Lecture 2 history of the united states Part 2. From the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century
Part 2 covers the period after gaining independence from Great Britain in 1783 to WWI at the onset of the 20th centuries. It describes:
the U.S. territorial acquisitions and westward expansion
Native Americans’ relocation to the West
slavery and Civil War
reconstruction
industrialization and immigration in the 19th century
the "progressive" era
the rise of U.S. imperialism and the U.S. in the early 1900’s
Key Words and Proper Names: annihilation, assassinate, barren, breadbasket, confine to reservations, defeat, gold rush, foster, grazing land, impose taxes and literacy requirements, influx, legacy, mounted warfare, overseas, progressivism, secede, sharecropping, sod, unprecedented and diverse stream of immigrants; voter rights, the referendum, and the recall; trustbuster, westward expansion;
Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Mackenzie and George Vancouver, Fort McHenry; the Apache, Arapaho, Cherokee, Cheyenne, Comanche, Hopis, Kiowa, Navajo, Nez Perce, Pueblo, Sioux, Geronimo, Red Cloud and Crazy Horse; George Custer, the Little Bighorn River battle, the Louisiana Purchase, Confederacy, the Confederate States of America, the Emancipation Proclamation, Generals Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, William T. Sherman, Gettysburg, Prohibition, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, the Star-Spangled Banner, the Trail of Tears.
U.S. territorial acquisitions and westward expansion: After the revolution the independent American republic was now expanding westwards without any opposition from either France or Britain. The U.S. westward expansion is often called frontier expansion or movement. Lots of pioneers were drawn westward by economic opportunity and a chance to escape or purify an earlier way of life.
Again the U.S. found itself in bloody conflict with rivals, such as Mexico and Native American tribes. The mix of people and exchange of cultures with an even richer mix of influences continued.
In 1803, Jefferson, the third U.S. president, purchased the vast Louisiana Territory from France almost doubling the size of the country. The Louisiana Purchase added more than million square kilometers of territory and extended the country's borders to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado (Fig.4).
Fig. 6. U.S. territorial acquisitions
The war of 1812 was the last obstacle on the way to conquering the West’s riches. In 1803, war broke out again between France and Great Britain, and each of them wanted to stop American ships from trading with its enemy. The U.S. declared war on Great Britain in the spring of 1812. The war dragged on for two years. Neither side was able to win. In January 1815, at New Orleans, came the greatest triumph for American forces.
Interesting to know: This victory in the war is connected in the minds of Americans with one more significant event - the writing of “The Star - Spangled Banner.” This poem conveyed the patriotic feeling of its author, an American lawyer named Francis Scott Key, who watched the attack from a ship in the harbor. When he saw the American flag still flying over Fort McHenry in Baltimore after the long night of bombardment, the following lines came to him:
О say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight, О 'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming! And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; О say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave О 'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
The poem was printed in newspapers all over the country. It became very popular and was soon set to music. Years later, in 1931, Congress passed a law to make the song the American national anthem.
The Star-Spangled Banner (30 feet hoist by 42 feet fly) was sewn by Mary Pickersgill, an experienced Baltimore City flag maker. There were 15 stars and stripes on the flag (to represent the 13 original colonies and Vermont and Kentucky - the next two states to enter the union). This flag, came to be known as the Star Spangled Banner Flag or National glory, it is today on display among the most treasured artifacts in the collections of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
The war increased Americans’ feeling of patriotism; now they had pride in their country, their army and navy. No wonder, for many years, the British navy had ruled the seas, and in 1815, the British lost battles to the American ships. The war also strengthened the U.S. nationalism.
A series of U.S. military invasions into Florida led Spain to cede it. In 1819, Spain gave up all of Florida and other Gulf Coast territories to the U.S.
Now, nobody and nothing could stop the U.S. westward expansion. The frontier moved westward by the forces other than the search for farmland. These forces were as follows:
the West was a vast storehouse of resources - gold, silver, coal, iron, copper, timber, rich soil, and immense grazing lands;
at the same time the rise of industry created an almost limitless market for many of the West’s riches.
Many resources of the West were discovered and developed by brave pioneers from the East like Lewes and Clark, Mackenzie and Vancouver as well as by thousands of unknown trappers, settlers, farmers; many local Indian tribes willingly or unwillingly provided them with important geographic facts and data. This geographic knowledge opened the way for ordinary citizens to move across the country to the Far West.
In January 1848, traces of gold were found in the American River, California. Their discovery sparked the gold rush of 1849. Later on, there were gold rushes in Colorado in 1859, Idaho and Montana in the 1860’s, and Arizona and Nevada in the 1870’s. In 1859, silver was discovered in far western Nevada, then in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, and Arizona. The West proved to be one of the world’s greatest reservoirs of valuable metals. As gold, silver, copper, and lead mines were established, towns sprung up around them. Many of these towns were later abandoned when the mines around them were closed.
The U.S. grew rapidly. The order in which states were admitted to the Union reflects the uneven frontier’s movement across the American West. By 1820, ten new states had been formed. By the 1840’s, the line of settlement had moved only a few hundred miles past the Mississippi River. By 1850, Arkansas, Michigan, Texas, Iowa, and Wisconsin had been admitted as states. Then the frontier jumped across the middle of the country to Oregon and California on the Pacific Coast. California became the first American state on the Pacific in 1850. The frontier then moved both westward and eastward, as white settlers gradually pushed into the huge interior area of the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the Great Basin, and the far South-west. Oregon, Minnesota, Kansas, Nevada, Nebraska, and Colorado were admitted to the Union between 1850 and 1876, but parts of the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains were settled slowly. Alaska was bought from Russia in 1867. Then in 1889 and 1890, six states were added: North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming. Hawaii was annexed in 1898. Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines were annexed from Spain after the Spanish-American War in 1898 for $20 ml. Utah, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona had joined the Union by 1912.
Between 1841 and the late 1860’s, more than a third of a million persons moved from the Missouri valley to the Pacific Coast. The California Gold Rush of 1848–49 further hastened western migration.
Most followed overland trails, including the Oregon and California trails.
Railroads: As the size of the population on the Pacific Coast exploded, there was a need to connect these distant communities with the eastern states by a railroad, linking the two parts of the continent. With the help of thousands of Irish immigrant laborers, the Union Pacific Railroad was built westward from Omaha, Nebraska. At the same time, the Central Pacific was built eastward from northern California by the efforts of Chinese workers imported for the job.
By the 1890’s, a web of steel rails covered much of the West. The role of the railroad linking the two parts of the continent for the U.S. was enormous. Railroads encouraged westward expansion more than any other single development.
They also helped industry develop in the West. They carried equipment and materials. Western companies used railroads to export the rich resources they found in the West. Railroads made it easier to transport troops and war materials, and thereby ended Native American independence. Railroads provided the means of linking supply with demand - the Texas cattle with the Northern cities. They played a crucial role in the development of the Great Plains states.
Westward Migration: In 1862, the U.S. Congress passed the Homestead Act, which provided land, originally 160 acres, at no cost if a settler agreed to cultivate it for at least five years. Many settlers moved west to establish farms. And agricultural production in the U.S. doubled between 1870 and 1900.
Interesting to know: The first homesteaders often quarreled with cattlemen who used to drive Texan half-wild cattle north through good grazing land of the Plains to the railroads when their crops were eaten and tramped upon by the cattle. In some places people were killed in “range wars”. It took years for the 2 groups to learn to live peacefully side by side.
New methods of farming on the Plains were introduced. To produce crops with less rainfall, farmers on the Great Plains used methods of dry farming. They learned to build sod houses cheaply out of bricks made of soil and held together by grassroots. By the 1870’s, the wheat grown by the pioneer farmers was turning the Great Plains into the nation’s “breadbasket.”
Before the end of the 19th century, wheat grown on the Great Plains was feeding millions of people not only in the U.S. but thousands of miles away in Europe, and more than 110 mln pounds of American beef were shipped across the Atlantic Ocean. The grass and wheat of the Great Plains earned the U.S. more money than the gold mines of California and Dakota.
Native Americans: New railroads made the relocation for settlers easier and increased conflicts with Native Americans. Dozens of Native American tribes lived in the West, supporting themselves with many different economies. Most tribes in the Southwest were hunters and farmers. In the Pacific Northwest, tribes were traders and fishermen. The tribes on the Great Plains were hunters and gatherers who depended on vast herds of bison. Within half a century, up to 40 million American bison, or buffalos, were slaughtered for skins and meat and to ease the railroads' spread. The loss of the bison, a primary resource for the Plains Indians, was an existential blow to many native cultures.
What happened to Native Americans in those years can be called as a massive murder or annihilation. Westward expansion depleted resources and damaged the environment, thus destroying the Native Americans’ ability to support themselves. In addition, the pioneers carried diseases that killed thousands of Native Americans.
In fact, the old conflict between Indians and settlers had started in the east of the U.S.A. with the removal of Cherokee Indians to Oklahoma and repeated farther west. In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, according to which almost all eastern tribes were forced to move west and leave their lands to settlers. In 1834, a special Indian territory was established in what is now Oklahoma.
The Trail of Tears is a name given to the forced relocation of Native American nations from southeastern parts of the U.S. The removal included many members of the following tribes, who did not wish to assimilate: Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations. Native Americans suffered from exposure to cold, disease and starvation on the route to their destinations. Many died, including 6,000 of 16,542 relocated Cherokee, one of the strongest and most populous eastern tribes.
But it was not the end of trouble for America’s Indian people. The aim of white settlers, called by Indian “pale-faced”, was to destroy the Native American culture of independence and to strip all native peoples of their land.
Some Native Americans resisted the influx of white settlers militarily. Many tribes fought the whites at one time or another. The most bloody militant conflicts took place on the Great Plains, where Sioux, Cheyenne, Comanche, Kiowa, and others fought the U.S. Army in several campaigns between 1855 and 1877.
The Sioux of the Northern Plains led by such resolute, militant leaders as Red Cloud and Crazy Horse were skilled at high-speed mounted warfare.
Conflicts with the Plains Indians continued through the Civil War. In 1876, the last serious Sioux war erupted, when the Dakota gold rush penetrated the Black Hills.
Native Americans won some dramatic victories, including the defeat of George Custer on Montana’s Little Bighorn River in 1876, but soon they were ultimately defeated and confined to reservations.
Southwestern Apache peoples, with their most famous leader, Geronimo, resisted the occupation of their country till 1886.
However, military conflict was not the force that destroyed the Native American culture of independence; it was the volume of white settlers taking over Native American land and the ways in which these settlers transformed the West.
Under scores of treaties Native Americans were assigned to reservations and given government support that was rarely adequate. Government policy tried to assimilate the tribes into the white society by suppressing native culture and converting Native Americans to white customs.
Slavery and Civil War: The ringing words of the Declaration of Independence, "all men are created equal," were also meaningless for 4 million American black slaves (the 1860 Census).
But attitudes toward slavery were shifting in the first half of the 19th century. The Northern states abolished slavery between 1780 and 1804, leaving the slave states of the South as defenders of the “peculiar institution.” The Second Great Awakening, beginning about 1800, favored abolitionism.
On the eve of the Civil War, the U.S. was a nation divided into 4 quite distinct regions: the Northeast, with a growing industrial and commercial economy and an increasing density of population; the Northwest, now known as the Midwest, a rapidly expanding region of free farmers where slavery had been forever prohibited; the Upper South, with a settled plantation system based on slavers’ labor; and the Southwest, a booming new frontier-like region with expanding cotton economy.
So, in the mid-19th century, the U.S. had two fundamentally different labor systems based on wage labor in the North and on slavery in the South. Tensions between slave and free states mounted with arguments over the spread of slavery into new states of the Southwest.
After Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, 11 southern states left the Union between 1860 and 1861 and proclaimed themselves an independent nation establishing a rebel government, the Confederate States of America on February 9, 1861. They were South Carolina and North Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee.
In fact, Lincoln was moderate in his opposition to slavery. He opposed the expansion of slavery into the new territories of the Southwest; but he also said the federal government did not have the power to abolish slavery in the states in which it already existed. However, the southern states did not trust him; they knew that many other Republicans were intent on the complete abolition of slavery. Lincoln encouraged abolitionists with his famous 1858 "House divided" speech, though that speech was about an eventual end of slavery achieved gradually and voluntarily with compensation to slave-owners and resettlement of former slaves. Abraham Lincoln hoped the South would rejoin the union without any bloodshed.
But on April 12, 1861, Confederate soldiers fired at Union troops in Fort Sumter in South Carolina. That was the beginning of the Civil War.
The American Civil War was fought in the United States from 1861 until 1865. For both North and South, the Civil War was long and hard. More than half a million soldiers lost their lives. Many died in battle, many died of sickness in the army camps. The North set up a blockade to prevent the South from getting supplies from foreign ships.
On January 1, 1863, President Lincoln signed The Emancipation Proclamation which declared that all slaves in states fighting against the Union were free. As result, about 180,000 blacks joined the Union army.
The Confederate Army did well in the early part of the war, and some of its commanders especially General Robert E. Lee, were brilliant tacticians. But the Union had superior manpower and resources to draw upon.
In the summer of 1863, General Lee marched his troops north into Pennsylvania. He met the Union army at Gettysburg, and the largest battle ever fought on the American soil occurred. After three days of desperate fighting, the Confederate army was forced to retreat, leaving 23,049 Union soldiers and 28,063 Confederate soldiers KIA.
A few months after the battle of Gettysburg, President Lincoln came to the battlefield. The speech he made is known as the Gettysburg Address. In the most famous part of the speech, Lincoln said, “Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Two years later, on April 9, 1865, after a long campaign involving forces commanded by Lee and Grant, the Confederate army surrendered to General Grant in Virginia after leaving roughly 650,000 dead. The war was over.
Five days later Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by an actor named John Wilkes Booth when he went to see a play at the Ford Theater in Washington. The assassin found his way to the President’s seat, shot Lincoln and escaped. Lincoln was carried to a house across the street. He died the next morning. Booth was killed by soldiers a few days later. The nation had gained реaсе but had lost its Great President.
The Civil War was the most traumatic episode in American history. But it resolved two matters that hadn’t been decided since 1776:
it put an end to slavery, and
it decided that the country was not a collection of semi-independent states but an indivisible whole.
The years after the American Civil War are called Reconstruction. It was the period when the southern states of the defeated Confederacy were reintegrated into the Union and the attempt was made to decide the fate of roughly 4 million former African American slaves, to make them citizens, and give them voting rights.
The Emancipation Proclamation made a start toward freeing the slaves. Then, in 1865, Congress passed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. This law abolished slavery everywhere in the U.S.A. The 14th Amendment proclaimed that all Americans had equal rights as citizens. The 15th Amendment said that no one could be kept from voting because of race.
These constitutional amendments, that laid the foundation for the most radical phase of Reconstruction, were adopted between 1866 and 1871. Republican legislatures, coalitions of whites and blacks, established the first public school systems in the South.
Until 1877, parts of the South were controlled by the U.S. army. Former four million black slaves called now freedmen could not make a living in the war-torn South. There was no real land reform, and most blacks still owned no property. The farmers had no money to pay black workers. And the ex-slaves had no money to buy farms. Finally, the system of sharecropping began to be used, when a farmer let a worker live on some of his land and farm it in return for a part of grown crops. But the system was not good enough. Very often, after sharing the crop, there was nothing, or almost nothing, left.
Many southern whites were angry about the new freedom for the black population. Beginning with 1874, there was a rise in white paramilitary organizations, such as the White League, Red Shirts, whose political aim was to drive out the Republicans. They also disrupted public life and terrorized blacks to bar them from the polls. They formed groups called Ku Klux Klan. They caught black people, dragged them through the streets, and hanged them. Lynching, or hangings committed by mobs, became common.
The end of Reconstruction in 1877 marked the end of the brief period of civil rights for African Americans. Later, racism was given more power; southern states passed laws to keep blacks from voting by imposing taxes and literacy requirements. By the early 20th century, every southern state had adopted laws enforcing segregation - blacks and whites were separated in schools, parks, trains, hospitals, and other public places.
But Reconstruction was not for nothing. It was the boldest attempt so far to achieve racial justice in the U.S. The 14th Amendment was especially important. It was the foundation of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s and made it possible for Martin Luther King to cry out eventually on behalf of all black Americans: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty we are free at last!”
Till the 1960’s, every southern state had laws enforcing segregation. The shock of the Afro-American social movements of the mid-20th century made the Federal government formally stop segregation in all public facilities; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 along with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, finally ended officially-sanctioned racial segregation in the U.S.
Reconstruction was also a time of bitterness and sorrow, but it was also a time of growth and change. Gradually, many of the large plantations were sold, and the land was divided to make smaller farms. Some northerners came to buy land or start businesses. Cities and industries were started - mills for making cloth; steel, and lumber were other important industries. All over the South, cities and towns were growing. One of the examples of such a development is Birmingham, Alabama, a new town, founded in 1871. Before the war, it was a cotton field. But two railroad lines crossed here, and iron and coal were discovered nearby. In a few years, it became one of the biggest iron and steel centers in the country.
In the North, urbanization and an unprecedented influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe hastened the country's industrialization. The wave of immigration, lasting until 1929, provided labor and transformed American culture. National infrastructure development spurred economic growth.
Industrialization and Immigration: Between 1865 and 1900, the U.S. became the world’s leading industrial nation. The availability of land, the diversity of climate and economy, the presence of navigable canals, rivers, and coastal waterways for the transportation needs of the emerging industries, the abundance of natural resources, fast transport, and the availability of capital powered the Second Industrial Revolution.
The Second Industrial Revolution resulted in the U.S. pioneering in organization, management and coordination of work; and industries were stimulated by technology and transportation.
The "Gilded Age" was a term that Mark Twain used to describe that period of the late 19th century when there was a dramatic expansion of American wealth and prosperity.
The petroleum industry prospered, and John D. Rockefeller became one of the richest men in America. Andrew Carnegie, who started out as a poor Scottish immigrant, built a vast empire of steel mills. Textile mills multiplied in the South, and meat-packing plants sprang up in Chicago, Illinois. An electrical industry flourished as Americans made use of a series of inventions: the telephone, the light bulb, the phonograph, the alternating-current motor and transformer, motion pictures.
Innovations also occurred in how work was organized: Henry Ford developed the assembly line and Fredrick Taylor formalized ideas of scientific management. Division of labor was a basic tenet of industrialization.
To finance large-scale enterprises, the corporation emerged as the dominant form of business organization. They combined into trusts. Trusts, in their turn, tried to establish monopoly control over some industries, notably oil. Business leaders backed government policies of laissez-faire. High tariffs sheltered U.S. factories and workers from foreign competition (which hardly existed after 1880).
By the century's end, American industrial production and per capita income exceeded those of all other world nations and ranked only behind Great Britain. Meanwhile, a steady stream of immigrants encouraged the availability of cheap labor, especially in the mining and manufacturing sectors. An unprecedented wave of immigration served both to provide the labor for American industry and create diverse communities in previously undeveloped areas.
Between 1880 and 1914, peak years of immigration, more than 22 million people migrated to the U.S.A. All in all, from 1840 to 1920, an enormous and diverse stream of immigrants came to the U.S., approximately 37 million in total. They came from a variety of locations and for a variety of reasons, ranging from economic opportunities and search for harvestable land to escaping from the Irish Potato Famine. Many fled from religious or political persecution.
The laissez-faire capitalism of the second half of the 19th century fostered huge concentrations of wealth and power, on the one hand, and severe exploitation of workers, on the other.
John D. Rockefeller used to say: “the growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest”. This "Social Darwinism" had many proponents who argued that any attempt to regulate business was tantamount to impeding the natural evolution of the species.
The growth of industry and cities created problems. Workers faced long hours, dangerous conditions, poor pay, and an uncertain future. Periodic economic crises swept the nation, further producing high levels of unemployment. The situation was worse for women and children, who made up a high percentage of the work force in some industries and often received but a fraction of the wages a man could earn.
At the same time, the unskilled labor pool was constantly growing, as immigrants were entering the country, eager for work.
Labor organization: Industrialization and abusive industrial practices led to the often violent rise of the labor movementin the U.S.
The first major effort to organize workers’ groups on a nationwide basis came with The Noble Order of the Knights of Labor in 1869. Originally a secret society, it was open to all workers, including African Americans, women and farmers.
Soon its place in the labor movement was taken by the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The AFL focused on skilled workers, thus the AFL helped turn the labor movement away from the socialist views expressed by earlier labor leaders representing the interests of different groups of workers.
Labor’s goals - and the unwillingness of capital to grant them - resulted in a number of most violent labor conflicts in the nation’s history. The first of them was the Great Railroad Strike in 1877, then a full scale working class uprising in several cities: Baltimore, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and San Francisco. The Haymarket Square incident took place nine years later (1886), in the battle, nine people were killed and some 60 injured. Next came the riots of 1892 at Carnegie's steel works in Homestead, PA. Two years later (1894), wage cuts at the Pullman Palace Car Company just outside Chicago, led to a strike, which, with the support of the American Railway Union, soon brought the nation’s railway industry to a halt.
But as soon as labor began to exert its immense power over capital, the federal government stepped in on the side of capital with all its force.
The 19th-century U.S. farmers also experienced recurring periods of hardship. Several basic factors were involved: soil exhaustion, the vagaries of nature, a decline in self-sufficiency, and the lack of legislative protection and aid. But most important was over-production.
The first political organizations defending the interests of farmers that came into existence in the late 19th century were: the Granger movement and Farmers’ Alliances. The Grangers tried to force railroad companies to reduce the high prices they charged to transport farmers’ crops. In response to heavy debts and decreasing farm prices, many wheat and cotton farmers joined the Populist Party.
The “progressive” era: As the U.S. entered the vulnerable 20th century; demand arose to remedy the problems created by industrialization and urbanization and, in the long run, to minimize violent labor conflicts and clashes. In the 1890’s, progressivism emerged as a political movement. From the 1890’s to the 1910’s, progressive efforts affected local, state, and national politics. National in scope, progressivism included both Democrats and Republicans. They also left a mark on journalism, academic life, cultural life, and social justice movements.
From the progressives’ viewpoint, economic privilege and corrupt politics threatened democracy. Never a cohesive movement, progressivism embraced many types of reforms. Progressives strove to curb corporate power, to end business monopolies, and to wipe out political corruption. They also wanted to democratize electoral procedures, protect working people, and bridge the gap between social classes. Progressives turned to government to achieve their goals.
Crusading journalists helped shape a climate favorable to reform, they revealed to middle class readers the evils of economic privilege, political corruption, and social injustice. Their articles appeared in McClure’s Magazine and other reform periodicals. I. Tarbell, e.g., exposed the activities of the Standard Oil Company. In The Shame of the Cities (1904), L. Steffens dissected corruption in city government. In Following the Color Line (1908), Ray S. Baker criticized race relations.
Novelists revealed corporate injustices too. Theodore Dreiser drew harsh portraits of a type of ruthless businessman in The Financier (1912) and The Titan (1914). In The Jungle (1906) Socialist Upton Sinclair horrified readers with descriptions of Chicago’s meatpacking plants, and his work led to support for remedial legislation. Leading intellectuals also shaped the progressive mentality. In The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), T. Veblen attacked the “conspicuous consumption” of the wealthy. Educator John Dewey emphasized a child-centered philosophy of pedagogy, also known as progressive education, which affected schoolrooms for three generations.
The social settlement movement, which originated in cities in the 1890’s, became a force for progressive reforms at the local level, such as, e.g., Hull House, the first settlement or community house, founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr in 1889. Hull House was a center for welfare work in Chicago. It championed the causes of labor reform, public education, and immigrants’ rights. Similar settlement houses offered social services to the urban poor, especially immigrants, provided nurseries, adult education classes, and recreational opportunities for children and adults. Settlements spread rapidly. There were 100 settlement houses in 1900, 200 in 1905, and 400 in 1910. Settlement leaders joined the battle against political machines and endorsed many other progressive reforms. In 1931, Jane Addams became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and is recognized as the founder of the social work profession in the United States.
At the state level, progressives campaigned for electoral reforms to allow the people to play a more direct role in the political process. Some Western states adopted practices that expanded voter rights. Progressives supported the 17th Amendment, ratified in 1913, which provides for election of U.S. senators directly by vote of the people, rather than indirectly by state legislatures. In the early 20th century, progressive reformers fought to reform working conditions. One of their battles was against child labor and against their long work hours.
Progressive reformers used the states as laboratories of reform. For instance, Wisconsin governor Robert La Follett supervised railroad practices and raised state taxes on corporations. Following his example, one state after another passed laws to regulate railroads and businesses.
Some progressive reformers initiated and persuaded the government to introduce Prohibition (the 18th Amendment), a law to prevent the manufacture, sale, or use of alcohol. The amendment was ratified in 1919 and remained law until 1933.
To regulate business, however, progressives had to get influence on the national level. Seeking antitrust laws to eliminate monopolies, they also supported lower tariffs, a graduated income tax, and a system to control currency. They found a spokesperson in President Theodore Roosevelt.
T. Roosevelt became President in 1901 and was one of the most popular Presidents in American history. People called him Teddy or TR. A popular toy, the Teddy Bear, was named after him.
One of his beliefs was that it was the duty of the President to improve the conditions of life for the people, to see that the ordinary man and woman got what he called - “a Square Deal (1904)” also called "New Nationalism." Roosevelt said "Somehow or other we shall have to work out methods of controlling the big corporations without paralyzing the energies of the business community...“
The Square Deal was part of the progressive movement responding to the detrimental effects of industrialization. It was formed on 3 basic ideas: conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, and consumer protection. Under President Roosevelt, the U.S. government took many of the giant companies to court.
Here is a list of some of the new laws initiated by President Roosevelt and passed by the national government in the early 1900’s: laws about ways of financing water supply to dry farmland, about government loans to help farmers, about making illegal selling dangerous foods and medicines, about making working conditions at factories and in mines safer, about setting up national forests and parks and conservation of natural resources, about starting an income tax, etc. Regulation, T. Roosevelt believed, was the only way to solve the problems caused by big business. He became known as a trustbuster. He tried to break up large trusts that reduced competition and controlled prices.
In fact, T. Roosevelt was a very controversial personality. Progressive at home, he was quite aggressive in international affairs. He made an addition (a corollary) to the original Monroe Doctrine stating that the U.S. would intervene in Latin America whenever it thought necessary.
Progressivism reached its peak during Woodrow Wilson’s first term as the president. Wilson carried out significant reforms to introduce laws governing tariffs, trusts, labor, agriculture, and banking. In 1913, Wilson signed the Underwood Tariff, which reduced taxes on imported goods. He introduced an income tax and supported the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which created a centralized banking system called the Federal Reserve Bank and its 12 subsidiaries to stabilize the existing private banks and serve as a source of credit for them, etc.
The rise of U.S. Imperialism: By the end of the 19th century, Americans had taken a greater interest in distant lands looking for new places as markets for their goods and new sources of raw materials. In fact, several motives were behind the U.S. expansion overseas. First, business leaders wanted overseas markets. Products basic to the American economy already depended heavily on foreign sales. Business leaders feared that if the U.S. failed to gain new markets abroad, other nations would claim them, and these markets would be lost to U.S. enterprise. Second, national prestige required the U.S. to join the great European nations and Japan as imperial powers. Third, American religious leaders supported efforts to spread Christianity to foreign peoples. Finally, the U.S. seemed to be falling behind in the race for empire; it had not acquired noncontiguous territory since Alaska was bought from Russia in 1867.
At the end of the 19th and the start of the 20th centuries, the U.S. began to acquire territories overseas. Once the U.S. acquired a territory, it often imposed its will on the people. Imperial designs sometimes evoked criticism. Some Americans opposed U.S. expansion and challenged the drive for an overseas empire. In those days the political cartoon portraying Uncle Sam, a symbol of America, as a school teacher lecturing the various people placed under his care was popular. The cartoon illustrated how many Americans thought the U. S. should treat Cuba following the Spanish-American War (1898). In fact, this cartoon hasn’t lost its novelty and relevance up to now.
The imperial acquisitions of the U.S.A. in those days can be summed up in the following lines. At the century’s end, the U.S. began to send American forces to Hawaii, Cuba, the Philippines, and East Asia. The quest for an overseas empire in the late 1890’s thus led to substantial American gains. The U.S. annexed Hawaii in 1898, conquered the Philippines and Guam from Spain in 1899, turned Cuba in effect into an American protectorate in 1901, and kept China opened to American traders and missionaries.
Fig. 7. Uncle Sam Scolds Errant Children
In those days the political cartoon portraying Uncle Sam, a symbol of America, as a school teacher lecturing the various people placed under his care was popular. The cartoon illustrated how many Americans thought the U. S. should treat Cuba following the Spanish-American War (1898). In fact, this cartoon hasn’t lost its novelty and relevance up to now.
Yet Americans were not good administrators. In 1902, American troops left Cuba, although the new republic was required to grant naval bases to the U.S. The Philippines got limited self-government in 1907 and complete independence in 1946. Puerto Rico became a self-governing commonwealth within the U.S., and Hawaii became a state in 1959 (as did Alaska).
Our brief description of American imperialism won’t be complete without mentioning the Monroe Doctrine and its provisions, which justified the U.S. imperialistic policy of turning almost all Latin America into its obedient vassal states.
The Monroe Doctrine: The Monroe Doctrine was announced by President Monroe in 1823 as a warning to Europe not to start any new colonies in Latin America. In it, he proclaimed the Americas should be free from future European colonization and free from European interference in sovereign countries' affairs. It further stated the U.S. intention to stay neutral in wars between European powers and their colonies, but to consider any new colonies or interference with independent countries in the Americas as hostile acts towards the U.S.
The Monroe Doctrine included two paragraphs that stated explicitly the basic tenets (goals) of the U.S. foreign policy. The first declared that the U. S. would oppose any further colonization by European powers in the western hemisphere. The second warned that the U.S. would “view any interposition in the affairs of western hemisphere nations for the purpose of oppressing them or controlling ... in any other manner their destiny ... as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States”.
It was T. Roosevelt who first manifested America’s naval power and American imperial interests by sending warships and marines to small countries in Latin America to protect American property and to keep European countries from interfering in Latin America.
Thus, in an effort to expand American power in Latin America and in the world, Roosevelt decided to build a canal through the Isthmus of Panama. But Panama belonged to Colombia, which turned down Roosevelt’s offer to buy it. In 1903, threatened by the help of American warships, Columbia had to accept Panama’s independence, and the new nation agreed to lease the Canal Zone to the U.S.
Later U.S. Presidents also used the Monroe Doctrine as a reason for sending troops into Latin American countries.