organizing its powers in such form, as to
them shall seem most likely to affect their
safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed,
will dictate that governments long
established should not be changed for
light and transient causes; and
accordingly all experience hath 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.”
US History
Assessment
U.S. Declaration of Independence
The leaders and citizens of the thirteen
colonies in North America had come to
view the legal, economic, and political
controls placed on them by British rule as
untenable and eventually determined to
declare their independence from Britain.
Violent rebellions and increasingly
punitive legislation were exchanged by
citizens and government from 1764–
1775, culminating in the Revolutionary
War (1775–1776). On July 4, 1776, the
Congress of the thirteen United States
adopted the Declaration of Independence.
Its first paragraph reads: “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 among
the powers of the earth, the separate and
equal station to which the laws of nature
and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent
respect to the opinions of mankind
requires that they should declare the
causes which impel them to the
separation.”
The first paragraph acknowledges
necessity to give reasons for separating
from Britain. The second asserts human
rights as truths, including to
change/overthrow governments
destroying, not securing them; and
acknowledges human preference for the
status quo over changing government
unless intolerable; continuing: “But when
a long train of abuses and usurpations,
pursuing invariably the same object
evinces a design to reduce them under
absolute despotism, it is their right, it is
their duty, to throw off such government,
and to provide new guards for their
future security. —Such has been the
patient sufferance of these colonies; and
such is now the necessity which
constrains them to alter their former
systems of government. The history of the
present King of Great Britain is a history
of repeated injuries and usurpations, all
having in direct object the establishment
of an absolute tyranny over these states.
To prove this, let facts be submitted to a
candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the
most wholesome and necessary for the
public good.”
Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration
of Independence. Its second paragraph
begins: “We hold these truths to be selfevident, 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 to 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
Historical eras
An historical era is marked by a fixed
point in time and/or specific event; or by
its salient characteristics, e.g. the
hedonism, exuberance, and wealth of the
Jazz Age in 1920s America.
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1877 - 1920
Some highlights of two U.S. historical eras
are: 1871–1914 included the Second
Industrial Revolution, with the Railroad
Era; inventors Edison, Ford, Tesla, and
Westinghouse; immigration; the Labor
Movement; the Sherman Antitrust Act;
closing of the U.S. frontier; the Wounded
Knee massacre; and the SpanishAmerican War (1898-1899). 1880–1920
was a second era of Political Reform (the
first followed the War of 1812), including
formation of Populist and Progressive
parties; Progressivism, including the
Temperance Movement, women’s
suffrage, the Social Gospel, and
muckraking novels; formation of farm
alliances and the Grange; economic
debates over gold versus silver; the first
Jim Crow laws; the Panic of 1893; the
Spanish-American War; President
McKinley’s assassination; presidencies of
Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard
Taft, and Woodrow Wilson; Federal
Reserve, Clayton Antitrust, and Federal
Trade Commission Acts’ passage; and
cultural figures Mark Twain and Harry
Houdini.
industry advanced. Efforts were made to
limit immigration. The Roaring 20s and
the Jazz Age were cultural phenomena.
Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart
achieved feats of aviation. Babe Ruth
became famous in baseball and Louis
Armstrong in jazz music. The stock
market crash of 1929 began the Great
Depression.
1933 - 1945
1933–1945 was characterized by the New
Deal and World War II. President Franklin
D. Roosevelt initiated his New Deal, a
sweeping series of reforms to help
America recover from the Great
Depression, addressing unemployment,
banking and business reforms, and new
farm policies. He also instituted the Social
Security Administration and collective
bargaining programs for labor unions.
Runner Jesse Owens swept the 1936
Berlin Olympics, an African-American at a
supposed showcase for Hitler’s “Aryan
racial superiority.” Albert Einstein
proposed his Theory of Relativity,
revolutionizing physics. Einstein and
other scientists like Enrico Fermi and
Nikola Tesla were pacifists protesting use
of their discoveries for war. Regardless,
the Manhattan Project began to develop
an atomic bomb. World War II began in
1939; the United States entered the war
in 1941 after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor
Naval Base in Hawaii. During this war,
Hitler’s Holocaust murdered six million
Jews, millions of Catholics, Poles, disabled,
and others. FDR’s 1945 death left
President Truman with the decision
whether to use the new atomic bomb.
1914 - 1933
An era of war, prosperity, and depression
existed in America from 1914–1933.
President Theodore Roosevelt practiced
activist “Big Stick” diplomacy, continued
by Taft. Panama became independent and
the Panama Canal was built. World War I
began in 1914; America entered the war
in 1917. The Treaty of Versailles was
signed to end the war. President Wilson
attended the Versailles conference and
proposed his 14 Points; however,
America rejected the treaty. Wilson also
led formation of the League of Nations,
but America refused membership. The
Negro Baseball Leagues were established.
The presidency of Warren G. Harding was
marked by corruption, including the
Teapot Dome and many other political
scandals. Calvin Coolidge and Herbert
Hoover followed as presidents. American
1945 - 1960
After World War II, the Cold War began.
Congress passed the Truman Doctrine
pledging to protect any country whose
freedom was threatened by Communism.
Soon thereafter the Marshall Plan was
passed to help postwar Europeans rebuilt
their countries. Congress established the
Atomic Energy Commission. The Berlin
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Blockade by Stalin’s Soviet Union isolated
West Berlin from receiving supplies;
British and American forces responded by
flying in supplies. This Berlin Airlift
showed Germans Western democracies’
support, changed British and American
views of Germany from enemy to ally
against the Soviets, and started the
Western Alliance. Jackie Robinson
became the first black major league
baseball player. The Korean War began in
1950. Alger Hiss’s perjury trials, and
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg’s espionage
convictions and executions divided
America within Cold War anticommunism sentiment. Republican
Dwight D. Eisenhower became president
in 1952. The Civil Rights movement
developed in response to segregation.
Foreign affairs included Russia’s Sputnik
launch, Castro’s Cuban victory, and the
Suez crisis. Democrat John F. Kennedy
became president in 1960.
and negotiated the SALT I Treaty with
USSR.
In the 1970s, U.S. troop withdrawals from
Vietnam began. Arab nations imposed an
oil embargo. The Supreme Court ended
state anti-abortion laws in Roe v. Wade
(1973). The Watergate Hotel burglary
was not immediately exposed, so Nixon
remained in office through the 1972
election. In 1974 this illegal activity came
to light, prompting a months-long series
of trials. Facing impeachment, Nixon
resigned. Vice President Gerald R. Ford
succeeded him. The same year, AfricanAmerican baseball player Hank Aaron
broke Babe Ruth’s career home run
record. Muhammad Ali also rose to boxing
fame. Technological developments in the
20th century’s final quarter have led
some historians to identify that period
with the “postmodern acceleration of the
Information Age.” In 1976, Democrat
Jimmy Carter was elected, defeating
incumbent Republican Ford. Carter’s
administration enacted the 1977 Panama
Canal Treaty and 1978 Camp David
Accords. A crisis in Iran involved
American citizens being held hostage
there. U.S.-China relations resumed after a
long hiatus.
1960 - 1980
The period from 1960–1980 is often
called the Vietnam Era for the longrunning war there. President Kennedy
encountered foreign crises including the
failed Bay of Pigs invasion; the Berlin
Wall’s construction; and the Cuban
Missile Crisis, wherein the Cold War’s
escalation into actual war was narrowly
averted. Kennedy was assassinated in
1963, succeeded by his vice president
Lyndon B. Johnson, who continued JFK’s
work to pass the Civil Rights and Voting
Rights Acts. Johnson initiated the War on
Poverty and the Great Society. After the
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, America built
up troops in Vietnam and an anti-war
movement developed. The Tet Offensive
was a turning point in the Vietnam War.
Civil rights issues escalated. Human rights
champions Reverend Martin Luther King
Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, former
attorney general in his late brother JFK’s
cabinet, were both assassinated during
1968. Richard M. Nixon became president
that year. He opened China to the West
1980 - 2000
In 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan was
elected, following the liberal Democratic
Carter administration with a conservative
anti-communist one. Reagan met with
Soviet leader Gorbachev in efforts to
resolve the Cold War. In 1983, America
was involved in two foreign crises: U.S.
troops invaded the island of Grenada to
resolve a conflict there; and America’s
Marine base in Beirut was bombed,
prompting Reagan to withdraw
peacekeeping troops from Lebanon. In
1985, members of Reagan’s
administration secretly and illegally sold
arms to Iranian enemies in efforts to free
American hostages in Lebanon, against
Democratic Congressional laws and
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against the official Reagan
administration’s policy. This was
uncovered, prompting a major scandal in
1986. Congressional controversy was
sparked by the proposal of the “Star
Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative.
America bombed Libya to retaliate for its
prior bombing of Berlin.
unions saw their influence on economic
and political policies continue to decline.
The American middle class was said to
“disappear” as the economy increasingly
polarized toward a very rich minority and
poor majority. Early in the century, a
housing boom involved many subprime
mortgages lent to consumers who
ultimately could not afford them. This
“bubble” burst around 2007, after the
economy had begun turning down
following the 9/11 attacks. U.S. and global
economies collapsed into a recession.
Democrat Barack Obama became the first
biracial president, elected in 2008.
George H. W. Bush had been elected in
1988 following Ronald Reagan. The Berlin
Wall, constructed in 1961, was
dismantled in 1989, reuniting East and
West Germany. The Soviet Union
collapsed, ending the Cold War in 1990
following Germany’s independence and
unification. After Iraq invaded Kuwait,
President Bush ordered troops there to
fight the Persian Gulf War, defeating Iraq.
Bush also deployed U.S. forces to Panama
to depose dictator Manuel Noriega.
Democrat Bill Clinton was elected
president in 1992. His administration
featured high employment, peacetime,
and prosperity, but was marred by
scandals, including one involving an affair
with intern Monica Lewinsky. The House
of Representatives voted for
impeachment and the Senate for acquittal,
so Clinton completed his second term.
The 2000 election between Al Gore and
George W. Bush was marked by voting
irregularities, especially in Florida, and
demands for recounts, culminating in the
intervention of the Supreme Court.
Populist Party
In the 1870s, postwar farm prices
dropped, breeding rural dissatisfaction.
The Greenback party, wanting to continue
the Civil War issue of non-backed paper
money in a depressed economy, incited
desire for currency expansion. A short
period of prosperity mitigated this.
However, the 1880s’ recession stimulated
formation of farmers’ alliances. Their
efforts toward unified political activism
were thwarted by Democratic loyalties
and fears of resurrecting BlackRepublican alliance through dividing
Democratic votes. A new political party
was enabled by (1) the Sherman Silver
Purchase Act, intended for expanding
currency but insufficient; and (2)
Congressional Republicans’ refusal to
vote for a bill to enforce Southern civil
rights, dividing Blacks and Republicans,
both in 1890. With neither party helping
farmers enough, an 1892 Populist
convention, including farmers’ alliance
delegates, nominated candidates with a
progressive platform.
2000 - 2010
The 21st century was heralded as the
New Millennium. On September 11, 2001,
members of the terrorist group Al Qaeda
aerially attacked the World Trade
Center’s twin towers in New York City, as
well as the Pentagon in Arlington,
Virginia. President George W. Bush
ordered the invasion of Afghanistan in
2001 and Iraq in 2003. In 2004, the
National Museum of the American Indian
opened in Washington, D.C. Corporations
began outsourcing foreign employees
more to magnify their profits. Labor
The failure of both Democratic and
Republican parties to provide economic
assistance to farmers suffering in a
depressed postwar economy allowed the
farmers’ alliances and others to form the
new Populist political party. Many of their
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progressive ideas were later implemented
through laws or amendments. In 1892’s
election, they won over a million popular
votes and elected several Populists to
Congress. They took control of the
Democratic party and nominated William
Jennings Bryan to the 1896 election,
focusing on free silver, but chose
Georgia’s Thomas Watson instead of the
Democratic vice presidential candidate.
They lacked electoral support other than
from farmers. The new party was divided
between those wanting an independent
identity and those wanting to continue
Democratic allegiance. By 1900’s election,
Bryan ran with the Democrats, but they
were still too associated with the silver
issue, which was over. Populists ran
Watson in 1904 and 1908, but farmers
were outnumbered by urban workers.
Low votes ended the Populist Party’s
short existence.
other transcontinental railroad
connections were built.
Social Gospel movement
In the second half of the 19th century, as
America shifted from agriculture to
industry, a number of creative,
enterprising, and unscrupulous business
leaders rose to power, such as John D.
Rockefeller. One reaction was a religious
movement known as the Social Gospel,
led by Protestant ministers. They believed
salvation depended on doing good works
to emulate Christ. They reacted against
the huge wealth amassed by business
tycoons, preaching this bounty should be
shared with the needy instead of hoarded.
Businessmen rationalized economic
inequities claiming Social Darwinism’s
“survival of the fittest,” which Social
Gospel proponents decried. Many social
reforms were instituted by the Social
Gospel movement, particularly their
establishment of settlement houses
offering education, free/low-cost
healthcare and housing, and many other
aids to the poor. The Social Gospel
strongly influenced the Progressive
movement. Congregational minister
Washington Gladden is credited with
founding the Social Gospel. Walter
Rauschenbusch ministered to German
immigrants in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen.
Both blamed poverty on capitalism’s
excessive competition, urging
congregations to fight immorality and
social injustice.
Industrialization
American society was agricultural but
became industrialized after the Civil War.
Factors influencing this change included
the availability of large quantities of
wood, oil, iron ore, and other raw
materials; the development of new
technologies by inventors; immigrants
coming to America, providing a
continuing supply of laborers; and the
rise of businessmen who were talented
and frequently unethical entrepreneurs.
Additionally, industrial progress on such
a large continent was enabled by
transcontinental railroads. Their idea had
been proposed in the 1830s, and again
during California’s 1849 Gold Rush.
Implementation was thwarted then by the
cost; fighting over route placement; and
technical problems. Wartime’s short rail
lines were consolidated by Cornelius
Vanderbilt, J. Edgar Thomson, and others.
In 1862, motivated by military and
political concerns, Congress passed the
Pacific Railroads Act, financing the Union
Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads. Soon
Economic, military, and diplomatic
power and expansion
By 1890, America’s economy led the
world, producing twice what Britain’s did.
However, Britain had a navy ten times
bigger and an army five times bigger than
America’s. The United States, located
between two big oceans and without
military threats, was not motivated to
expand overseas from the Civil War until
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the 1890s. One exception was Presidents
Lincoln’s and Johnson’s Secretary of State
William Seward, whose vision was for
America to expand to Alaska, Hawaii,
other Pacific islands, the Caribbean,
Mexico, Central America, Canada, Iceland,
and Greenland. He accomplished the
annexation of Alaska and the occupation
of the Pacific’s Midway Islands. The older
generation found imperialism violated
America’s republican principles, while the
younger generation thought it America’s
duty to lift up “backward” societies.
Americans generally were unmotivated to
add cultural, religious, and linguistic
diversity through expansionism.
However, rampant European colonialism
from 1870–1900 stimulated America to
compete.
annexation, America annexed Hawaii by
1900.
Spanish-American War
Controversy over America’s world role
was reinforced by Cuba’s fight for
independence from Spain in 1895.
President McKinley, the last president to
experience the Civil War, the Republican
Speaker of the House, and the American
public had mixed feelings; they
sympathized with Cuba, but did not want
to shed American blood without direct
threats to U.S. interests. Republican
Theodore Roosevelt, then assistant
secretary of the Navy, advocated war with
Spain. Newspaper publishers Joseph
Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst
printed stories that swayed public
opinion by reporting Spain’s abuse of
Cuban revolutionaries and the Spanish
ambassador’s insults to the president.
The sinking of a U.S. ship in Havana
harbor further incited anti-Spanish
sentiment. After visiting Cuba, Senator
Redfield Proctor declared his change from
an isolationist to an interventionist
position after seeing the entire country’s
struggle for freedom. McKinley acceded to
public pressure, and after debating for ten
days, Congress declared war.
America had little interest in expansion
from the Civil War until the mid-1890s.
From 1870–1900, European nations
colonized 10 million square miles of
African and Asian territory, one-fifth of
the world’s land. With Europeans ruling
roughly 150 million colonized people,
American manufacturers, trade unions,
bankers, and policymakers began to fear
they would lose raw materials and world
markets to European competition. Social
Darwinists believed they must compete to
survive. Half of America’s petroleum and
one-fourth of its farm products were sold
abroad by the 1890s, increasing its
dependence on foreign trade. Naval
strategist Alfred T. Mahan wrote,
“Whoever rules the waves rules the
world.” He argued that naval power
would determine national wealth and
power. America became more assertive,
engaging in territorial disputes with
Britain and Germany. Expansionism
motivated American involvement in
deposing the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893.
Emergent pineapple entrepreneur
Sanford Dole took over Hawaii in 1894.
After the Spanish-American War victory,
and to pre-empt possible Japanese
American leaders and citizens were
ambivalent, siding with Cuba in its bid for
independence, but reluctant about
another war after the recent Civil War.
Eventually, insults by the Spanish, reports
in American press, and a respected
senator’s position change after visiting
Cuba combined to turn popular sentiment
toward war. President McKinley gave in
to public pressures. Before declaring war,
Congress adopted the Teller Amendment,
indicating America was not pursuing
imperialist interests and would not annex
Cuba, shocking European governments.
Queen Victoria exhorted Britain and
Europe to unify against this behavior,
fearing it could set a precedent for
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America to free Ireland and other
colonies. After defeating Spain, America
established military government of Cuba
and issued the Platt Amendment allowing
it to intervene there to protect “life,
property, and individual liberties.”
Withdrawal of U.S. troops was conditional
upon Cuba’s accepting this amendment.
As a result of the Spanish-American War,
which lasted just 144 days, America also
took over the Philippines, Guam, and
Puerto Rico.
still the primary military tactic; as a
result, machine guns caused enormous
casualties, killing many soldiers as soon
as they emerged from trenches. British
military leaders were not as confident of
machine guns, issuing fewer to their
battalions; German confidence was aided
by greater efficiency, e.g. placing machine
guns ahead of their lines for battlefield
visibility, killing thousands of British
troops at the Battle of the Somme. Poison
gas was used on trenches, even outside of
attacks. It killed fewer total soldiers than
machine guns, but shelter was less
protective and deaths were slower.
Germans first used poisonous gases in
1915 and 1917. Armies promptly
manufactured gas masks, which became
fairly sophisticated to aid Western Front
troops near the war’s end. Early tanks
were unreliable, but they offset trench
warfare, introducing mobility to the
stalemated Western Front.
World War I
European territorial and other disputes
culminated when a Serbian zealot
assassinated Austria’s Archduke
Ferdinand in 1914. A German submarine
sank the British liner Lusitania, killing its
passengers including 128 Americans, in
1915, escalating tensions. AustriaHungary, Germany, Bulgaria, and the
Ottoman Empire were at war against
Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Belgium,
Serbia, Montenegro, and Japan’s Allied
powers by 1915. America had traded with
countries engaged in the war, but
remained neutral, feeling justified by
horror stories of trench warfare.
President Wilson’s neutrality policy
included “fairness,” i.e., U.S. banks could
lend to both sides in the war. Trade with
both sides was also allowed. However,
Britain’s naval blockade of Germany
prevented this; Germany’s reaction was to
engage in unrestricted submarine
warfare, including neutral ships, in 1917.
After re-election in 1916, Wilson tried
unsuccessfully to negotiate with both
sides for peace. Seeing no other choice in
view of Germany’s attacks, America
entered the war in 1917.
Airplanes
When machine guns came into use in the
war near the end of 1914, the war aircraft
was said to come into existence for all
practical purposes. Early in World War I,
armies used reconnaissance planes to
monitor the movements of enemy troops
and the presence, locations, directions,
and movements of enemy artillery fire, as
well as to confront opponents in closer
proximity. These aircrafts were not
armed. However, flight crews manning
them still engaged in battle with rifles,
pistols, and/or whatever weapons they
had available. Many of these weapons had
been specially adapted for use by airplane
flight crews. Enemy forces flew airplanes
covered with fabric at that time, and some
Allied air force soldiers carried steel darts
that could penetrate the fabric for
throwing at these planes. Russia’s
foremost World War I flying ace, Captain
Alexander Kazakov, invented a device
featuring hooks hung on cables for air
combat.
Technological advances
Crude machine-gun prototypes had been
used in the Civil War. However, while
they were improved by 1914, military
practices had not changed to catch up
with their use. The infantry charge was
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Progressive Era’s reforms
interest political action committees.)
Progressive leaders argued that Senators
should be directly elected by the people.
Their influence succeeded in getting
Congress to pass and ratify the 17th
Amendment in 1913, providing that the
public would elect U.S. Senators.
16th Constitutional Amendment
Until the Progressive Era, taxes and
customs duties on goods were the
American federal government’s primary
sources of income. As polarization of rich
and poor increased, many Progressive
interest groups advocated for a national
income tax, which would be graduated in
percentage according to individual
citizens’ incomes. Proponents felt this tax
would establish a better balance between
the rich and the poor, and would provide
funding for government programs.
Significant cuts were made to the
protective tariff, which opened American
business markets to competition from
foreign countries, breaking the
monopolies of U.S. trusts and demoting
big business in importance and power.
Congress passed the 16th Amendment,
giving federal government the right to
collect taxes from the nation’s population,
in 1909. Seventy-five percent of the
American states ratified this amendment
by 1913. Graduated income taxes gave
federal government enormous new
income, making up for money lost due to
the protective tariff cutbacks.
18th Constitutional Amendment
The Progressives blamed moral decline
on alcohol, the country’s most abused
drug. Temperance movements had been
popular in the 19th century. Early 20thcentury Progressives advanced this to the
idea of alcohol prohibition, which gained
acceptance. The Women’s Christian
Temperance Union (WCTU), formed in
1873, spearheaded this effort, publicizing
associations of alcohol with abuse,
domestic violence, crime, poverty,
diseases, and unemployment. In 1893, the
Anti-Saloon League joined the WCTU,
campaigning for national temperance
legislation. Urban working-class and
immigrant voters opposed this; rural
voters supported it. Nineteen states
passed prohibition laws by 1916.
America’s entry to World War I made
prohibition more imperative, to conserve
grain for the war effort and assure more
efficient workers with lower absenteeism.
Congress passed the 18th Amendment
banning the sale and use of alcohol in
1917. All states except Connecticut and
Rhode Island ratified it by 1919; it
became effective in 1920. Rather than
decreasing alcohol consumption, it led to
organized crime producing, distributing,
and selling alcohol; illegal bars
(speakeasies); and unregulated
manufacturing of dangerous alcohol.
17th Constitutional Amendment
Before 1913, U.S. Senators were selected
by the individual state legislatures. This
meant that the people did not have a
choice in the members of the Senate. The
Progressive Movement advocated for
many political reforms, including giving
citizens more of a voice in government.
They also wanted to reform government
by reducing the influence of big business
on politics: businesses often influenced
state legislatures to pick candidates who
would serve the businesses’ interests,
resulting in corruption. (This practice, of
course, still exists today at state and
federal levels in the forms of tax subsidies
to wealthy corporations, their hefty
campaign contributions to politicians,
powerful corporate lobbies, and special-
19th Constitutional Amendment
Equal rights were a theme of reforms
advocated by the Progressive Movement.
The women’s suffrage (right to vote)
movement gained impetus in 1910.
Middle-class women believed the female
voice could support the Temperance
Movement and help stop violent wars.
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The state of Washington gave women
suffrage in 1910. American entry to
World War I unexpectedly produced
opportunities for women to support the
war effort and economy by working in
factories as men departed to fight abroad.
Their increased economic power enabled
women to make great political progress.
By 1919, women had full political
participation in fifteen states and could
vote in certain elections in thirty-nine
states. In June of 1919, Congress passed
the 19th Amendment granting women the
right to vote. Over three-fourths of the
states ratified it, and it became law in
1920. The 19th Amendment created a
precedent and inspired equal rights and
feminist issues to come later in the 20th
century.
Sinclair proudly considered himself a
muckraker.
Ida M. Tarbell
In 1902, muckraker Ida Tarbell
interviewed Standard Oil magnate Henry
H. Rogers. She then wrote negative
exposés of the corporation and CEO John
D. Rockefeller’s business practices,
published first as a series of articles in
McClure’s Magazine and as a book in
1904, The Rise of the Standard Oil
Company. In 1908, McClure’s published
her piece The History of the Standard Oil
Company: the Oil War of 1872. Tarbell
exposed the company’s practices of
manipulating trust companies and of
strong-arming business rivals, railroad
companies, and any others that
interfered. She subsequently wrote a
profile of Rockefeller. By developing her
tactics of digging into public documents
nationwide, Tarbell revolutionized the
field of investigative reporting. Her
exposés of Standard Oil opened eyes to
the fact that America’s most famous CEO
could operate a corporation using such
unethical behavior, creating a damning
picture of big business and mobilizing the
public. Some credit her with breaking up
Standard Oil’s monopoly and “bringing
down” Rockefeller. Her works influenced
federal antitrust actions against Standard
Oil.
Muckraker
President Theodore Roosevelt is credited
with coining the term “muckraker,”
although he may never have used it
himself. In a 1906 speech, he compared
those focusing on corruption to the
character in John Bunyan’s classic
Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), the Man with
the Muck Rake, who refused to exchange
his muckrake for a heavenly crown, only
looking down at the muck he raked.
Though warning against focusing
exclusively on filth, Roosevelt also said in
this speech that “muckraking”
investigative journalists served a vital
function by exposing social ills, and that
they should always “attack” such “evil,”
reminding them that “the attack is of use
only if it is absolutely truthful.” Ida
Tarbell, an early investigative journalist,
remarked that many who requested work
from her only wanted “attacks,” while her
purpose was objective reporting. Even for
negative exposés of Standard Oil
Corporation and CEO John D. Rockefeller,
she meticulously documented facts
through researching public records.
Tarbell disliked the “muckraker”
designation; The Jungle author Upton
Upton Sinclair
Upton Sinclair published The Jungle in
1906, exposing the meatpacking industry.
His record of unsafe foods prompted the
Pure Food and Drug Act and Meat
Inspection Act’s quick passage the same
year. Sinclair had intended to attack free
enterprise capitalism and unsanitary,
unsafe, inhumane employee work
conditions; however, people were so
revolted by his exposure of unsanitary
practices—disguising spoiled meat with
chemicals; rat feces; inadequate
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inspections, etc.—they focused on this to
the exclusion of workers’ suffering.
Sinclair remarked, “I aimed at the public's
heart, and by accident I hit it in the
stomach." He bitterly commented that he
became famous “not because the public
cared anything about the workers, but
simply because the public did not want to
eat tubercular beef.” 1906’s Pure Food
and Drug Act established the Bureau of
Chemistry, which became the Food and
Drug Administration in 1930. Sinclair
rejected this legislation as unwarranted
help to meat packers as the government,
not the packers, paid $30 million yearly
for inspections.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Du Bois was the first African-American to
earn a Ph.D. from Harvard; a sociologist
focusing on criminology, historian,
author, editor, and civil rights activist. His
criminology theory proposed three points
about black crime: (1) The “social
revolution” encountered by newly freed
slaves as they started to adapt to new
lives created “strain”/stress causing black
crime, which he called “a symptom of
wrong social conditions…” (2) Black
crime decreased as black social status
increased toward that of whites. He
documented this assertion with statistical
correlations of low education and
employment with high crime in The
Philadelphia Negro and later works. (3)
What Du Bois called “The Talented
Tenth,” i.e. the most “exceptional men”
among blacks, would save the black race
from high crime rates. He believed a class
system within African-American society
needed to evolve for these men to
implement his proposed solutions to
crime.
Susan B. Anthony
In her twenties, Anthony was a
schoolteacher and then a headmistress.
Observing that men teachers’ wages were
four times those of women inspired her to
fight for equal pay. Before the Civil War,
she worked for temperance and
antislavery movements. Reading of the
first National Women’s Rights Convention
in 1850 and Horace Greeley’s admiration
of a speech by Lucy Stone, Anthony was
inspired by Stone’s speech to dedicate her
life to women’s rights, later meeting
Greeley and Stone in 1852. In 1851, after
a convention’s denying her admission for
being female, Anthony organized
America’s first women’s state temperance
society with Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Thereafter they crossed the country
speaking together for women’s equal
treatment. They founded the National
Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in
1869. Anthony’s 1872 arrest, trial, and
conviction for voting illegally gave her an
even bigger audience for women’s
suffrage. Anthony copublished The
History of Women’s Suffrage (1884–1887).
In 1890, she engineered NWSA’s merger
with Stone’s AWSA, forming the NAWSA.
W. E. B. Du Bois was probably the first
among criminologists to put together
social changes with historical facts, and to
use this combination of factors in
proposing his theories. When black
crimes increased following the Civil War,
while white racists blamed this on
inherent inferiorities of AfricanAmericans, Du Bois pointed out real
conditions contributing to black crime
instead. These factors included the
greater “complexity of life” after the Civil
War; mass immigration of AfricanAmericans from rural farms to
industrialized cities; and competition for
industrial jobs, particularly from recently
arrived Irish immigrants. In his (1899)
work The Philadelphia Negro, Du Bois
wrote of the logical consequences of
sudden social changes: “Naturally then, if
men are suddenly transported from one
environment to another, the result is lack
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of harmony with the new conditions; lack
of harmony with the new physical
surroundings leading to disease and
death or modification of physique; lack of
harmony with social surroundings
leading to crime.”
Germany’s “Master Race,” Hitler
eliminated parliamentary government,
instituting a dictatorship. He
accomplished many of his goals without
war by manipulating the divisive
European powers. Benito Mussolini,
Italy’s Fascist Party dictator, joined Hitler
in the Axis, an alliance between Rome and
Berlin, in 1935. Japan, as the only Asian
industrialized power, wanted China and
Southeast Asia’s natural resources. It had
seized Manchuria in 1931, and then
waged war against China in 1937. The
League of Nations was unsuccessful in
controlling Japan’s aggression in
Manchuria and Italy’s invasion of
Ethiopia. Japan joined Germany and Italy
in the Axis. America had refused to sign
the Versailles Treaty or join the League of
Nations after WWI; was uninterested in
foreign affairs before WWII; and did not
expect to engage in another major war
(except possibly with Japan).
Civil rights
Du Bois was the foremost intellectual and
political activist for African-Americans in
the 20th century’s first half and was
called “The Father of Pan-Africanism.” He
and educator Booker T. Washington
collaborated on ideas for solutions to
political disenfranchisement and
segregation, and on organizing the “Negro
Exhibition” showing black contributions
to American society at Paris’s 1900
Exposition Universelle. In 1905 he
cofounded the Niagara Movement,
championing free speech, voting,
leadership, and antiracist ideals.
Cofounder William Trotter felt whites
should be excluded. Du Bois disagreed
and cofounded the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) in 1909 where races could unite
for civil rights. He left his faculty position
at Atlanta University and became
NAACP’s publications director in 1910,
publishing Harlem Renaissance writers
Langston Hughes and Jean Toomer.
Becoming more radical as NAACP became
more institutionalized, Du Bois suggested
black separatism as an economic policy in
the 1930s and returned to teaching at
Atlanta University. He corresponded with
NAACP member Albert Einstein, who
called racism “America’s worst disease” in
1946.
United States’ policy and preparedness
American Congressional isolationism
promoted passage of the Neutrality Act of
1937, outlawing U.S. trade with
belligerent countries. U.S. policy
designated the Navy as its first line of
continental defense, and the Army as the
center for mass mobilization against any
invasions not stopped by powerful
American coastal defense installations
and/or by the Navy. The National Defense
Act of 1920 had authorized the largest
peacetime army in American history—
280,000 troops—but Congress had never
allocated funds to fund that number, only
paying for a little over half that, until
1939. Preparations for possible war
included experiments with armored
vehicles, motorization, air-ground
collaboration, and aerial troop transport;
however, these lacked resources and
support and so were ineffective. More
successful were the U.S. Marine Corps’
pioneering efforts in amphibious warfare
and related techniques, from which the
Army learned; the Signal Corps’ leading
World War II
Events leading to war
Following World War I, Europe was
unstable. The global Great Depression of
1929 destroyed Germany’s new
democracy, leaving it vulnerable to Adolf
Hitler’s Nazi Party taking power in 1933.
Wanting more space in Europe for
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improvements in radio communications;
and the world’s most sophisticated firedirection and fire-control techniques,
practiced by U.S. artillery.
additional Communist expansion in
Europe. The Marshall Plan’s 1947
enactment was a way for America to help
European countries rebuild after the war.
However, in 1948 the Soviet Union
deposed Czechoslovakia’s democracy,
making it a Communist country. American
leaders immediately determined to
discuss with their European allies a
Western security agreement. The need for
this became more urgent when the
Soviets blockaded Berlin, and America,
Britain, and France flew supplies in via
the Berlin Airlift. In 1949, twelve Western
countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty
forming the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO). This was the first
time since the 18th century that America
and Europe joined their continents’
security.
U.S. Army
The 1920 National Defense Act provided
for establishing a U.S. Army of 280,000,
but the government did not appropriate
funds for that many troops between the
two World Wars. Instead, the majority of
new equipment funding was used for the
nascent U.S. Air Corps. During most of the
period from 1920–1939, the U.S. Army
was minuscule and self-contained,
populated by long-term volunteers
scattered across small outposts
throughout the continent, Hawaii,
Panama, and the Philippines. While not
expecting to enter World War II, the
American military made some
preparations. These included the early
1930s identification of young officers at
Fort Benning, Georgia, for leadership.
Current military leaders had drawn up
war plans for various contingencies. They
had made plans for industrial and
manpower mobilization. They had
adopted amphibious warfare techniques
from the U.S. Marine Corps. The Army’s
Signal Corps had greatly enhanced radio
communications, and its artillery
practiced the world’s most advanced
techniques. Regardless, the U.S. Army
overall was unprepared in 1939 when the
European war began.
The original membership of NATO on
inception was America, Belgium, Britain,
Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy,
Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway,
and Portugal. For forty years thereafter,
NATO was the Western nations’ mainstay
of military defense against the Soviet
Eastern bloc. Its membership increased
during the Cold War with Greece and
Turkey’s 1952 admissions; the Federal
Republic of [West] Germany in 1955; and
Spain in 1982. France left military activity
with NATO in 1966 and rejoined in 1995.
With West Germany’s participation in
NATO in 1955 and its rearming, the
Communists formed the Warsaw Pact,
also a security agreement to coordinate
military defenses, like NATO, in response
as Soviet powers were concerned about
Germany attaining military power again.
Warsaw Pact nations were Albania,
Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany,
Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the USSR.
This membership stayed the same until
the collapse of the Soviet Union ended the
Cold War and all Eastern European
Communist governments in 1989–1990.
Events leading to the Marshall Plan
and NATO
Upon the heels of World War II’s end,
differences between the Western
countries America, Britain, France, etc.,
and the Eastern Communist bloc of the
USSR and its followers continued. Sovietallied governments were established by
the USSR in many regions it had captured
from the Nazis during WWII. The Western
nations responded with efforts to impede
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Red Scare and Joseph P. McCarthy
unconstitutional, a landmark decision
setting the stage for desegregation on a
wider basis. This ruling overturned the
1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson
sanctioning “separate but equal”
treatment of the races by stating that
“separate educational facilities are
inherently unequal.” NAACP attorney
Thurgood Marshall, who was
instrumental in this ruling, would later
become the first African-American
Supreme Court Justice.
Following World War II, during the Cold
War, many Americans feared the
influence of Communism, which appeared
a realistic danger. The first Soviet
detonation of an atomic bomb in 1949;
Soviet victory in the Chinese Civil War
and establishment of the People’s
Republic of China that year; and Soviets
and U.S. entering the Korean War on
opposing sides in 1950 gave credence to
fear of the “Red Menace.” This fear was
preyed upon by some, warping the
period’s political culture. The most
notorious U.S. politician to aggravate fear
of Communists was Senator Joseph
McCarthy. For nearly five years, he made
strenuous, albeit unsuccessful, efforts to
expose Communist Party members,
sympathizers, and “loyalty risks” with
left-wing views. The Cold War bred a
paranoid climate, encouraging the public
to believe McCarthy’s claims that the U.S.
government was full of spies and traitors.
Most were too intimidated by McCarthy’s
behavior to oppose him. Finally, when he
extended his accusations to the Army in
1954, the Senate censured his activities.
On September 1, 1955, in Montgomery,
Alabama, Rosa Parks was arrested when
she challenged current Southern customs
by refusing to relinquish her bus seat at
the front of the “colored section” to a
white man. Montgomery’s AfricanAmerican community instituted a
yearlong bus boycott, led by Revered
Martin Luther King Jr., accomplishing bus
desegregation by December 21, 1956.
King became the first president of the
Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC) when it was formed in
January–February 1957. Founded on
principles of civil disobedience and
nonviolence, the SCLC became a major
organizer of the Civil Rights movement. In
September 1957, nine African-American
high school students were prevented
from entering Central High School in
Little Rock, Arkansas, which was
supposed to be integrating, by an order
from anti-integration Governor Orval
Faubus. President Eisenhower sent the
National Guard and federal troops to
facilitate the attendance of these students,
who became known as the “Little Rock
Nine.” This event furthered American civil
rights progress.
13th and 14th Amendments and
American Civil Rights movement
The 13th Amendment abolished slavery
in 1864. The 14th Amendment gave
African-Americans citizenship and
Constitutional protection in 1868. The
15th Amendment in 1870 gave AfricanAmericans voting rights. On July 26, 1948,
President Harry Truman signed Executive
Order 9981 stating, "It is hereby declared
to be the policy of the President that there
shall be equality of treatment and
opportunity for all persons in the armed
services without regard to race, color,
religion, or national origin.” On May 17,
1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled
unanimously in the case of Brown v. Board
of Education of Topeka, Kansas that
segregation in public schools was
On February 1, 1960, four AfricanAmerican students from North Carolina
Agricultural and Technical College sat at a
segregated lunch counter at a
Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North
Carolina. They were refused service but
not asked to leave, so they staged the first
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sit-in. This prompted many other sit-ins
across the Southern states. Six months
after their sit-in, the four Greensboro
students realized victory when they were
served lunch at the same Woolworth’s
counter. Parks, libraries, theaters,
swimming pools, and other public places
were integrated via such peaceful sit-in
student protests throughout the Deep
South. Starting in May 1961, to test new
laws banning segregation in interstate
travel, funded by the Congress of Racial
Equality (CORE) and the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC), over 1,000 black and white
volunteers began taking bus trips, often
being attacked by hostile mobs. These
volunteers became known as the
Freedom Riders.
Supreme Court cases
In 1950, in both the Sweatt v. Painter and
McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents cases,
the Supreme Court ruled that AfricanAmerican students in graduate and law
schools could not be segregated. In its
brief, the U.S. Justice Department stated to
the court that the 1896 decision in Plessy
v. Ferguson that “separate but equal”
facilities were acceptable was
unconstitutional and should be
overturned. Thurgood Marshall, who later
became the first African-American
Supreme Court Justice, led the NAACP
Legal Defense Fund in designing a plan to
induce the court to revisit the
constitutionality of the separate-butequal doctrine. In 1954, in the case of
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka,
Kansas, recently appointed Chief Justice
Earl Warren read his first major
statement that the Supreme Court had
unanimously concluded that “in the field
of public education the doctrine of
‘separate but equal’ has no place.” He
added that “separate educational facilities
are inherently unequal.”
In April 1963, Reverend King was
arrested and jailed for protesting
segregation in Birmingham, Alabama.
While detained, he wrote his “Letter from
a Birmingham Jail.” Its principle was that
people are morally obligated to disobey
laws that are unjust. This was the same
concept espoused by Thoreau in Civil
Disobedience (1849) and by other
Enlightenment philosophers, and stated
in the U.S. Declaration of Independence
(1776). King’s letter became famous. The
Birmingham Public Safety
Commissioner’s uses of fire hoses, dogs,
and police brutality against peaceful
protesters in May were widely televised
and printed, gaining worldwide support
for the Civil Rights movement. In June,
Medgar Evers, 37, NAACP’s Mississippi
field secretary, was murdered. Two 1964
trials of Byron De La Beckwith both
ended in hung juries. De La Beckwith was
convicted of Evers’s murder—thirty years
later. In August, roughly 200,000 people
participated in the March on Washington.
Dr. King made his now-famous “I Have a
Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial,
stating people should be judged by
character, not color.
Nixon’s efforts to reconnect America
with China
During the Cold War following the end of
World War II, the USSR had created the
People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a
Communist state. While Nixon had run as
Eisenhower’s vice president in 1952 with
a strong anti-Communist position, he
nonetheless was determined to visit
China as president in 1972. Past
Presidents Grant and Hoover had visited
China, but respectively after and before
holding office; Eisenhower had visited
Taiwan in 1960. Nixon was the first
president to visit mainland China while in
office. America had viewed the PRC as a
confirmed enemy, and Nixon’s
establishment of diplomatic relations
marked the end of a twenty-five-year
period of separation between these two
world powers.
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Because of Nixon’s previous antiCommunist policy, his visit to China
became a symbol of a politician’s
behaving out of character. It also became
the most positive hallmark of Nixon’s
presidency, somewhat counterbalancing
his notoriety for the Watergate scandal.
a pro-Soviet government. America
increased aid to Turkey, Pakistan, and
Saudi Arabia by 1980. With silent U.S.
support, Iraq invaded Iran in 1980,
beginning an eight-year war. Neither side
was victor upon the 1988 cease-fire.
America had supported Israel’s 1982
occupation of southern Lebanon, which
would last until 2000; and sent troops to
Lebanon to protect American interests in
1983. America secretly sent Iran weapons
from 1985–1986, attempting their
exchange for U.S. hostages in Lebanon
and greater influence in Iran, which failed
after being publicized.
US involvement in the Middle East
1970s “Black September” massacre
occurred when Palestinian guerilla camps
were attacked by Jordan’s U.S. - and
Israel-backed troops, on the ground and
with napalm dropped by the Jordanian air
force. America threatened the Soviet
Union with nuclear weaponry if the USSR
intervened. In 1973, when Egypt and
Syria attacked Israel intending to
recapture the Golan Heights, America
gave the Israelis $2.2 billion in emergency
aid and advanced troops into the area.
When Soviets threatened engagement to
stop Israel from destroying Egypt’s 3rd
Army, the U.S. moved its nuclear powers
to DEFCON III status, forcing the USSR to
back off intervening. From 1973–1975, to
diminish the pro-Soviet Iraqi regime’s
strength and support Iran, America
helped Iran’s Kurdish rebels, withdrawing
support when Iraq and Iran made a deal
and denying refuge in Iran to Kurds;
Iraq’s government then killed many
Kurds.
Third parties in the 1990s and 2000s
America’s electoral process is based on
the two-party system of Democrats and
Republicans, with write-in/third-party
candidates allowed. For example, the
Green Party has an environmental
platform, and consumer
advocate/environmentalist Ralph Nader
has run as their presidential candidate.
The Independent Party has two U.S.
Senators: Bernie Sanders (Vermont) and
Joe Lieberman (Connecticut). Libertarian
and Constitution Parties are among the
largest third parties, with many other
smaller ones. There are no third-party
representatives in the House currently.
One effect of third-party candidates is as
“spoilers”; i.e. they draw votes away from
the party more similar to them (e.g. Green
from Democratic), but not enough to win,
so the more different party (e.g.
Republican) wins instead. Third parties
can focus attention on issues not
addressed by major parties, even leading
to a major party’s adopting such issues.
They can boost voter turnout. Higher up
third-party candidates can attract votes
for their party’s state and local party
candidates. With 33 percent Republicans
and 43 percent Democrats, 25 percent of
the 2004 electorate was from third
parties.
America supported the Shah of Iran and
tried to engineer a military coup to save
him in 1979, but Shiite Muslim
reactionaries forced him out while
Ayatollah Khomeini took control. America
publicly supported Khomeini’s
suppression of Kurdish rebels and Iran’s
control over Kurdistan. Also in 1979,
President Jimmy Carter designated the
Persian Gulf a crucial American interest
for its oil, stating America would go to
war to protect this supply. He threatened
the Soviets with nuclear power against
potential intervention. In December,
Soviets invaded Afghanistan, establishing
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2008 presidential election
The 2008 presidential election was the
first general election since 1952 when
neither the incumbent (sitting) president
nor the incumbent vice president was a
candidate. Following Bob Dole,
Republican candidate John McCain was
the second oldest first-time presidential
nominee in America’s history. McCain’s
running mate, Sarah Palin, was the
Republican Party’s first female vicepresidential nominee. The age difference
between McCain and Democratic
candidate Barack Obama, almost twentyfive years, was the largest ever, larger
than the twenty-three-year difference
between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole in
1996. Both candidates were born off the
U.S. main continent—Obama in the state
of Hawaii, and McCain in the Panama
Canal Zone. Both were also current
senators, another first in U.S. history.
Obama, who is biracial, is considered to
be the first African-American nominee
and president. His acceptance speech, and
McCain’s concession speech, both broke
Nielsen ratings records for television
viewership.
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