permanent banishment of the fear of vaunting appeals to state sovereignty, backed by armed force, then Reconstruction looks like what in that respect it was, a lasting and unappreciated success.[13]
The West
In 1869, the First transcontinental railroad opened up the far west mining and ranching regions. Travel from New York to San Francisco now took six days instead of six months.[14] After the Civil War, many from the East Coast and Europe were lured west by reports from relatives and by extensive advertising campaigns promising "the Best Prairie Lands", "Low Prices", "Large Discounts For Cash", and "Better Terms Than Ever!". The new railroads provided the opportunity for migrants to go out and take a look, with special family tickets, the cost of which could be applied to land purchases offered by the railroads. Farming the plains was indeed more difficult than back east. Water management was more critical, lightning fires were more prevalent, the weather was more extreme, rainfall was less predictable. The fearful stayed home. The actual migrants looked beyond fears of the unknown. Their chief motivation to move west was to find a better economic life than the one they had. Farmers sought larger, cheaper and more fertile land; merchants and tradesmen sought new customers and new leadership opportunities. Laborers wanted higher paying work and better conditions. With the Homestead Act of 1862 providing free land to citizens and the railroads selling cheap lands to European farmers, the settlement of the Great Plains was swiftly accomplished, and the frontier had virtually ended by 1890.[15]
American Indian assimilation
Expansion into the plains and mountains by miners, ranchers and settlers led to conflict with some of the regional American Indian tribes. The government insisted the
American Indians had the choice of living on reservations. The US government provided food, supplies, education and medical care. Individuals could move out on their own in Western society and earning wages, typically on a ranch. Reformers wanted to give as many American Indians as possible the opportunity to own and operate their own farms and ranches, and the issue was how to give individual Indians land owned by the tribe. To assimilate the Indians into American society, reformers set up training programs and schools, such as the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, that produced many prominent Indian leaders. The anti-assimilation traditionalists on the reservations, however, resisted integration. The reformers decided the solution was to allow Indians still on reservations to own land as individuals.
The Dawes Act of 1887 was an effort to integrate American Indians into the mainstream; the majority accepted integration and were absorbed into American society, leaving a trace of American Indian ancestry in millions of American families. Those who refused to assimilate remained in poverty on the reservations, supported by Federal food, medicine and schooling. In 1934, U.S. policy was reversed again by the Indian Reorganization Act which attempted to protect tribal and communal life on the reservations.[17]
Farming
A dramatic expansion in farming took place.[18] The number of farms tripled from 2.0 million in 1860 to 6.0 million in 1905. The number of people living on farms grew from about 10 million in 1860 to 22 million in 1880 to 31 million in 1905. The value of farms soared from $8.0 billion in 1860 to $30 billion in 1906.[19]
The federal government issued 160-acre (65
Despite their remarkable progress and general prosperity, 19th-century U.S. farmers experienced recurring cycles of hardship, caused primarily by falling world prices for cotton and wheat.[21]
Along with the mechanical improvements which greatly increased yield per unit area, the amount of land under cultivation grew rapidly throughout the second half of the century, as the railroads opened up new areas of the West for settlement. The wheat farmers enjoyed abundant output and good years from 1876 to 1881 when bad European harvests kept the world price high. They then suffered from a slump in the 1880s when conditions in Europe improved. The farther west the settlers went, the more dependent they became on the monopolistic railroads to move their goods to market, and the more inclined they were to protest, as in the Populist movement of the 1890s. Wheat farmers blamed local grain elevator owners (who purchased their crop), railroads and eastern bankers for the low prices.[22]
The first organized effort to address general agricultural problems was the
Family life
Few single men attempted to operate a farm; farmers clearly understood the need for a hard-working wife, and numerous children, to handle the many chores, including child-rearing, feeding and clothing the family, managing the housework, and feeding the hired hands.[24] During the early years of settlement, farm women played an integral role in assuring family survival by working outdoors. After a generation or so, women increasingly left the fields, thus redefining their roles within the family. New conveniences such as sewing and washing machines encouraged women to turn to domestic roles. This was further supported by the scientific housekeeping movement, promoted across the land by the media and government extension agents, as well as county fairs which featured achievements in home cookery and canning, advice columns for women in the farm papers, and home economics courses in the schools.[25]
Although the eastern image of farm life on the prairies emphasizes the isolation of the lonely farmer and farm life, in reality rural folk created a rich social life for themselves. For example, many joined a local branch of the Grange; a majority had ties to local churches. It was popular to organize activities that combined practical work, abundant food, and simple entertainment such as barn raisings, corn huskings, and quilting bees,.[26] One could keep busy with scheduled Grange meetings, church services, and school functions. The womenfolk organized shared meals and potluck events, as well as extended visits between families.[27]
Childhood on the American frontier is contested territory. One group of scholars argues the rural environment was salubrious for it allowed children to break loose from urban hierarchies of age and gender, promoted family interdependence, and in the end produced children who were more self-reliant, mobile, adaptable, responsible, independent and more in touch with nature than their urban or eastern counterparts.[28][29] However other historians offer a grim portrait of loneliness, privation, abuse, and demanding physical labor from an early age.[30][31]
Industrialization
From 1865 to about 1913, the U.S. grew to become the world's leading
Where the
New technologies in iron and steel manufacturing, such as the
To finance the larger-scale enterprises required during this era, the corporation emerged as the dominant form of business organization. Corporations expanded by merging, creating single firms out of competing firms known as "
Powerful industrialists, such as
Labor and management
In the fast-growing industrial sector, wages were about double the level in Europe, but the work was harder with less leisure. Economic depressions swept the nation in 1873–75 and 1893–97, with low prices for farm goods and heavy unemployment in factories and mines.[40] Full prosperity returned in 1897 and continued (with minor dips) to 1920.[41]
The pool of unskilled labor was constantly growing, as unprecedented numbers of immigrants—27.5 million between 1865 and 1918[2] —entered the U.S. Most were young men eager for work. The rapid growth of engineering and the need to master the new technology created a heavy demand for engineers, technicians, and skilled workers. Before 1874, when Massachusetts passed the nation's first legislation limiting the number of hours women and child factory workers could perform to 10 hours a day, virtually no labor legislation existed in the country. Child labor reached a peak around 1900 and then declined (except in Southern textile mills) as compulsory education laws kept children in school. It was finally ended in the 1930s.[42]
Labor organization
Part of a series on |
Organized labour |
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The first major effort to organize workers' groups on a nationwide basis appeared with The Noble Order of the Knights of Labor in 1869. Originally a secret, ritualistic society organized by Philadelphia garment workers, it was open to all workers, including African Americans, women, and farmers. The Knights grew slowly until they succeeded in facing down the great railroad baron, Jay Gould, in an 1885 strike. Within a year, they added 500,000 workers to their rolls, far more than the thin leadership structure of the Knights could handle.[43]
The Knights of Labor soon fell into decline, and their place in the labor movement was gradually taken by the
In times of economic depression, layoffs and wage cuts angered the workers, leading to violent labor conflicts in 1877 and 1894. In the
At its peak, the Knights claimed 700,000 members. By 1890, membership had plummeted to fewer than 100,000, then faded away.[47] The killing of policemen greatly embarrassed the Knights of Labor, which was not involved with the bomb but which took much of the blame.[48]
In the
Two years later, wage cuts at the
The most militant working class organization of the 1905–1920 era was the
Gilded Age
The "Gilded Age" that was enjoyed by the topmost percentiles of American society after the recovery from the
With the end of Reconstruction, there were few major political issues at stake and the 1880 presidential election was the quietest in a long time. James Garfield, the Republican candidate, won a very close election, but a few months into his administration was shot by a disgruntled public office seeker. Garfield was succeeded by his VP Chester Arthur.
Reformers, especially the "
The dominant social class of the Northeast possessed the confidence to proclaim an "American Renaissance", which could be identified in the rush of new public institutions that marked the period—hospitals, museums, colleges, opera houses, libraries, orchestras— and by the Beaux-Arts architectural idiom in which they splendidly stood forth, after Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893.[62]
Social history
Urbanization (the rapid growth of cities) went hand in hand with industrialization (the growth of factories and railroads), as well as expansion of farming. The rapid growth was made possible by high levels of immigration.[63][64]
Immigration
From 1865 through 1918 an unprecedented and diverse stream of immigrants arrived in the United States, 27.5 million in total. In all, 24.4 million (89%) came from Europe, including 2.9 million from Great Britain, 2.2 million from Ireland, 2.1 million from Scandinavia, 3.8 million from Germany, 4.1 million from Italy, 7.8 million from Russia and other parts of Central and Eastern Europe. Another 1.7 million came from Canada.[65] Most came through the port of New York City, and from 1892, through the immigration station on Ellis Island, but various ethnic groups settled in different locations. New York and other large cities of the East Coast became home to large Jewish, Irish, and Italian populations, while many Germans and Central Europeans moved to the Midwest, obtaining jobs in industry and mining. At the same time, about one million French Canadians migrated from Quebec to New England.[66]
Immigrants were pushed out of their homelands by poverty or religious threats, and pulled to America by jobs, farmland and kin connections. They found economic opportunity at factories, mines and construction sites, and found farm opportunities in the Plains states.
While most immigrants were welcomed, Asians were not. Many Chinese had been brought to the west coast to construct railroads, but unlike European immigrants, they were seen as being part of an entirely alien culture. After intense
Some immigrants stayed temporarily in the U.S. then returned home, often with savings that made them relatively prosperous. Most, however, permanently left their native lands and stayed in hope of finding a better life in the New World. This desire for freedom and prosperity led to the famous term, the American Dream.
Religion
The
At the same time, the Catholic Church grew rapidly, with a base in the German, Irish, Polish, and Italian immigrant communities, and a leadership drawn from the Irish. The Catholics were largely working class and concentrated in the industrial cities and mining towns, where they built churches, parochial schools, and charitable institutions, as well as colleges.[71]
The Jewish community grew rapidly, largely from immigrants fleeing anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia and Austria-Hungary. Settling primarily in and around New York City, these new Jewish Americans avoided the Reform synagogues of the older German Jews and instead formed Orthodox and Conservative synagogues.[72]
Nadir of race relations
Starting in the end of the 1870s, African Americans lost many of the civil rights obtained during Reconstruction and became increasingly subject to racial discrimination. Increased racist violence, including lynchings and race riots, lead to a strong deterioration of living conditions of African Americans in the Southern states. Jim Crow laws were established after the Compromise of 1877. Many decided to flee for the Midwest as early as 1879, an exile which was intensified during the Great Migration that began before World War I.[73]
In 1896, the
D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), the first great American film, made heroes of the KKK in Reconstruction.[74]
Populism
By 1880, the Granger movement began to decline and was replaced by the Farmers' Alliance. From the beginning, the Farmers' Alliance were political organizations with elaborate economic programs. According to one early platform, its purpose was to "unite the farmers of America for their protection against class legislation and the encroachments of concentrated capital." Their program also called for the regulation—if not the outright nationalization—of the railroads; currency inflation to provide debt relief; the lowering of the tariff; and the establishment of government-owned storehouses and low-interest lending facilities. These were known as the Ocala Demands.[75]
During the late 1880s, a series of droughts devastated the West. Western
Its first convention was in 1892, when delegates from farm, labor and reform organizations met in Omaha, Nebraska, determined at last to make their mark on a U.S. political system that they viewed as hopelessly corrupted by the monied interests of the industrial and commercial trusts.
The pragmatic portion of the Populist platform focused on issues of land, railroads and money, including the unlimited coinage of silver. The Populists showed impressive strength in the West and South in the 1892 elections, and their candidate for president polled more than a million votes. It was the currency question, however, pitting advocates of silver against those who favored gold, that soon overshadowed all other issues. Agrarian spokesmen in the West and South demanded a return to the unlimited coinage of silver. Convinced that their troubles stemmed from a shortage of money in circulation, they argued that increasing the volume of money would indirectly raise prices for farm products and drive up industrial wages, thus allowing debts to be paid with inflated dollars.
Conservative groups and the financial classes, on the other hand, believed that such a policy would be disastrous, and they insisted that inflation, once begun, could not be stopped. Railroad bonds, the most important financial instrument of the time, were payable in gold. If fares and freight rates were set in half-price silver dollars, railroads would go bankrupt in weeks, throwing hundreds of thousands of men out of work and destroying the industrial economy. Only the gold standard, they said, offered stability.
The financial
The Democratic Party, which supported silver and free trade, absorbed the remnants of the Populist movement as the presidential elections of 1896 neared. The Democratic convention that year was witness to one of the most famous speeches in U.S. political history. Pleading with the convention not to "crucify mankind on a cross of gold", William Jennings Bryan, the young Nebraskan champion of silver, won the Democrats' presidential nomination. The remaining Populists also endorsed Bryan, hoping to retain some influence by having a voice inside the Bryan movement. Despite carrying the South and all the West except California and Oregon, Bryan lost the more populated, industrial North and East—and the election—to the Republican William McKinley with his campaign slogan "A Full Dinner Pail".
In 1897, the economy began to improve, mostly from restored business confidence. Silverites—who did not realize that most transactions were handled by bank checks, not sacks of gold—believed the new prosperity was spurred by the discovery of gold in the Yukon. In 1898, the Spanish–American War drew the nation's attention further away from Populist issues. If the movement was dead, however, its ideas were not. Once the Populists supported an idea, it became so tainted that the vast majority of American politicians rejected it; only years later, after the taint had been forgotten, was it possible to achieve Populist reforms, such as the direct popular election of Senators in 1914.
Women's suffrage
The
Around 1912, the movement, which had grown sluggish, began to reawaken. This put an emphasis on its demands for equality and arguing that the corruption of American politics demanded purification by women because men could no longer do their job.
Finally, the suffragettes were ordered released from prison, and Wilson urged Congress to pass a Constitutional amendment enfranchising women. The old anti-suffragist argument that only men could fight a war, and therefore only men deserved the franchise, was refuted by the enthusiastic participation of tens of thousands of American women on the home front in World War I. Across the world, grateful nations gave women the right to vote. Furthermore, most of the Western states had already given women the right to vote in state and national elections, and the representatives from those states, including the first voting woman Jeannette Rankin of Montana, demonstrated that Women's Suffrage was a success. The main resistance came from the south, where white leaders were worried about the threat of black women voting. Nevertheless, Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919. It became a constitutional law on August 26, 1920, after ratification by the 36th required state.[80]
Foreign policy
With the
War with Spain
Spain had once controlled a
The Spanish were quickly defeated, and Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders gained fame in Cuba. Meanwhile, Commodore George Dewey's fleet crushed the Spanish in the faraway Philippines. Spain capitulated, ending the three-month-long war and recognizing Cuba's independence. Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines were ceded to the United States.[84]
Although U.S. capital investments within the Philippines and Puerto Rico were small, some politicians hoped they would be strategic outposts for expanding trade with Latin America and Asia, particularly China. That never happened and after 1903 American attention turned to the Panama Canal as the key to opening new trade routes. The Spanish–American War thus began the active, globally oriented American foreign policy that continues to the present day.
Philippines
The U.S. acquired the Philippines from Spain on December 10, 1898, via the
Roosevelt continued the McKinley policies of removing the Catholic friars (with compensation to the Pope) and spreading Protestantism in the islands, upgrading the infrastructure, introducing public health programs, and launching a program of economic and social modernization. The enthusiasm shown in 1898–99 for colonies cooled off, and Roosevelt saw the islands as "our heel of Achilles." He told Taft in 1907, "I should be glad to see the islands made independent, with perhaps some kind of international guarantee for the preservation of order, or with some warning on our part that if they did not keep order we would have to interfere again."[85] By then the President and his foreign policy advisers turned away from Asian issues to concentrate on Latin America, and Roosevelt redirected Philippine policy to prepare the islands to become the first Western colony in Asia to achieve self-government, holding its first democratic elections in 1907.[86] The Jones Law, passed in 1916, increased Filipino self-governance and guaranteed eventual Philippine independence, which was finally achieved in 1946.[87]
Latin America
The U.S. demanded Spain stop its oppressive policies in Cuba; public opinion (overruling McKinley) led to the short, successful Spanish–American War in 1898. The U.S. permanently took over Puerto Rico, and temporarily held Cuba. Attention increasingly focused on the Caribbean as the rapid growth of the Pacific states, especially California, revealed the need for a canal across to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Plans for one in Nicaragua fell through but under Roosevelt's leadership the U.S. built a canal through Panama, after finding a public health solution to the deadly disease environment. The Panama Canal opened in 1914.[88]
In 1904, Roosevelt announced his "Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine, stating that the United States would intervene in cases where Latin American governments prove incapable or unstable in the interest of bringing democracy and financial stability to them. The U.S. made numerous interventions, mostly to stabilize the shaky governments and permit the nations to develop their economies. The intervention policy ended in the 1930s and was replaced by the Good Neighbor policy.[89]
In 1909, Nicaraguan President José Santos Zelaya resigned after the triumph of U.S.-backed rebels. This was followed up by the 1912–1933 U.S. occupation of Nicaragua.
The U.S. military occupation of Haiti, in 1915, followed the mob execution of Haiti's leader Vilbrun Guillaume Sam but even more important was the threat of a possible German takeover of the island. Germans controlled 80% of the Haitian economy by 1914 and they were bankrolling revolutions that kept the country in political turmoil. The conquest resulted in a 19-year-long United States occupation of Haiti. Haiti was an exotic locale that suggested black racial themes to numerous American writers including Eugene O'Neill, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Orson Welles.[90]
In 1916, the U.S.
Progressive Era
A new spirit of the times, known as "Progressivism", arose in the 1890s and into the 1920s (although some historians date the ending with World War I).[92]
In 1904, reflecting the age, and perhaps prescient of difficulties arising in the early part of the next millennium (including the rise of a demagogue in the land trying to array society into two camps), the Hungarian born Joseph Pulitzer wrote about the dangers ahead for the republic:[93]
"Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations.”[94]
The
President William McKinley was enjoying great popularity as he began his second term,[96] but it would be cut short. In September 1901, while attending an exposition in Buffalo, New York, McKinley was shot by an anarchist. He was the third president to be assassinated, all since the Civil War. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt assumed the presidency.[97]
Political corruption was a central issue, which reformers hoped to solve through civil service reforms at the national, state, and local level, replacing
Many self-styled progressives saw their work as a crusade against urban political bosses and corrupt "robber barons". There were increased demands for effective regulation of business, a revived commitment to public service, and an expansion of the scope of government to ensure the welfare and interests of the country as the groups pressing these demands saw fit. Almost all the notable figures of the period, whether in politics, philosophy, scholarship, or literature, were connected at least in part with the reform movement.
Trenchant articles dealing with trusts, high finance, impure foods, and abusive railroad practices began to appear in the daily newspapers and in such popular magazines as
The hammering impact of
Roosevelt's presidency
Roosevelt, a progressive Republican, called for a "
Following Roosevelt's landslide victory in the
President Taft
Roosevelt's popularity was at its peak as the campaign of 1908 neared, but he was unwilling to break the tradition by which no president had held office for more than two terms. Instead, he supported
Taft continued the prosecution of trusts, further strengthened the Interstate Commerce Commission, established a
Yet balanced against these achievements was Taft's support for the Payne–Aldrich Tariff Act with protective schedules that outraged progressive opinion.[153] Protection was the ideological cement holding the Republican coalition together. High tariffs were used by Republicans to promise higher sales to business, higher wages to industrial workers, and higher demand for farm products. Progressive insurgents said it promoted monopoly. Democrats said it was a tax on the little man. It had greatest support in the Northeast, and greatest opposition in the South and West. The Midwest was the battle ground.[154] Insurgents also complained about his opposition to statehood for Arizona because of its progressive constitution; his opposition to environmental activists; and his growing reliance on the conservative wing of his party. His patron Roosevelt became his enemy by 1910. The Republican Party was divided, and an overwhelming vote swept the Democrats back into control of Congress in the 1910 United States elections.[155]
President Wilson
Two years later,
Wilson, in a spirited campaign, defeated both rivals. Under his leadership, the new Congress enacted one of the most notable legislative programs in American history. Its first task was tariff revision. "The tariff duties must be altered," Wilson said. "We must abolish everything that bears any semblance of privilege." The
The second item on the Democratic program was a reorganization of the banking and currency system. "Control," said Wilson, "must be public, not private, must be vested in the government itself, so that the banks may be the instruments, not the masters, of business and of individual enterprise and initiative."
Passage of the
To resolve the long-standing dispute over trusts, the Wilson Administration dropped the "trust-busting" legal strategies of Roosevelt and Taft and relied on the new
The Adamson Act of 1916 established an eight-hour day for railroad labor and solidified the ties between the labor unions and the Democratic Party.[159] The record of achievement won Wilson a firm place in American history as one of the nation's foremost liberal reformers. Wilson's domestic reputation would soon be overshadowed by his record as a wartime president who led his country to victory but could not hold the support of his people for the peace that followed.
See also
- Thomas Alva Edison
- Turn of the century
- History of the United States (1918–1945)
- Timeline of United States history (1860–1899)
- Timeline of United States history (1900–1929)
- Timeline of the American Old West
- Presidency of Abraham Lincoln
- Presidency of Andrew Johnson
- Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant
- Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes
- Presidency of James A. Garfield
- Presidency of Chester A. Arthur
- Presidency of Grover Cleveland
- Presidency of Benjamin Harrison
- Presidency of William McKinley
- Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt
- Presidency of William Howard Taft
- Presidency of Woodrow Wilson
Notes
- ^ U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States (1976) series D726 and D736 pp. 164–165
- ^ a b U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States (1976) series C89
- ^ "The First Vote" by William Waud, Harpers Weekly Nov. 16, 1867 Archived 2014-02-02 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ William C. Harris, With Charity for All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union (1997)
- ISBN 978-0313258626.
- ^ Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction (1990) pp. 217–37
- JSTOR 2936329.
- ^ C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1954) pp. 67–111
- ^ C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877–1913 (1951) pp. 205–34
- ^ Vernon Burton, "Civil War and Reconstruction," in William L. Barney, ed., A Companion to 19th-century America (2006), pp. 54–56.
- ^ Wilson Fallin Jr., Uplifting the People: Three Centuries of Black Baptists in Alabama (2007) pp. 52–53
- ISBN 978-0199759255. Eric Foner argued in 2015, "Today, scholars believe that if the era was 'tragic,' it was not because Reconstruction was attempted but because it failed." Eric Foner, "Why Reconstruction Matters," New York Times March 28, 2015 Archived August 2, 2019, at the Wayback Machine
- ISBN 978-1469617572.
- ^ Stephen E. Ambrose, Nothing Like It In The World; The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863–1869 (2000)
- ^ Ray Allen Billington and Martin Ridge, Westward Expansion (5th ed. 1982) ch 32
- ^ Robert M. Utley, and Wilcomb E. Washburn, Indian Wars (1987) pp. 220–79.
- ^ Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (1986) pp. 181–241, 311–25
- ^ Fred A. Shannon, The Farmer's Last Frontier: Agriculture, 1860–1897 (1945) complete text online
- ^ Historical Statistics (1975) p. 437 series K1–K16
- ^ William Clark, Farms and Farmers: The Story of American Agriculture (1970) p. 205
- ^ Shannon, Farmer's Last Frontier: Agriculture, 1860–1897 (1945), ch 1
- ^ Elwyn B. Robinson, History of North Dakota (1982) p. 203
- ^ D. Sven Nordin, Rich Harvest: A History of the Grange, 1867–1900 (1974)
- ^ Deborah Fink, Agrarian Women: Wives and Mothers in Rural Nebraska, 1880–1940 (1992)
- ^ Chad Montrie, "'Men Alone Cannot Settle a Country:' Domesticating Nature in the Kansas-Nebraska Grasslands," Great Plains Quarterly, (2005) 25#4 pp. 245–258
- ^ Karl Ronning, "Quilting in Webster County, Nebraska, 1880–1920," Uncoverings, (1992) Vol. 13, pp. 169–191
- ^ Nathan B. Sanderson, "More Than a Potluck," Nebraska History, (2008) 89#3 pp. 120–131
- ^ Katherine Harris, Long Vistas: Women and Families on Colorado Homesteads (1993)
- ^ Elliott West, Growing Up with the Country: Childhood on the Far Western Frontier (1989)
- ^ Elizabeth Hampsten, Settlers' Children: Growing Up on the Great Plains (1991)
- ^ Lillian Schlissel, Byrd Gibbens and Elizabeth Hampsten, Far from Home: Families of the Westward Journey (2002)
- ^ Edward C. Kirkland, Industry Comes of Age, Business, Labor, and Public Policy 1860–1897 (1961)
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- ^ Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (1972) pp. 731–872
- ^ Mark A. Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (1992) pp. 286–310
- ^ Robert William Fogel, The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism (2000)
- ^ Charles R. Morris, American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church (1998) pp. 141–195
- ^ Hasia R. Diner, The Jews of the United States, 1654–2000 (2004) pp. 71–111
- ^ Rayford Logan, The Betrayal of the Negro from Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson, (Da Capo Press, 1997)
- ^ Melvyn Stokes, D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation: A History of "The Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time (Oxford University Press, 2007).
- ^ John D. Hicks, Populist Revolt: A History of the Farmers' Alliance and the People's Party(1931)
- ^ Rebecca J. Mead, How the Vote Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868–1914 (2006)
- ^ Glenda Riley, Inventing the American Woman: An Inclusive History (2001)
- ^ Aileen S. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Women's Suffrage Movement: 1890–1920 (1967)
- ^ Katherine H. Adams and Michael L. Keene, Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign (2007)
- ^ Elizabeth Frost-Knappman and Kathryn Cullen-Dupont, Women's Suffrage in America (2004)
- ISBN 0-8207-0202-1.
- S2CID 145544412.
- ^ May, Ernest (1961). Imperial Democracy: The Emergence of America as a Great Power.
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- ISBN 0-394-54975-9.
- The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914(1978)
- ^ Frederick W. Marks III, Velvet on Iron: The Diplomacy of Theodore Roosevelt (1982)
- ^ Mary A. Renda, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915–1940 (2000)
- ^ Eileen Welsome, The General and the Jaguar: Pershing's Hunt for Pancho Villa: A True Story of Revolution and Revenge (2007)
- ISBN 0-582-35671-7.
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- ^ The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Jan., 1893), Social and Economic Legislation of the States in 1892 by William B. Shaw, p. 187
- ^ The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Jan., 1895), Social and Economic Legislation of the States in 1894 by William B. Shaw p. 199
- ^ "November 1896 : Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor, No. 7, Volume I". Archived from the original on 2022-04-29. Retrieved 2022-04-29.
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- ^ Labor Firsts in America By United States. Department of Labor, 1977, p. 22
- ^ Wage-payment Legislation in the United States by Robert Gildersleeve Paterson
- ^ Labor Legislation of 1918
- ^ Labor Legislation of 1919
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- ^ "Labor Legislation of 1916". Archived from the original on 2022-04-24. Retrieved 2022-04-24.
- ^ Labor Legislation of 1912
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- ^ The Quarterly Journal of Economics , Vol. 8, No. 2 (Jan., 1894), Social and Economic Legislation of the States in 1893 by William B. Shaw, pp. 232–233
- ^ Californai Progressive Campaign for 1914 Three Years of Progressive Administration in California Under Governor Hiram W. Johnson p. 80
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- ^ The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Jan., 1896), Social and Economic Legislation of the States in 1895 by William B. Shaw, P. 228
- ^ Revolt of the Tar Heels The North Carolina Populist Movement, 1890-1901 By James M. Beeby, 2008, p. 107
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- ^ H.W. Brands, Theodore Roosevelt (2001)
- ^ Douglas Brinkley, The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (2009) ch 15
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- ^ Paolo Coletta, The Presidency of William Howard Taft (1990).
- ^ Stanley D. Solvick, "William Howard Taft and the Payne-Aldrich Tariff." Mississippi Valley Historical Review (1963) pp. 424–42 in JSTOR Archived 2021-03-07 at the Wayback Machine.
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- ^ John Milton Cooper, Woodrow Wilson: A Biography (2009)
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Further reading
- Carnes, Mark C., and John A. Garraty, The American Nation: A History of the United States (14th ed. 2011); university and AP textbook
- Hamby, Alonzo L. (2010). Outline of U.S. History. U.S. Department of State. Archived from the original on 2013-04-08.
- Divine, Robert A. et al. America Past and Present (8th ed. 2011), university textbook
- Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty! An American History (3rd ed. 2011), university textbook
- Kennedy, David M.; Cohen, Lizabeth (2012). The American Pageant: A History of the Republic (15th ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin., university textbook
- Lynch, Timothy J., ed. (2013). The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Military and Diplomatic History, 2 vol. Oup USA. ISBN 978-0199759255.
- Paxson, Frederic L. Recent History Of The United States 1865–1929 (1929) online old survey by scholar
- Tindall, George B., and David E. Shi. America: A Narrative History (8th ed. 2009), university textbook
- The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896(Oxford History of the United States, 2017).
Reconstruction: 1863–1877
- See Reconstruction Bibliographyfor much longer guide.
- Fleming, Walter Lynwood, The Sequel of Appomattox, A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States(1918) short survey from Dunning School
- ISBN 0-8071-2234-3, short well-illustrated survey
- Foner, Eric. A Short History of Reconstruction (1990) excerpt and text search
- Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (1988), highly detailed history of Reconstruction emphasizing Black and abolitionist perspective
- Hamilton, Peter Joseph. The Reconstruction Period (1906), history of era using Dunning School 570 pp; chapter on each state
- Nevins, Allan. The Emergence of Modern America 1865–1878 (1927)
- Stalcup, Brenda. ed. Reconstruction: Opposing Viewpoints (1995). Text uses primary documents to present opposing viewpoints.
- Summers, Mark Wahlgren. The Ordeal of the Reunion: A New History of Reconstruction (2014) excerpt
Gilded Age: 1877–1896
- Buenker, John D. and Joseph Buenker, eds. Encyclopedia of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. (3 vol 2005). ISBN 0-7656-8051-3; 900 essays by 200 scholars
- Cherny, Robert W. American Politics in the Gilded Age, 1868–1900 (1997)
- Dewey, Davis R. National Problems: 1880–1897 (1907) online
- Edwards, Rebecca. New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age, 1865–1905 (2005); 304pp excerpt and text search
- Faulkner, Harold U.; Politics, Reform, and Expansion, 1890–1900 (1959), scholarly survey, strong on economic and political history online
- Fine, Sidney. Laissez Faire and the General-Welfare State: A Study of Conflict in American Thought, 1865–1901. University of Michigan Press, 1956.
- Ford, Henry Jones. The Cleveland Era: A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics (1921), short overview online
- Garraty, John A. The New Commonwealth, 1877–1890, 1968 scholarly survey, strong on economic and political history
- Hoffmann, Charles. "The depression of the nineties." Journal of Economic History 16#2 (1956): 137–164. in JSTOR
- Hoffmann, Charles. Depression of the nineties; an economic history (1970)
- Jensen, Richard. "Democracy, Republicanism and Efficiency: The Values of American Politics, 1885–1930," in Byron Shafer and Anthony Badger, eds, Contesting Democracy: Substance and Structure in American Political History, 1775–2000 (U of Kansas Press, 2001) pp. 149–180; online version
- Kirkland, Edward C. Industry Comes of Age, Business, Labor, and Public Policy 1860–1897 (1961), standard survey
- Kleppner; Paul. The Third Electoral System 1853–1892: Parties, Voters, and Political Cultures U of North Carolina Press, (1979) online
- Morgan, H. Wayne ed. The Gilded Age: A Reappraisal Syracuse University Press 1970. interpretive essays
- Morgan, H. Wayne, From Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877–1896 (1969)
- Nevins, Allan. John D. Rockefeller: The Heroic Age of American Enterprise (1940); 710pp; favorable scholarly biography; online
- Nevins, Allan. The Emergence of Modern America, 1865–1878 (1933) ISBN 0-403-01127-2, social history
- Oberholtzer, Ellis Paxson. A History of the United States since the Civil War. Volume V, 1888–1901 (Macmillan, 1937). 791pp; comprehensive old-fashioned political history
- Rhodes, James Ford. History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850: 1877–1896 (1919) online complete; old, factual and heavily political, by winner of Pulitzer Prize
- Shannon, Fred A. The farmer's last frontier: agriculture, 1860–1897 (1945) complete text online
- Smythe, Ted Curtis; The Gilded Age Press, 1865–1900 Praeger. 2003.
Progressive Era: 1896–1917
- Buenker, John D. and Joseph Buenker, eds. Encyclopedia of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. (3 vol 2005) ISBN 0-7656-8051-3; 900 essays by 200 scholars
- Buenker, John D., John C. Burnham, and Robert M. Crunden. Progressivism (1986)
- Buenker, John D. Dictionary of the Progressive Era (1980)
- Cooper, John Milton. Woodrow Wilson: A Biography (2009)
- Diner, Steven J. A Very Different Age: Americans of the Progressive Era (1998)
- Dirck, Brian R. (2007), The executive branch of federal government: people, process, and politics, 107, ABC-CLIO, )
- Gould, Lewis L. America in the Progressive Era, 1890–1914 (2000)
- Gould, Lewis L. ed., The Progressive Era (1974), essays by scholars
- Hays, Samuel P. The Response to Industrialism, 1885–1914 (1957),
- Hofstadter, Richard The Age of Reform (1954), Pulitzer Prize
- Jensen, Richard. "Democracy, Republicanism and Efficiency: The Values of American Politics, 1885–1930," in Byron Shafer and Anthony Badger, eds, Contesting Democracy: Substance and Structure in American Political History, 1775–2000 (U of Kansas Press, 2001) pp 149–180; online version
- Kagan Robert. The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of World Order, 1900–1941 (Knopf, 2023) excerpt
- Kennedy, David M. ed., Progressivism: The Critical Issues (1971), readings
- Mann, Arthur. ed., The Progressive Era (1975), readings
- McGerr, Michael. A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920 (2003)
- Mowry, George. The Era of Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of Modern America, 1900–1912. survey by leading scholar
- Pease, Otis, ed. The Progressive Years: The Spirit and Achievement of American Reform (1962), primary documents
- Thelen, David P. "Social Tensions and the Origins of Progressivism," Journal of American History 56 (1969), 323–341 in JSTOR
- Walworth, Arthur (1958). Woodrow Wilson, Volume I, Volume II. Longmans, Green.; 904pp; full scale scholarly biography; winner of Pulitzer Prize; online free; 2nd ed. 1965
- Wiebe, Robert. The Search For Order, 1877–1920(1967), influential interpretation
Primary sources
- Link, William A., and Susannah J. Link, eds. The Gilded Age and Progressive Era: A Documentary Reader (2012) excerpt and text search